FREE online courses on Consumer Behaviour and Motivation - Main Difficulties
in the Study of Buying Motives
Buying motives of the consumers are studied by different
techniques or methods. But no method is free from difficulties The main
difficulties that came across in such studies are the following:
(i)
Consumers ignorance: Sometimes the consumers themselves do not
understand their inner urges which prompt them to react in a particular way to
purchase a product.
(ii)
Consumer's hesitation or misstatement: Sometimes, even they
understand their buying motives, they hesitate to explain the same to the
interviewers or give misstatement. It leads to miscalculation.
(iii)
Difficulty in identifying the buying motives: Sometimes there
are more than one motives which prompts a consumer to purchase a particular
product. He is not in a position to identify the primary motive which influences
his purchases.
(iv)
Existence of contradictory motives: Sometimes there is a
conflict in motives. In such cases it becomes very difficult to tell which
particular motive influences the consumer's buying.
(v)
Dynamic nature of buying motives: Buying motives are constantly
changing with the changes in income, habits, fashions, taste, time and
circumstances. The organization should be always on the look out for changing
new motives.
(vi)
Consumer's personality: The personality of the consumer is also
not always the same. It undergoes a constant change. Decision making on the
basis of such information once for all might not be justified.
(vii)
Imperfect techniques: Research techniques have not yet been
evolved to provide perfect data to base our conclusions and therefore, their
reliability is doubtful.
Taking the above difficulties in view, it should not to
understood that the study of buying motives is quite useless. Projective
techniques have been developed to make the buying motives understandable.
