Chapter 7 Discussion
Modified Customer Decision Journey
A customer determining where to go on vacation.
How social media could influence each stage?
Trigger
When a customer is determining where to go on vacation, a trigger can occur at any moment. In this example, a trigger is presented to the customer in the form of a social media advertisement. The customer logs onto their social media platform of choice and an ad is triggered. The customer is persuaded by the advertisement to visit a particular location for vacation within the United States. The ad includes information like the location, lodging prices, and entertainment opportunities. This trigger created interest and convinced the customer to plan their next vacation. This trigger stage will continue to occur throughout the customer decisioning journey.
Information Gathering
After the customer was triggered by their social media account, they then begin to actively research different vacation opportunities. As they perform their research, they begin to receive additional triggers from social media advertisements based on the websites they have visited. This is due to the cookies on the customer’s electronic device (computer, tablet, or cell phone) sharing their most recently viewed websites. This additional information through social media provides additional choices for the customer to consider.
Consideration Set
Now that the customer has gathered information, they can now begin the process of determining an initial set of vacation options. The customer will utilize the information they gathered in the prior step to identify complete list of locations for consideration. During this stage, companies will advertise with same day discounts for purchase (Aaker
& Moorman, 2017, p. 125)
.This can occur through social media to sway a customer to expedite their decision and commit to a purchase.
Preference
At this point in the customer decision journey, the customer will now determine a short
list of the top contenders for vacation options. Social media can impact this phase of the
journey by causing the customer to either take a step or two backwards or move forward to the purchase stage. If the customer were to move backwards, then this could
bring about additional options causing the need for more information gathering and reconsideration of the set list of options for vacation options. Purchase
This is the step in the modified customer decision journey when a decision is made. The customer will use the preference list to make a final determination on where to vacation. Social Media could make or break the purchase stage. Similar to other stages, if an additional vacation option is presented to the customer through social media, it could sway the customer to reconsider their short list of options and move back to the Information Gathering and Consideration Set stages. On the other hand, it could help the customer in making that final decision to commit to a vacation spot on their short list of options.