MT219 Unit 2 Buyer Behavior Analysis Example

Three Weeks From an Empty Spray Bottle to an $18 Starter Kit: A Unit 2 Buyer Behavior Analysis

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

MT219: Marketing

Unit 2 Buyer Behavior Analysis

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

Brightdrop Home, the buyer and every detail are composite and illustrative; the sources cited are real.

The Buyer

Jordan is a composite thirty-four-year-old who rents a one-bedroom apartment in Columbus with a single cabinet under the kitchen sink. She works as a dental office manager, cleans on Sunday mornings and has bought the same store-brand all-purpose spray for years out of habit. Her budget is careful but not tight; she notices prices on things she buys every week and pays less attention to things she buys every few months, and spray falls in the second group. That habit matters later, because a price per tablet only registers with her when she compares it directly with what she used to pay. She recycles, but she would not have described herself as someone who shops for environmental reasons.

Stage One: Problem Recognition

The trigger was small. On a Sunday in March the spray bottle sputtered empty halfway through cleaning the counter, and a second bottle she thought she had was not under the sink. She finished with dish soap and a sponge and added spray to her grocery list. Kotler and Armstrong (2021) put the start of every purchase at the point where someone senses that what they have falls short of what they want. For Jordan, the gap was mild: she needed spray, not a new way of cleaning.

Stage Two: Information Search

The search began by accident. That week a short video in her social feed showed a tablet dropped into a bottle of tap water and fizzing into spray, with a line about not paying to ship water. She watched it twice. Over the next ten days she saw two more ads from the same brand, read a friend's comment under one of them, and looked at the brand's site once on her phone during lunch. She did not search actively; the information came to her. That matters for the brand, because a buyer who is not looking will not compare carefully at first; she notices one thing, here the fizzing tablet, and only later asks whether it works.

Stage Three: Evaluating the Alternatives

This is where the decision was made, and it took the longest. Jordan compared four options, though she would not have called it a comparison. On cost per bottle, the store-brand spray she always bought cost about [$1.10] per sixteen ounces, a national-brand spray about [$2.15], a rival tablet brand about [$2.00] and vinegar and water almost nothing. Brightdrop's tablets were [$2.25] each, or [$1.91] on subscription, plus an [$18] starter kit with a bottle and three tablets.

On scent, she disliked vinegar and found the national brand too strong. On storage, the tablets won clearly: a flat box of tablets fit in a drawer, while two spray bottles crowded her only cabinet. On trust, she had used the store brand for years and had no evidence the tablets cleaned as well.

Howard and Sheth (1969) described buyers forming a choice set from brands they know and weighing them on the attributes that matter most to them. Jordan's choice set narrowed quickly to the store brand and Brightdrop. Price favored the store brand. Storage and the feeling of doing something better favored the tablets. Trust was the deciding question.

The vinegar option deserves a word, because it was the cheapest by far and Jordan rejected it on scent alone. That shows the limits of a price comparison: an option that saves money but makes the apartment smell like a salad dressing was never really in the choice set, whatever its cost. The rival tablet brand dropped out for a different reason. Its site required a subscription to buy at all, and Jordan was not ready to commit before she knew whether tablets worked.

Stage Four: The Purchase

Two things settled trust. A friend replied to Jordan's question in a group chat, saying she had used the tablets for six months and they worked on grease. And the brand's site offered a thirty-day refund on the starter kit. On a Thursday evening, three weeks after the bottle ran dry, Jordan bought the kit for [$18] and declined the subscription box that was pre-selected at checkout, choosing to pay for tablets as she needed them.

The purchase was not driven by price. It was driven by a friend's recommendation, which reduced the risk of being wrong, and by the refund, which reduced the cost of being wrong.

The ads made her curious; a friend and a refund made her buy.

Stage Five: After the Purchase

Jordan used the first tablet the Sunday after the kit arrived and was satisfied with the spray on her counters and stove. She found the glass formula streaked on her bathroom mirror and switched back to an old glass cleaner for that. She reordered six all-purpose tablets a month later. By the third month she had settled into a pattern of buying when the box ran low, about every five weeks, never on subscription. From the brand's point of view she is a loyal but cautious buyer: she stays, but she keeps the decision in her own hands each time. Festinger (1957) described cognitive dissonance as the discomfort people feel after a choice when doubts arise, and Jordan's mirror experience created exactly that; she resolved it by keeping the product for the job it did well rather than abandoning it.

Which Choices Moved Her

Of everything Brightdrop did, three choices mattered. The video ads created awareness at almost no effort from her. The refund lowered her perceived risk. And the flat packaging solved a real problem in her small apartment that no competitor addressed. The pre-checked subscription did not move her; it annoyed her, and she unchecked it.

One choice the brand could make better is its message. The ads talked about shipping water and plastic, but Jordan bought partly for storage and stayed for the counter results. A message about a cleaner cabinet and grease that comes off might reach buyers like her faster. So might a glass formula that does not streak, since a disappointing first use of one formula can make a new buyer doubt the others. Testing which message and which first product lead to a second order would tell the brand more than measuring how many people watched the video.

References

Festinger, L. (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford University Press.

Howard, J. A., & Sheth, J. N. (1969). The theory of buyer behavior. Wiley.

Kotler, P., & Armstrong, G. (2021). Principles of marketing (18th ed.). Pearson.