The Buyer Decision Making Process | Protyre

If you’ve not heard of Protyre before we are the retail arm of Micheldever Tyre Services, which is a tyre wholesaler that has been trading since 1972. Protyre sells directly to the consumer through 166 Protyre garages across the UK. As well as tyres we add value to our proposition by offering a number of additional services through our Protyre garages, including MOTs, brakes, alignments, car servicing and exhausts. The retail business is supported by a large ecommerce website protyre.co.uk its is my role to run the retail ecommerce website.

To offer the best services and products to our consumers it is important that we understand the consumers behaviour and the buying decisions they make when deciding to shop at Protyre. “The term consumer behaviour is defined as the behaviour that consumers display in search for, purchasing, using, evaluating and disposing of products and services that they expect will satisfy their needs. Consumer behaviour focuses on how individuals make decisions to spend their available resources (time, money, effort) on consumption of related items. “ (Schiffman, 2012)

The Five Stages of the Buying Decision Process

1. Need Recognition/Problem Solving
2. Information Search
3. Evaluation of Alternatives
4. Purchase Decision
5. Post Purchase Evaluation

Stage 1 – Problem Recognition

All products that we sell at Protyre are designed to meet the needs of our target audience i.e the customer. Car tyres and maintenance are not something that we purchase on an everyday basis, so the customer has to have a need for the product and problem recognition is important here, we cannot sell a product to someone who doesn’t need it, so the customer needs to be in market – there needs to be a consumer demand for the product. Have they got a flat tyre, are their tyres reaching the end of their life? A tyre can be seen as a distressed purchase and its not the sort of product customers normally take enjoyment from replacing. This process works exceptionally well for selling products such as MOTs, we are able to target this customer with an MOT reminder campaign and we will start targeting this segment approx. 6 weeks before there MOT due date. An MOT product has a defined expiry date and the product life cycle of an MOT is annually, it is a legal requirement to have an MOT on your vehicle – so there is a captive audience you have to have one it’s just a case of whether you go back to the same garage as previous or you look for an alternative. In summary what every product you purchase from Protyre there is a need.

Stage 2 – Information Search

The second of the five stages that make up the Buyer Decision Process is information search. Once the customer has identified a need for one of Protyre’s products they are likely to search for information about the product and try to find the best possible option. Relying on internal and external factors as well as their past experiences with Protyre. In the information stage internal searches refers to the consumers own memory or recollection of a product, have they purchased a particular tyre from Protyre before, were they happy with the product or dissatisfied? In this stage of the process the customer can often guided by their own personal experience with Protyre. If it was good last time, then they are likely a retained customer. An external search is conducted when the customer has no prior knowledge about a product and they browse through online resources, such as Google or even look at reviews for social proofing to help them make a decision. At Protyre we aim to give the user the information they want. A good tool for this is the telephone, we generate thousands of calls each month into the business from prospective customers with questions about certain products this is an example of external research and is down to our sales team to provide clarity on any questions asked and close the sale.    

Stage 3 – Evaluation of Alternatives

Evaluation of alternatives is the third stage in the Consumer Buying Decision process. Consumers will evaluate all of the products they are interested in purchasing and whether they have the defined attributes to deliver the benefits they need. An example of a tyre would be whether it was being used for winter driving, for example if you were driving abroad you would need a tyre that is winter approved and features the snow and ice icon. The consumer may look at alternative products available from many of Protyre’s competitors. The consumer can spend significant time in the comparative process reviewing the various prices for the same products, warranties offered by each competitor to help resolve the problem. Buying a tyre can be a confusing and expensive purchase. The customer could simply be persuaded to choose between one alternative or the next by what promotions are run by each brand or what discount code is available, what the availability of the tyre is, how quickly can it be fit – remember tyres are a distressed purchase your normally buying one because there is a need and its urgent. This could play a significant factor when evaluating alternatives in the buying decision process.

Stage 4 – Purchase Decision

The penultimate stage in the Buying Decision Process is the purchase decision and when the purchase actually takes place. During this process the consumer will decide from who they will buy, having taken into account all of the other factors we have already covered. The biggest factor for Protyre’s customers is price and availability. Getting the tyre at the best price Vs our competitors and having them available for fitting asap. At Protyre we are very fortunate to be part of a large organisation which stocks of over 2 million tyres available from 15 warehouses across the UK, so if the tyres are not available for immediate fitting, they, can usually be delivered into the garage for fitting the next day. The Protyre website is a good example of this, with its first available fitting date displayed on all tyre search results as shown in the below screenshot.

Stage 5 – Post Purchase Evaluation

The final stage of the Buyer Decision Making process is the Post purchase evaluation, where the customer assess whether they are satisfied or dissatisfied with their purchase and whether it met their expectations, exceeded them or was disappointing. How the customer feels about their purchase and the service they received. At Protyre it is important to us that the customer has the best experience during the purchase process and one they have purchased the product whether that be when visiting one of our garages or using our retail website protyre.co.uk. Did the customer receive a good service in the garage, were the tyres fitted quickly and how were the staff when the customer visited the garage. Finally, once the customer has left the garage what are their thoughts on the performance of the tyre – did it perform as expected or exceed expectation? There are a number of questions that we at Protyre try to answer, so we can improve the customers buying experience for both new and existing customers.  It is essential that the customer goes away believing they have had the best experience, and this sits with our company slogan and values – Protyre are The local garage you can trust. This is very important to us as the perception from a garage is the service levels are poor – we are trying to change this perception. We will regularly engage with our customers to make sure that they have had the best experience and will send out weekly NPS emails to the previous weeks customers, the scores and feedback from these surveys help drive our in garage performance, help drive change and help us shape our standard operating procedures. We have collected over 44,000 positive Trustpilot reviews and over 97,000 Feefo reviews. We are able to control whether the customer is satisfied or dissatisfied using this review platforms and we promote these great customer satisfaction scores across our website, marketing collateral and social media channels. By controlling the post purchase evaluation stage it helps Protyre to retain more life-long customers.

Thanks for reading! I hope you have found my own experiences interesting and how I have related the Buyer Decision Making process to my job role. Please leave a comment, I would love to get your thoughts.

Bibliography:

Blythe, Jim, and Jane Martin. Essentials of Marketing PDF EBook, Pearson Education, Limited, 2019. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/solent-ebooks/detail.action?docID=5731459. (Accessed: 21st January 2022)

SCHIFFMAN, L.G., L.L. KANUK and H. HANSEN, 2012. Consumer behaviour : a European outlook. Harlow, England: Prentice Hall (Accessed: 21st January 2022)

Lucidchart Content Team (2017). Definition and Examples of the Consumer Decision-Making Process. [online] Lucidchart.com. Available at: https://www.lucidchart.com/blog/consumer-decision-making-process. (Accessed: 21st January 2022)

Trustpilot. Protyre is rated “Excellent” with 4.8 / 5 on Trustpilot. [online] Available at: https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/www.protyre.co.uk (Accessed: 21st January 2022)

Protyre – Buy Tyres online, Book MOTs, Car Servicing & Fitting: Same Day Fitting. [online] Available at: https://www.protyre.co.uk. (Accessed: 21st January 2022)