Dissonance Reducing Buying
This article covers meaning, importance & example of Dissonance Reducing Buying from marketing perspective.
What is Dissonance Reducing Buying?
Dissonance-Reducing Buying is a buying situation in which the customer is highly involved in the decisioning process and is unable to differentiate between different options and brands available in the market to fulfil the need. The dictionary meaning of dissonance is ‘a conflict of people's opinions, actions or characters’. On the same lines, Dissonance-Reducing Buying can be seen when there is an anxiety after purchase. This usually happens in the case of high involvement purchases where there are few differences between brands. This is what differentiates it from the complex buying situation where they are a lot of differences in the options in the market.
In this case the consumer does not have enough information based on which to make a decision. Therefore the consumer will try to reduce his/her anxiety by not believing on any negative information about the brand purchased. One of the major disadvantages of this type of behavior is customer will show post purchase dissonance which is very difficult to control.
Importance of Dissonance Reducing Buying
In this buying situation, the customer is not very clear on the differences between the various brands available in the market for the same need. It is very important for the marketer to differentiate here even if it is on the basis of positioning, brand image, trust or pricing. The dissonance can remain even after the purchase which is not good for the brand for future repeat purchases or for feedback.
Customer should be provided ample information about the service, parts, pricing options, replacement etc. so that the customer feels less dissonance even after buying as the customers would know that they can rely on the company to get replacement or answers to the queries. Customer service and support can play major role in this buying situation.
Example of Dissonance-Reducing Buying
Customers who want to purchase the newly arrived LED TVs will not find many differences between the brands but the price of the product and its technicality will make them involve more. Similar behavior is seen in the smartphone market where there are so many phones available in the same price range with almost the same features that the customers are not sure on which to buy and whether buying a particular brand would lead to dissatisfaction post purchase.
Hence, this concludes the definition of Dissonance Reducing Buying along with its overview.
Browse the definition and meaning of more similar terms. The Management Dictionary covers over 1800 business concepts from 5 categories.
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