Understanding the influence of company's marketing mixes on consumer decision making process toward choosing convenient stores: A case study of " shop and go" stores in Ho Chi Minh city
Abstract
Consumer decision making process is an important process that marketers always want to learn and understand more thoroughly. This is a complicated process that a customer has to go through before and during making their purchase decision. According to Mc Daniel, Lamb, Hair (2005), the process of making decisions involves five stages: problem recognition, information search, and evaluation of alternatives, decision making, and post-purchasing evaluating. Furthermore, consumer decision making is depicted as multi-staged and complex with several factors triggering problem recognition before initiating a sequence of actions to reach an outcome of satisfaction or dissatisfaction (Harrel, 1990:740; Cox, Granbois & Summers, 1983:394). Also, together with the speedy change of information and technology, consumer demands and behaviors change very quickly nowadays. Thus, the influences of company’s marketing mixes on the consumer decision making process needs to be reviewed and updated by marketers of different product categories. Although there are many researches on consumer decision making process have been explored for many industry and product categories, the existing researches
on convenient store of retail industry in Vietnam are still insufficient and have spaces
to be explored. Convenient stores have just appeared in Vietnam for several years and have a potential to grow. “Shop & Go” store is one of the most popular convenient stores with more than 70 outlets and becomes the largest operator of convenient stores
in Ho Chi Minh city. This research aims to explore the influence of company’s marketing mixes on consumer decision making process toward choosing convenient stores. The research uses “Shop and Go” store as a case study to narrow down the
reseach and examine deeply.