Customer transaction-behaviour model

This conceptual paper draws on relevant consumer behaviour and economics literature to produce a Customer Purchase Transaction-behaviours Model that avoids the complexity of earlier purchase-decision models but includes significant behavioural antecedents of each of the three stages of the purchase transaction. Within the proposed model, there is a sequence of separable behavioural stages, input, process and output (Van de Ven 1992). The input stage occurs when the customer decides they have a need to purchase a product (purchase decision). The input stage precedes the process stage, during which the customer chooses between available products that satisfy their need (choice behaviour). After the customer has made a choice between alternative products the final, output, stage occurs when the customer’s product preference decision is manifested by their purchase behaviours (Schmidt and Spreng 1996).The primary purpose in proposing a holistic purchase transaction-behaviours model integrating cross-disciplinary research is to provide a theoretical input/process/output framework for research focusing on customer purchase transaction behaviours impacting on business profitability. Nine research propositions for empirical testing are provided in the paper. A key feature of the proposed model is the simplicity of the model. Research supported by this theoretically derived model will provide useful information for guiding practitioners’ decision making and promote marketers’ understanding of customer choice behaviours. The paper provides a contribution to present knowledge by combining existing literature and models into a new holistic model focusing on customer behaviours, the precursor to business success or failure.