Contents

Introduction ...................................................................................... 2

Marketers Influence the Stages of Decision Making in B2B and B2C ...... 3

Perception ...................................................................................... 3

Learning ......................................................................................... 5

Culture ........................................................................................... 6

Details Explanation on How Marketers Influence Each Stages of Decision

Making Process Supported By Examples from Nestle ............................ 7

Perception ...................................................................................... 7

Learning ......................................................................................... 8

Culture ........................................................................................... 9

Conclusions ..................................................................................... 10

References ...................................................................................... 11

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Introduction

Nestlé is a food and beverages company that have been in Malaysia for
more than 100 years ago. Nestlé began in Malaysia in 1912 as the Anglo-Swiss
Condensed Milk Company in Penang and later, growth and expansion made a move
to Kuala Lumpur necessary in 1939. Since 1962, with its first factory in Petaling Jaya,
Nestlé Malaysia now manufactures its products in 8 factories and operates from its
head office in Mutiara Damansara.

Consumer behaviour is the study of consumers and the processes they use
to choose and consume or dispose of products and services. Understanding consumer
behaviour is crucial for any organisation before releasing or launching any kind of
product. Consumer behaviour helps organisation to make the consumers aware of the
products that is being launched.

Decision making process is the process made by customers that involves

making choices, identifying decisions, gathering information and assessing alternative
resolutions (UMass Dartmouth, 2018). Basically, a consumer decision making process
is a journey that customers made before buying a product. This process will allow
consumers to choose the most satisfying alternatives within all the product choices.

Business-to-business or B2B is a transaction or selling of a product or

services between business and another business (Uzialko, 2017). A business-to-
business transaction usually involves a company supplying raw materials for other
companies in order for the companies to keep the business running. Business-to-
consumer or B2C is a type of selling or transaction in which a business sells products
or services to the consumers (Hom, 2013). A business-to-consumer are basically a
transaction that happens when an individual buying for their own personal usage and
not gaining any profit after transaction.

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Marketers Influence the Stages of Decision Making in
B2B and B2C

Consumer decision making process is a process whereby each of the

consumers will eventually take or took before buying a product (Johnston (2016).
Based on my understanding, customer buying process describes the journey that
every customers or consumers will go through before buying a product. These factors
will be influenced through the consumers and customers’ environment and
surroundings.

Various factors influences the decision making process for a consumer or a

customer. Factors that are not usually visible in the naked eyes but greatly influenced
the decision making of each consumers and customers (Management Study HQ,
2018). There are factors such as learning, perception and culture, these factors
sometimes unknown to the customers themselves.

Perception
According to The Saylor Foundation (2010), perception is the way people
interpret everything around them. People do it through stimuli that affects the human
senses like sights, hearing, smell and taste. Based on my understanding, these stimuli
is the ones that can change the way people view things, such as some people might
think blue is a peaceful colour while some might not.

Selective attention is a process where people filters out the information

they see or hear to only the ones they think are relevant to them (The Saylor
Foundation, 2010). Based on my understanding, these selective attention helps the
people to ignore the information that is not needed by them. Different from selective
retention, where in the selective retention, the people forgets information even though
the information is relevant for them (The Saylor Foundation, 2010). Based on my
understanding, the selective retention is normal occurrence whereby consumers or

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customers forgets the information they have obtained even though the information is
related for them.

Marketers used these types of stimuli to bring forward the customers or

basically make customers closer to their brands whether the people need the brand
or not (The Saylor Foundation, 2010). Marketers used a lot of platforms to attract the
consumers through their senses. Platforms like television, radio, magazines and the
internet are used by marketers to advertise their products. According to Ron Marshall
(2015), estimated amount of advertisement sees by people is around four thousand
to ten thousand advertisement each day.

As an example, Nestle have used advertisements platforms like television

and billboard to show the Milo Drink advertisements. From the advertisement, Nestle
have constantly advertise the phrase “Energy To Take On The Day, Every Day”. Thus,
putting the Milo Drink in the eyes of the consumers as the drink that could give energy
to them. The perception of the consumers towards Milo is because the consumers see
the advertisement made by Nestle and have imprinted the fact that Milo Drink will give
people who drink them energy.

Thus, for business-to-business companies, seeing that Nestle have done

good advertising to make customers have good perception towards the products,
businesses will continue taking the supply of Milo Drink to be sell to the customers,
such as Tesco, retail stores or mini stores. Milo can be seen everywhere due to
businesses believes that customers have good perception towards the product.

4
Learning
Learning is a process made by consumers when they want to learn about
a product or service or even learning could be experienced that the consumers had
after trying out a product or service (The Saylor Foundation, 2010). Based on my
understanding, learning is a process where customers or consumers seek out
information before buying a product or even the consumers experience on the
product. That is one reason why consumers do not buy any bad product when they
had bad experience or learned something bad about the product.

There are three types of learning, which is operant conditioning, cognitive

learning and modelling learning. Operant learning is basically learning through a
positive or negative reinforcement (The Saylor Foundation, 2010). Operant
conditioning is when companies uses sales promotions such as samples, coupons and
price offs. These sales promotions by companies will result is two things, positive
reinforcement whereby the consumers repeat purchase or negative reinforcement
where the consumers learns that they do not like the product and choose not to
purchase it.

Cognitive learning is the development of beliefs without any reinforcement

(The Saylor Foundation, 2010). These type of learning is focusing on communication
of benefits offered by the product to the consumers. Modelling learning is when
consumers learns about the product from others and does not have any experience
with the product (The Saylor Foundation, 2010). These learning is when a consumers
learns by following others that they trust such as experts or influencers.

Marketers will try to get customers to learn more about their product
positively (The Saylor Foundation, 2010). Different kinds of companies will deal with
different types of ways to make customers learns about their product, with Nestle,
their product CERELAC, NANKID and LACTOKID which is a product for babies, gives
out free samples for moms to try out first before buying, for free (Nestle, 2016). The
consumers will have to register online, and choose the desired sample to try out and
the product will be shipped to the address registered.

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 Nestle only provide trying out free samples, but Nestle does not sell the full
product, thus, customers that wanted to buy the product after trying out the product,
can get the product at the stores near them, this is because, businesses that have
seen that CERELAC, NANKID and LACTOKID was given free sample by Nestle can give
the product a boost in sales, keeps on taking supply of the product to sell to the end
customer.

Culture
Culture refers to the beliefs, values, customs that characterize a society.
The culture are the ones that describe the way a society should live (The Saylor
Foundtion, 2010). Thus, culture also affect the way people make decision on buying
things. Based on my understanding, different countries may have different cultures,
thus the companies must consider well about the conformity of the product in the
culture.

As for example, in Malaysia, the culture for breakfast is that Malaysian

always eats heavy in the morning, with all kinds of dish, this is because, Malaysian
thinks and are used to eat heavy to start the day with energy. Thus, Nestle marketers
took the opportunity to promote Milo Drink as the drink for energy in the morning.
Nowadays, the selling of Milo in restaurants is a must because of how Milo have
penetrate the Malaysian market.

In the Business-to-Business sense, the companies have seen how Malaysian

and Milo Drink is a perfect combination. Thus, retail businesses will keep on taking the
supply of Milo at Nestle to continue selling the product to the end customers, which is
Malaysians.

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Details Explanation on How Marketers Influence Each
Stages of Decision Making Process Supported By
Examples from Nestle

Perception

The perception factor influences the Evaluation of Alternatives in the stages

of consumers’ decision making. Evaluation of alternatives is the search of information
on the specific product (Joshua, 2016). These is the stage where consumers will start
to list all the available product or services that could possibly solve their own needs.
At this stage, the consumers will look for the most suitable choice out of all similar
product or services.

According to Joshua (2016), there are two characteristics that is made by

the consumers which is the objective characteristic and the subjective characteristic.
The objective characteristics is basically the features of the product and services while
the subjective characteristics is the value or the brand reputation of the product or
services.

As an example, for Nestle product, Milo, its competitor will be Ovaltine.

Thus, making consumers able to choose between the two products. For Milo to
compete with the other brands, Ovaltine, Milo must have a good brand name and
health cautious. Nestle as a company have started to be focusing their products
towards the healthier and nutritious products, which includes Milo. Milo have proven
that it has only six percent of sugar and out of the six percent, three percent of the
sugar is natural sugar (The Star Online, 2018). Thus, this gives Milo the competitive
advantage.

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Learning

The learning factor can be relate with the pre-purchase search, purchase
and post purchase of the stages in the consumers’ decision making. The pre-purchase
search is consumer seeking help or search for the solution of the problems (Joshua,
2016). The way consumers seek help is based on either two ways, internal information
or external experience. Internal experience is experiential sources or when the
consumers have used the product before and external sources is information that
consumers get via friends, family members or advertisements.

This can be relate with learning through experience and modelling learning.
Learning through experience will help consumers choose whether to buy a product
again while modelling learning is caused by the consumers’ trust on the model that
could be family, friends or even celebrities.

As an example, Milo is not a recent product but Milo have already been in
the Malaysian market since 1950 (Hakim, 2015). Thus, the product have been one of
the important Malaysian household brands. With a consumers’ family using the Milo
brand in their home no doubt that by only watching and modelling their family
members, consumers will choose Nestle Milo.

Next, the purchase stage. According to Joshua (2016), when the consumers
is done with finding the best solution that could fit with their needs and wants,
purchasing of product will starts. Every purchase of product, there are two types,
which is trial purchasing and repeat purchasing. Trial purchasing is when the
consumers never had experience on the product while repeat purchasing is when the
consumer is satisfied with the product and wanted to buy the product again.

This stage can be related with the Operant learning. As in the Operant learning,
marketers will give out free samples as a trial for consumers to try and hoping that
the consumers will then purchase the product. It is stated that Nestle have given out
free samples for their baby food products, thus increasing the sales of the product.

The last stage, which is the post-purchase stage in the consumers’ decision
making process can also be related with the learning factor that influences the decision
8
making of consumers. Post-purchase stage is when the consumers have purchased
the product or services, thus, making them able to evaluate the product or services
(Joshua, 2016).

As an example, Milo Drink have been advertised and shown that by drinking
the malt drink, it could give energy to start the day. Thus, consumers can actually
evaluate the truthfulness of the product on Nestlé’s own statement which is Milo giving
consumers’ energy. If the Milo Drink actually brings satisfaction towards the
consumers, the consumers will start being loyal towards Nestle.

Culture
The culture factor can influence the need recognition. Need recognition is
the first stage in the consumers’ decision making model. There are two states that can
be seen in the need recognition stage, which is Actual State and Desired State (Sirgy,
Rahtz, & Portolese, 2018). Actual state is the moment where the consumers is having
problems with their current situation while desired situation is the state where
consumers want their current state to be with the product that trigger their decision
making process.

As an example, the culture in Malaysia is the need for healthier product.

This is because, According to Farezza Hanum Rashid (2017), Malaysians is the most
obese in the region. Thus, Malaysians have started to eat healthily. Nestle have started
following their stratergy on building a nutritious, healthy and well products (Nestle,
2018). Thus, Malaysians will choose Nestle products due to Nestle being able to
provide Malaysian with Healthier and Nutritious yet tasty food and beverages.

9
Conclusions

As a conclusion, Nestle have been in Malaysia for quite a long time, while
providing Malaysian some of Malaysian all-time-favourite food and beverages since
one hundred years ago. Consumer decision making process is the process that
consumers take before, during and after buying a product or services. The process
describes the journey made by each customers.

Business-to-Business (B2B) and Business-to-Consumers (B2C) both have

difference and similarities that helps distinguished between the two transactions. Both
are important for both as business-to-business will help business-to-consumers.
Without B2B, the products will not be able to be run in the B2C environment.

Each factors that influenced the consumers’ decision making process will
have different impact towards different types of customers. Perception of customers
towards a product is important because with perception, the product will either be
positive or negative in the eye of the consumers. Thus, marketers need to carefully
place the product to please the stimuli of the consumers.

Learning factors is also important as consumers nowadays are smart and

the availability of any knowledge about the product is easier to access because of the
internet and the quickness of the spread of word of mouth. Thus, marketers needs to
ensure that the customers learn the positive sides of every product and counter back
any negative feedbacks from the public.

Culture factor is also one of the factors that could influence the consumers’
decision making. Culture have been in the consumers’ life for the longest time, thus,
their behaviour, styles and purchasing behaviour are usually on par with the culture.
Thus, marketers should consider the culture on a country before coming out with a
product or services.

10
References

Hakim, H. (2015, January 22). Beverages: Why is Nestle Milo so popular in Malaysia?
Retrieved from Quora: https://www.quora.com/Beverages-Why-is-Nestle-Milo-
so-popular-in-Malaysia

Hom, E. J. (2013, September 11). What is B2C? Retrieved from Business News Daily:
https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/5085-what-is-b2c.html

Johnston, E. (2016, May 18). 5 steps to understanding your customer’s buying

process. Retrieved from B2B Marketing: https://www.b2bmarketing.net/en-
gb/resources/blog/5-steps-understanding-your-customers-buying-process

Joshua. (2016, August 22). Insight into the consumer buying decision process.
Retrieved from Ashton Manufacturing:
https://ashtonmanufacturing.com.au/insight-into-the-consumer-buying-
decision-process/

Management Study HQ. (2018). Factors Affecting Decision Making Process of a

Consumer. Retrieved from Management Study HQ:
https://www.managementstudyhq.com/factors-affect-decision-making-
process.html

Marshall, R. (2015, September 10). How Many Ads Do You See In One Day? Retrieved
from Red Crow Marketing Inc:
http://www.redcrowmarketing.com/2015/09/10/many-ads-see-one-day/

Nestle. (2016). Free Sample. Retrieved from Nestle Start Well, Stay Well:
https://www.startwell.nestle.com.my/free-sample

Nestle. (2018). Stratergy. Retrieved from Nestle:

https://www.nestle.com/aboutus/strategy

Sirgy, M. J., Rahtz, D. R., & Portolese, L. (2018). Consumer Behavior Today, v. 1.0.
Retrieved from Flatworld:

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 https://catalog.flatworldknowledge.com/bookhub/reader/8111?e=sirgy_1_0ch
11_s01

The Saylor Foundation. (2010). Factors That Influence Consumers’ Buying Behavior.
Principles of Marketing, 86-100.

The Star Online. (2018, February 6). Nestle: Milo only contain 6% sugar if
recommended preparation is followed. Retrieved from The Star Online:
www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2018/02/06/nestle-milo-only-contains-6-
sugar/

UMass Dartmouth. (2018). Decision-Making Process. Retrieved from UMass

Dartmouth: https://www.umassd.edu/fycm/decisionmaking/process/

Uzialko, A. C. (2017, July 12). What Is B2B? Retrieved from Business News Daily:
https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/5000-what-is-b2b.html

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