Question:

This assignment will require you to do research on current Holmes students in order to analyse their decisions in selecting Holmes as an institution for study in Australia.

Part 1

Describe the demographics and psychographic characteristics the sample student

Analyze the consumer decision making processes for choosing Holmes over any other provider.

How did they reach the decision to study with Holmes and what factors had an impact on their decision?

Analyze how students’ emotions, personality, and motivation affect their purchasing decisions?

Part 2

Based on your findings what advice can you give education providers to increase international student recruitment?

Answer to Question: HK2011 Buyer Beahviour

Introduction

This assignment will help you to define the consumer buying behavior and/or the consumer buying processes.

There are two components to this assignment.

The Holmes University is an Australian university that was chosen for this assignment.

It is one among the most respected business colleges worldwide.

The university’s journey began in 1963 when the founding members opened their first commercial college in Melbourne.

This assignment examines the various demographic and psychographic characteristics among the university students.

The first part will focus on the analysis of different consumer decision process.

The importance and significance of the consumer decision processes is crucial as they are closely linked with business implementations.

Part 1

Here, it is necessary to discuss the socio-demographic and psychographic characteristics of the students.

In order to better understand the whole situation, 30 students must be selected from this university to study in different departments.

Demographic Characteristics

These students will be discussing the demographic characteristics of their students.

An assortment of 30 students were chosen from different parts of the country (Mazanov. et. al., 2013,).

Age Structure

10 students from these 40 are aged between 20 and 25.

Ten students are aged between 25 and 30, while the remaining 10 are aged between 30-35.Gender

13 of these 30 students are females, and 17 are men.

That means that about 43% of students are female, while 57% of students are male.

Race and Ethnicity

The students selected are of different ethnicities.

Five of the selected students belong to native Australians.

Six students belong then to the Chinese Australians ethnicity group.

Next, 4 students belong the Lebanese Australians category.

10 students are members of the European Australian groups.

The Irish Australian group comprises the rest of the students.

Education

The selected 30 students represent a variety of educational backgrounds.

10 of the chosen 30 students are from Melbourne. 5 have done their high schools in Adelaide. 3 have done school education in Brisbane. 6 have done school education in Tasmania. 6 have done school in Sydney.

All of them received over 80% marks in their respective subjects.

Income

According to Australia’s growth rate students have come from a good family.

8 students come from well-off families.

4 other students come from established working class families. 5 are mobile middle-class, 6 are emerging affluent and 7 come from established wealthy families.

The income of these students is dependent on their economic status.

Psychographic Characteristics

Beliefs of Religion

Each of the 30 students selected for this assignment is from a different faith.

Six Chinese Australians are part of Buddhist groups.

The Islam is the religion of the four Lebanese Australians. Catholic Christians are the 10 European Australians.

The Christian faith is held by the five native Australians as well as 5 Irish Australians.

Musical Tastes

The 30 students were subject to extensive psychographic research. It was discovered that 10 liked soft rock music.

5 prefer to hear pop while 8 prefer old English songs.

The other 7 students love to hear hard metal music.

Lifestyle Choices

It has been shown that students from the emerging and established affluent classes enjoy a lavish lifestyle.

All 13 students enjoy luxurious living and extravagant spending.

Other students want to live well and meet their basic needs.

They do not live extravagant lives and are here to learn. After that, they will be able to find a good job.

Analyse of Consumer Decision Processes

Consumer decision making can be a complicated process (Mihart 2012.)

This process has many stages.

These stages cover everything from the identification of the problem to the actions that take place after purchasing the product.

This is a complicated product since the whole process relies on the customer’s decision regarding the product.

Buyers must learn all about the product before they can decide to buy it. They should also compare the product against other market options, evaluate the product according to the marketing standards, and finally choose the best product on the market (Mihart, 2012).

The hardest part of this whole process is understanding and evaluating the quality of the product.

It is important to focus on Holmes University when completing this assignment.

Holmes University has always been an option for students interested in business management, whether they are from the United States or abroad.

Holmes University has been successfully operating for many years in the country. The university has also produced many successful business leaders across the globe (“Holmes Institute”,2017).

They offer various educational facilities, including Vocational Education and Training, Higher Education, and Secondary education (“Holmes Institute”), 2017.

They provide high quality coaching in these different areas, and they are interested in both students from the country and those from abroad.

They have created a dedicated learning environment in which teachers and students work together to learn.

Teachers are supportive and compassionate towards their students.

There are 6 locations for schools across the country.

Their university has 6 locations. 5 of these are in Australia, and 1 in Asia.

Hong Kong is Asia’s sole location.

Other branches are located in Melbourne and Sydney, Brisbane, Gold Coast (Queensland), Cairns, and Brisbane.

These locations are beautiful and also comfortable for students (“Holmes Institute”) 2017,

They offer many courses to students.

They offer higher education courses such as bachelor’s degrees in business or professional accounting.

They offer diplomas in Accounting and Hospitality, Leadership and Management, Hospitality, Commercial Cookery and other areas.

These courses allow students to choose Holmes University (“Holmes Institute”) 2017 as their first choice for their specific studies.

Motivation, personality, emotion and motivation of students

This university is the one students choose because their purchase decision supports them.

This purchase decision is influenced by many factors, such as the personality, motivation and emotions of the students.

Students are influenced by motivation (Oyserman 2015.)

The consumer’s buying decisions are influenced by their lifestyle, social and economic class.

An organization must encourage the buyer according the class in order to give them something.

Holmes University has increased student motivation to study in their university by providing them with a wide range of products.

Personality, which is a subtle parameter of marketing, determines the buyer’s internal likes about a brand. & Budeyri-Turan 2012).

This represents the psychological characteristics of an individual based on how they react to certain marketing environments.

This shows what product varieties the individual prefers.

These personality traits can change due to many factors, including birth, death or marriage.

Marketing professionals can choose their strategies for expanding their marketing areas.

Holmes University is well-versed in the wants and needs of both international and domestic students. This has allowed them to succeed.

Emotion plays a significant role in consumer behavior (Hwang& Kandampully, 2012).

It displays the desires of human beings about what type of organisation they would like to invest.

The consumer’s mind is affected by negative emotions such as anger, anxiety and sadness.

They have found Holmes University through internet research and other sources. The students are now convinced and happy to be admitted as this university will fulfill all their wishes.

Part 2

These guidelines will help Holmes University in attracting more international students to their university.

They have a great number of domestic students. But, in order to enhance their working areas and to be successful on the international arena, they must use positive strategies to attract international students (Stromquist & Monkman 2014.

A larger number of international students will increase their reputation globally and help them to stay ahead of other universities.

Use social media to attract international students with eye-catching advertisements on Facebook, Instagram, or other social media platforms. (Tuten & Solomon, 2014).

This will allow you to present a combination of different cultures while maintaining harmony.

This would improve the effectiveness of marketing.

The university must acquire the global prospectlists and send them to the correct university.

The university should use the current international students as brand ambassadors to draw in other international students (Stromquist & Monkman, 2014).

To encourage international students to apply, the university should provide inspirational messages.

The Australian government must also collaborate for the university’s international outreach (Barber et. al., 2013,).

Literature Review on Consumer Behaviour

This section of the assignment involves a literature review on the topic consumer behavior (Solomon, 2014).

Marketing is complicated. Consumer behavior is key to a successful strategy.

It is evident that both the past experiences with the product and the habits of customers have an impact on consumers’ behavior.

The customers’ perceptions of a particular product have a huge impact on their buying decisions.

The more attractive the product, the more customers will want to purchase it.

To ensure that customers remain loyal to both the brand and the organization, organizations must always strive for a better image. Romaniuk & Nenycz Thiel (2013)

The Five stages model of consumer behavior is an important aspect of it. It was created to better understand the term and allow for proper evaluation of each stage.

The five stages of consumer behavior are critical to the customer’s purchasing decision. These stages include a) recognizing the problem/need, b), thorough information research, c), evaluating alternatives, d), purchasing the product, and e), evaluating the product’s effectiveness after purchase.

The concept of consumer behaviour is greatly affected by several factors.

These factors include situational, cultural. social. and personal (Bian & Forsythe 2012.

Gunter & Furnham (2014). These are the factors that influence the consumer’s behavior.

Marketers attempt to motivate customers by providing a favorable environment and other factors that encourage them to make purchases.

Cultural factors are the differences in culture between the marketers and consumers (Bian & Forsythe 2012.

These differences can occur in both the local and global region.

Social factors encompass interactions between potential customers and other people in various situations.

The society’s target members are considered the opinion makers. This allows for effective strategies to convince customers. (Moshrefjavadi, et al. (2012)

Personal factors can include the tastes of customers and their financial status (Hoyer & Stokburger Sauer (2012)).

Personal factors are shown to be more successful in cases of target segmentation of the products, market positioning, or the 4P’s marketing (Singh, 2012).

Theories of Consumer Behavior

This segment outlines some models or theories of consumer behavior (Kardes Cronley & Cline, 2014).

Theory Of Reasoned Action

The theory focuses on the analysis of current attitudes and decision-making processes (Montano & Kasprzyk 2015.

The consumers can be seen as rational actors, who are driven by their own decisions.

Marketers need to have a clear approach, because consumers take specific buying decisions in anticipation of a particular outcome.

EKB Model

Engel, Kollet and Blackwell designed the EKB Model.

This model teaches consumers to make a buying decision after a long-term consideration and applying rational insight. (Solomon Russell Bennett & Previte 2012.

Marketers try to influence their consumers using a variety of products and external factors.

Marketers must provide enough information about the product to consumers in order for them to take these products seriously.

Other theories, like the Theory of Planned Behaviour and the Black box model, can also be used in the context of consumer shopping behavior (Montano & Kasprzyk, 2015).

These theories can also be linked to the Holmes University in Australia, which is the topic of the current discussion.

In particular, the theory and theory of plan behavior are directly related to the attraction of students to their university.

The university offers a wide variety of courses and facilities that students will find attractive.

These factors would be considered and the students would choose to enroll in the university.

Conclusion

After extensive discussion about the whole topic of Holmes University, we can conclude that Holmes University provided many courses that could benefit students.

It will be a pleasure for students to enroll there.

So that the university can assess cross-cultural issues, a detailed analysis was performed on the sample students.

This has been extremely helpful in determining the demographic and psychological characteristics of the students.

This has allowed for a more detailed understanding of the topic thanks to various theories and models.

Through the literature review, many aspects were identified and strategies to attract more international student have been discussed.

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