Influence Of Buying A Car

Consumer Behaviour
When consumers decide to buy a car, there are many factors which influence their decisions. The customers follows following generic model while deciding which car to buy.
Need recognition: The need might arise due to internal or external stimulus. Internal stimulus for buying a car would be when a consumer need arise out of a need for safety. External stimulus can arise when a person looks at a friends car and would want to buy a similar one. The size of the car is influenced by the family size, income, social status, safety, convenience. In the recent times, car is just not luxury but has become more of a need for safety and convenience. Owning a car now is a matter of social status. People pay high premium to brands when buying a car just for the sake of maintaining their status symbol and as luxury.

Consumers are influenced the most by personal and experiential experience and has the greatest impact on the decision. Public and commercial sources just adds to the information but does not have an impact to the extent of decision making.
Consumers start partitioning the market and then start eliminating from the total set. A hierarchy of characteristics of the cars is formed and which guides the consumers on their selection from the total set available. Consumers used to be brand dominant years ago. They might prefer General Motors and then look at the different styles this company offer. Now the consumers are becoming nation dominant. They look for cars which are known to originate from a country. They might want to buy a German car and then look at different companies which are German origin and then decide on the brand that they want to buy.
Consumers can be type/price/brand dominant. By type, we can look at sports, passenger cars etc. Consumers might be directed because of the price of the