Presenting a Pattern for Consumer’s PrePurchase Behavior

Manufacturing institutions and businesses can better develop marketing plans to attract more customers and save marketing costs by realizing the pre-purchase behavior of potential customers. The present study proposes a comprehensive model of the pre-purchase behavior of consumers.

A mixed methodology was adopted. The qualitative phase identified pre-purchase consumer behavior factors by a systematic review of the literature, and reliability was verified by Cohen's kappa coefficient. The quantitative phase tested the proposed model using structural equation modeling (SEM) in Smart PLS V.3.

Pre-purchase behavior was modeled in four dimensions and ten factors, including contextual factors (psychological and social), requirement identification factors (requirement encouragement, requirement emergence, and cognitive reaction to requirement), information searching factors (positional information searching factors, subjective information sources, and external information sources), and pre-purchase investigation factors (alternative evaluation and pre-purchase satisfaction).

Contextual factors had significant, direct and indirect, impacts on pre-purchase behavior in all the stages of requirement identification, information searching, and pre-purchase investigation. This stage (contextual factors) directly and indirectly impacted all the succeeding stages.