Consumer Behavior And Microwave Oven Market In Oman Essay.

You need to write about the Cooking Range and research Consumer Buying Behavior for the appliance and produce a report that addresses the following:

1. Description of your chosen appliance.
2. Explain whether it's a low or high involvement purchase.
3. The current consumer / consumption trends for this product category in Oman.
4. The Positioning Strategies followed in this product category and their influence on Consumer Buying behaviour.
5. An evaluation of internal and external factors that influence the buyer behavior for this appliance, using the following model of Consumer buying-decision process: Need Recognition – Information Search – Evaluation of Alternatives – Purchase Decision – Post Purchase Behaviour.

Consumer buying behaviour plays an important role in the organization. By knowing the consumer needs and wants properly, firms can achieve the high demand for their products. In today’s time, consumers are preferring more standard product for using in their home. It has increased the demand of microwave oven in various countries including Oman. In this report, the discussion continues by giving the brief description about the microwave oven and its uses. In the further section of the report, demand for microwave oven in Oman is being discussed.

Microwave oven is an electric oven that helps in cooking the food by revealing it to electromagnetic radiation in some frequency range. Microwave oven helps in heating the food quickly as well as in efficient manner. It heats the food evenly than any other cooking technique. After the First World War II, an American engineer has invented the modern microwave. It was first sold in the year 1946 after it named as the Radarange (Oxford Business Group, 2018). After that, Raytheon has taken the license for the microwave that was introduced by Tapan in the year 1955. It is considered to be one of the best innovations that was done in twentieth century. It is popular also due to its various special features. As compared to the other items, it helps in the quick cooking. As a result, it helps in saving the time also (East, Singh, Wright & Vanhuele, 2016).

Microwave come under the commonly and most used kitchen appliance for again heating the food that was previously cooked. It is also helpful in quick heating of that food which can burn if they cooked in any conventional pans like fats, hot butter, or chocolate. There are exception associated with microwave oven but only in rare cases such as when micro oven is used to heat the frying oil or any other oily item as they have very higher temperature (Sharaf DG LLC, 2018).This oven has only limited role in the professional cooking. The reason is that the boiling temperature of microwave does not create the flavourful chemical reaction that browning, frying or baking at high temperature.

Purchase involvement of any product is the interest of customers while buying any product. It is the commitment of the customers for purchasing any brand. Low involvement purchases are of those products that have low prices. On the other hand, high involvement purchases usually have high prices. Microwave oven has high involvement of customers due to its various factors. The first factor is the unique features of the microwave have led to the high involvement of product. Due to unique features of the product, customers in today’s time highly involved with this product. Secondly, customers  are highly involved in the purchase of micro oven due to its differentiation. Apart from normal heating tools, it assists the customers in quick heating of previously cooked foods. Various businesses and offices also use microwave oven in order to help their staff in getting the hot food fast and effectively. IN today’s time, customers are mostly attracting towards the luxurious lifestyle so they try the different product that will improve their living standard. In microwave, word of mouth is best strategy that leads it in high-involved purchase. Due to its quick service, people are also recommending this appliance for the best use.

About microwave oven

Customers are also high involved with the microwave appliance because it fits with the requirement of customers in an effective manner. In the today’s age, customers are buying microwave for getting access to use in emergency (Solomon, Dahl, White, Zaichkowsky & Polegato, 2014). Sometimes, it might be possible that the high involvement of microwave lost because the features of this product do not fit to their requirement. Price is also one of the essential factors in the high involvement of any product.

When budget of individual person affects the level of involvement, some of the services as well as products fairly involve the majority of customers. Appliance is also one such category that come under it. Customers are highly involving for it because of the expense or the significance of this item to the purchaser. Services such as due care is also involved with the purchasers due to its importance or cost. As a result of this, purchasers always want to get the best result and reduce the negative outcomes in the high involvement product. It depends on the using and care of buyer regarding that product. It is true that the successful buyer will always get the maximum professional as well as personal gains from the use of microwave oven. On the other side, a bad purchase will result into wastage of money and negative impression in the professional and social group (Donohoe, 2018).

Consumption trend is the habit of customers that is rampant among the customers of any goods or services. Data’s collected about the trend of microwave in Oman states the high involvement purchase. After the increasing trend of globalization in the business environment, customers also started selecting from the extensively presented imported commodities. Due to increasing demand of microwave oven in Oman, there are various online sites also started that sales the microwave online. Recently, LG also introduced the new microwave oven in the country Oman. Due to the increasing demand of microwave oven in Oman, it is now available in various types of models. The microwave available is accessible as well as minimalistic by bringing a class in any kitchen. The customers are using the elegant LG NeoChef microwave in order to remove the trim as well as parting lines with its sleek (Muscat Media Group, 2017). The increasing demand of microwave in Oman has received the various awards in the country by the name of 2015 PIN UP design award. When the survey conducted on the electronic market industries of Oman, it is founded that it is seeing the continuous growth. Reporters have also stated the strong growth in revenue of electronic items (Khan, 2014). Due to the increasing demand of these products, there is continuous sale on electronic items in order to attract more and more customers towards it (Sharaf, 2018).

As the microwave oven is one of the best inventions done in the twentieth century. It is popular as it helps in quick cooking. As compare to the other appliances, it takes the 30% time. In order to position the market of microwave oven in the market, there are few strategies that can be adopt-

1. Acquaintance of microwave oven- in order to position the market of microwave oven, the marketer is required to know the consumer’s acquaintance for the product. Therefore, by knowing this it is necessary to choose the best acquaintance channel in order to attract the buyer (Hamari, Sjöklint & Ukkonen, 2016). The This will create the awareness regarding the product by choosing the proper medium. Advertisement is one of the best ways to get the acquaintance of microwave oven.
2. Awareness of the characteristics of microwave ovens- For position any product in the market, it is essential to aware the users regarding its features. Microwave is the upcoming product. Therefore, it is essential to tell about its features (Chan, Johns & Moses, 2018).The marketer should focus on those features that are known by the consumers. This will help in awareing the customers about uniqueness of the product.
3. Ranking of product attributes- The most important attributes of microwave oven are its performance capacity, price, appearance and convenience. All of these attributes strongly influence on the image of the product. Hence, for creating the strong position of the microwave oven in market, it is necessary to create the image of the brand. The survey data received on the microwave oven states that the customer mostly prefers the microwave by its appearance. Price usually does not matter most to the customers when they are buying electronic item for long-term. Performance is also the key attribute in selecting a microwave oven. All these insights enable the marketer to position the microwave even in the market.
4. Perception of the best brand- A market is positioned strongly when the product is offering the best and desired value to the customer. The perception of any brand depends on the judgement of users as well as their comparison with other brands. Consumers are known to be the best judge who decides that brand is fulfilling their expectations or not. It helps in strong positioning of the product. Therefore, for position the microwave oven in the market, it is essential for the marketer to know the perception of customers for the microwave. Hence, there is need to ascertain the consumer perception of the any best brand of microwave oven. The survey conducted on the microwave oven states that LG and BPL are the best brand category of the microwave oven.

In today’s time, it is one of the most challenging actions for marketer to identify what products consumer will buy or which products it will not buy. Therefore, the purchasing behaviour of customers can be known by market research or by the knowledge of some internal and external factors.

1. Personals needs of customers- Needs and motives is one of the most important factors that influence the consumer behaviour for purchasing microwave oven. Motive is the inner need of the consumer that encourages to satisfy their specific need. For example- In most of the offices, microwave oven is required so that the food that was brought in the morning become hot quickly when eating (Yoo, Kim & Sanders, 2015).  By satisfying this need of the consumers, microwave oven can easily influence the person to buy it. There may be some other reasons also for purchasing the microwave oven such as living a standard life or busy life schedule.
2. Attitudes- It is next internal factor that affect the consumer buying behaviour. Attitude is something about what individual things or feels regarding something. Microwave oven is always seen as the individuals act. If a person has made any negative belief regarding the microwave oven then it is too difficult to change. Therefore, it is long-lasting assessment of customers regarding the product (Oliver, 2014). Microwave oven is required to keep in mind in the modern world. It is essential for the microwave marketer to design the unique advertisement that does not conflict with the attitude of customers. In this way, microwave purchasing behaviour of customers totally depends on the attitude.

1. Culture- An individual attitudes, values, opinions, and beliefs come under the culture. While making the decision for purchasing microwave oven, people see the prices, as well as guarantee of that oven. The product that includes high investment depends on certain aspects especially its period of use (Hong, 2015). In Oman, the OTE group ensures that the customer of LF microwave should get the high quality even after sales service.
2. Segmentation- There is various types of segmentation approach that influence the buying behaviour of customer. The microwave oven usually segments the market based on demographic segmentation. As the demand of microwave oven is done by the women who are wither working or living a high standard of life. Therefore, the women’s mostly who are married have increased the demand of microwave oven. In this way, demand of microwave oven depends on the preferences of women in specific country.
3. Target market- among the selected market segment, the target market can be selected by microwave oven marketer is mostly the businesswoman’s or working women’s. Other than the microwave oven, there are various alternatives available for heating the previously cooked food (Sakkthivel & Sriram, 2015). However, in order to heat the food quickly, microwave oven is mostly preferred. The selected target market can be positively influence by serving the best quality of product. Microwave oven is electronic item due to which customers require the warranty if they are purchasing it in higher price.

References

Chan, J., Johns, F., & Moses, L. B. (2018). Academic Metrics and Positioning Strategies. In Metric Culture: Ontologies of Self-Tracking Practices (pp. 177-195). Emerald Publishing Limited.

East, R., Singh, J., Wright, M., & Vanhuele, M. (2016). Consumer behaviour: Applications in marketing. London: Sage.

 Hamari, J., Sjöklint, M., & Ukkonen, A. (2016). The sharing economy: Why people participate in collaborative consumption. Journal of the association for information science and technology, 67(9), 2047-2059.

Hong, I. B. (2015). Understanding the consumer's online merchant selection process: The roles of product involvement, perceived risk, and trust expectation. International Journal of Information Management, 35(3), 322-336.

Kumar, A., & Dash, M. K. (2015). Effectiveness of electronic service dimensions on consumers’ electronic buying behaviour and exploration of different groups. International Journal of Business Innovation and Research, 9(1), 81-99.

Muscat Media Group. (2017). LG introduces new Neochef microwave oven in Oman. Retrieved from: https://timesofoman.com/article/117017 

Oliver, R. L. (2014). Satisfaction: A Behavioral Perspective on the Consumer: A Behavioral Perspective on the Consumer. Routledge.

Oxford Business Group. (2018). Growing demand pushing Oman to continue investing in utilities services. Retrieved from: https://oxfordbusinessgroup.com/overview/new-game-plan-growing-demand-pushing-government-continue-investing-and-revamping-services

Sakkthivel, A. M., & Sriram, B. (2015). Examining the Brand Communication Tools that Impact Brand Preferences of Women Consumer buying intentions-Empirical Investigation of Middle East. In Trends and Innovations in Marketing Information Systems (pp. 358-372). IGI Global.

Sharaf DG LLC. (2018). Microwave oven in Oman. Retrieved from:  https://oman.sharafdg.com/c/home_appliances/cooking/microwaves/

Solomon, M. R., Dahl, D. W., White, K., Zaichkowsky, J. L., & Polegato, R. (2014). Consumer behavior: Buying, having, and being (Vol. 10). London: Pearson.

Yoo, C. W., Kim, Y. J., & Sanders, G. L. (2015). The impact of interactivity of electronic word of mouth systems and E-Quality on decision support in the context of the e-marketplace. Information & Management, 52(4), 496-505.