Entrepreneur's Handbook

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Entrepreneur's Handbook

UNDERSTANDING THE DEMAND AND THE CUSTOMERS

In the competitive processes in the business world, the ultimate decision maker is the customer who will determine who will win and who will lose. The customer evaluates which company is in the market with the higher value proposition and reveals his preferences. Therefore, there is nothing more important for entrepreneurs than knowing and understanding the customers. Issues such as determining different customer profiles, dividing them into different sections in terms of various criteria considered to represent the attitudinal and behavioral responses of customers in the market, and selecting target markets will be discussed in the following sections. In this section, we will try to put forward questions that need to be answered in order to better understand the customers and to reasonably estimate the demand in the market. As mentioned earlier, the customers of any enterprise can be individual consumers, as well as various institutions and organizations. Of course, there are differences between individual consumers' purchasing decision processes and mechanisms for the formation of preferences and organizations. Organizations, too, can differ significantly from each other in many ways, with fundamental differences such as being profit oriented or public benefit work. In this section, it will not be possible to elaborate on these differences, but the basic issues that entrepreneurs should have knowledge of in order to better understand the customer in the market and to develop strategies in this direction will be discussed.

3.1. Five Essential Questions to Understand the Customer

Questions such as “with what motives the customers make their purchasing decision, the details of the decision process, how they form their preferences, with which processes and when they develop their satisfaction judgments, and how they become loyal customers” are the subjects that have been discussed at length under the main heading of consumer psychology in marketing literature and definitely with utmost importance. Entrepreneurs will sooner or later try to answer these questions in the process of establishing and developing a business. In this section, five critical basic questions that need to be answered at the beginning of the initiative process, even at the beginning of the business idea development phase, will be presented.

3.1.1. Who Buys the Products / Services and Who Uses them?

"Who makes the purchasing decision for a product or service, who makes the purchase and who uses the product" questions are extremely important. Those who make the purchasing decision are critical people who determine both the execution of the process and which companies or brands will be preferred. Purchasers are important because their decisions are decisive at the time of purchase and at the point of purchase. Those who use the product, on the other hand, develop satisfaction judgments about the performance of the product and determine which brands will be preferred for the next purchase. All these different roles may be assumed by the same person, or each may be performed by different individuals. As the purchasing process for customers in industrial markets or from different types of organizations consists of different roles that many people or departments have to fulfill, in addition to these questions, questions such as who initiated the purchasing decision process and who influenced the decision makers in the process, or who is the determinant of the decisions that will emerge by controlling the flow of information in the process are also important. In such markets, entrepreneurs should try to find answers to these questions, perhaps by working one by one, the organizations that make up the critical customer groups.