The Path to Purchase for Customers

Customer Decision Journey

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Executive Summary

The report discussed the path to purchase of the customer persona of John doe, a 50-year-old man seeking to buy comfortable and long-lasting running shoes from Adidas to accommodate his desire to inculcate regular exercises into his schedule. It detailed the importance of touch points like TV and billboard advertisements to influence him to buy from Adidas, and enhance his customer experience to increase the likelihood of him making repeat purchases from the brand. To achieve this it aimed to address the prominent pain point of bad in-store experience through staff training and inducing repurchases by reaching out through WhatsApp after customers make purchases to offer special discounts.

Table of Contents

Introduction 4

Customer Persona 5

Path to Purchase 6

Problem recognition 6

Search for information 7

Evaluation of alternatives 7

Purchase 7

Post-purchase 7

Conclusion 9

Reference List 10

Introduction

The Customer purchase decision-making process or path to purchase is an essential component of the marketing process of any contemporary organisation. This report will assess a case study of the path to the purchase of a pair of running shoes by an older man between the age of 45 to 65 years from the chosen organisational context of Adidas. First, it will explain the customer persona, then, it will discuss the path to purchase involved in the scenario along with recommendations to improve their customer experience. Adidas started as Adi Dassler in 1924 as a sports equipment provider to professional athletes and is today a major brand across the world for both professionals and casual buyers (Adidas, 2022).

Customer Persona

The customer persona involved in the scenario involves older men between the ages of 45 to 65 years, who have the desire to partake in exercises including running to achieve physical fitness. This demographic is likely to suffer from some chronic ailments like arthritis, which requires the use of special shoes to ensure that their condition does not worsen (Rybaczewska and Sparks, 2022). These may affect their physical abilities, and may therefore be a reason for seeking products to aid them in their exercises. The primary motivation of this customer persona is buying running shoes which can provide them with the highest levels of comfort while ensuring that they can last long enough for them to consider these as successful purchases.

Name: John Doe	Age: 50 years old	Sex: Male
Education: Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology (IT)	Employment: Senior Manager at an IT Firm	Hobbies: Playing guitar
Motivation: To buy comfortable and long-lasting running shoes	Goal: To inculcate regular running exercises into his schedule	Behaviour: Likely to repurchase if he considers the last purchase successful

Table 1: Customer Persona

(Source: Created by the learner)

Path to Purchase

The path to purchase or the customer purchase decision-making journey represents the process that consumers go through before, during, and after making a purchase (Jones and Runyan, 2016). This process generates insight into the different points of interaction of different customer personas with organisations, which can offer opportunities for improving organisational operations to enhance customer experience. Such improvements may allow companies like Adidas to ensure that customers become loyal to their brand through consistent repurchases. The following is the customer journey map for the chosen scenario:

Figure 1: Path to Purchase

(Source: Created by the learner)

Problem recognition

The first stage of the path to purchase involves the customer, in this case, John Doe, becoming aware of his need to buy a pair of running shoes. This stage may happen naturally as customers’ needs and desires transform, or organisations may bring this realisation through advertisements to appeal to the interests of their potential customers (Cortinas et al., 2019). John Doe, being an older man, is less likely to use digital technologies like smartphones and social media excessively, and therefore, Adidas can best reach out to him through traditional advertisements. These would include touch points like billboard advertisements, or advertising on Television and magazines, and would enable Adidas to overcome the digital challenge among this older population, which is the main pain point.

Search for information

This stage of the path to purchase comprises a customer searching for relevant information on the required product or service according to the problem that they identified (Flavián et al., 2019). For John Doe, major touch points include details provided by traditional advertisements mentioned before along with opinions of their acquaintances and visiting shoe stores for gaining information. A major pain point here is the abundance of traditional marketing used by shoe companies and rivals of Adidas like Puma, Nike, and Reebok. Therefore, Adidas may overcome this by developing creative advertisements that can point out the specific health benefits that their products may provide for the older generation. This would enhance the relevant touchpoints and improve the customer experience of John Doe.

Evaluation of alternatives

This stage involves customers evaluating the alternatives that they have for making their purchase, by considering their cost and value. It is a significant step, where marketers make a huge impact by increasing the appeal of their organisation and making it seem better than their rivals. Therefore, Adidas must gain the favour of John Doe by emphasising the comfort and long life of its running shoes to attract the attention of the customer and influence him to purchase from them.

Purchase

The purchase step is fairly simple as it involves the customer purchasing their preferred medium, but still has a significant impact on their experience (Lynch and Barnes, 2020). According to the customer persona of John Doe, he is likely to make the purchase in-store, which makes the store experience a prominent touch point in his customer decision-making process. Here, a major pain point can be the delay in sales staff reaching him and their ability to aid him in selecting the most suitable product as they comprise the essential touchpoint in this stage. Therefore, Adidas must ensure the staffing of a sufficient number of sales staff to avoid delays and train them satisfactorily to allow them to easily help customers in selecting the best products.

Post-purchase

The final stage in the path to purchase involves the post-purchase evaluation done by customers and the ways that organisations reach out to them after making purchases, which impacts their likelihood of making repurchases (Kannan 2016). Important touchpoints here include the quality and life of the sold running shoes to John Doe, along with the company’s measures to increase the appeal of repurchases. For this objective, Adidas may offer special repurchase discounts to repeat customers and reach out to them using popular mediums like WhatsApp messages. This would enable them to develop a personal relationship with their customers, allowing them to build a loyal clientele and record a high repeat purchase rate.

Conclusion

The report evaluated the case study of John Doe, a 50-year-old man, seeking to purchase a pair of running shoes from Adidas using the path-to-purchase model. It discussed major touchpoints including TV and magazine advertisements as effective tools for this customer persona along with a robust in-store customer experience. Further, it explained that Adidas may overcome the prominent pain point of bad in-store customer experience by properly staffing and training their sales workforce.

Reference List

Adidas (2022) HISTORY. Adidas. Available: https://www.adidas-group.com/en/about/history/ [Accessed: 10 January 2023]

Cortinas, M., Cabeza, R., Chocarro, R., and Villanueva, A. (2019) Attention to online channels across the path to purchase: An eye-tracking study. Electronic Commerce Research and Applications, 36, 100864.

Flavián, C., Gurrea, R., and Orús, C. (2019) Feeling confident and smart with webrooming: understanding the consumer’s path to satisfaction. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 47, 1-15.

Jones, R. P., and Runyan, R. C. (2016) Conceptualizing a path-to-purchase framework and exploring its role in shopper segmentation. International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management.

Kannan, P. K., Reinartz, W., and Verhoef, P. C. (2016) The path to purchase and attribution modelling: Introduction to a special section. International Journal of Research in Marketing, 33(3), 449-456.

Lynch, S., and Barnes, L. (2020) Omnichannel fashion retailing: examining the customer decision-making journey. Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management: An International Journal, 24(3), 471-493.

Rybaczewska, M., and Sparks, L. (2022) Ageing consumers and e-commerce activities. Ageing & Society, 42(8), 1879-1898.