Ch. 6 - Consumer Decision Making

     Consume behavior strongly affect the consumer buying process, hence marketers always to know what is actually happening inside customer's mind in order to provide additional values of products to users to satisfy their needs and wants. However,it is mainly influenced by three key factors-cultural tractors, social factors and psychological factors - that are vital conditions for every   
marketing strategy to be considered before launching in the market. In cosmetic industry, although L'Oreal is the leader of the market, it is necessarily for the company to concern these factors in its marketing plan, so as to gain the market shares and remain its above rivals such as P&G and Unilever. The report will try to find out the role of consumer behavior in marketing strategy planning and discover the process of how L'Oreal adapt the three factors to their marketing plans order to achieve success.
The term consumer behavior is defined as "the study of how individuals, groups and  organisations select, buy, use and dispose of goods, ideas or experiences to satisfy their needs and wants "(Kotler & Keller , 2009:150). In other words, the study focuses on how individuals spending their available resources-time, money and effort - to create a final decision in buying process (Schiffman, Hansen & Kanuk, 2008).
Since consumer behaviour has huge effects on marketing planning, large companies like L'Oréal always consider carefully this psychological term before a new marketing campaign is launched. L'Oréal is the world's largest cosmetic and beauty company, which founded 1909 by Eugene Schuller. the company has operations in over 130 countries with more than 60,850 employees and got many awards for the world top 20 respected company in 2005, the international corporate diversity award in 2006, the world's most ethical companies in 2007 and 2010 and top 100 sustainable companies in the world in 2011.