regional formation and development studies - Klaipėdos universitetas

Valērijs Praude, Santa Bormane
Influence of Marketing Communications on the Processes of Consumers’ Decisions
behind radio among mass media for product information searches. Consequently, the use of souvenirs would
be less efficient if consumers only searched product information or assessed alternatives.
As shown in Table 3, personal selling influences the majority of respondents upon searching product
information and assessing alternatives. 40.1 % have selected influence and 39.4 % have selected significant
influence, resulting in a total of 79.5 %. This indicates that personal selling, which includes consultations
by salesmen, is the second most important means of communication behind price discounts. Consequently,
companies should pay attention to how salesmen communicate with buyers, how much and how professionally
they can tell about the products offered and how to present their company in general.
Sponsorship and public relations influence and significantly influence 53 % or the respondents (calculated
as the aggregate percentage of both ratings), while 30.6 % are indifferent. 15.5 % of the respondents consider
that sponsorship and public relations are of no influence and 0.9 % – that they are of negative influence. The
indifferent and those with no influence and negative influence together make 47 %, i.e., for almost half of
the people polled sponsorship or support of public events does not affect the process of product assessment.
Overall, we can conclude that at the stage of buyers’ behaviour featuring the search of information and
the assessment of alternatives the major marketing communications are price discounts, personal selling,
direct marketing and advertising on the Internet.
Further we will analyse how the same marketing communications affect the buyers’ behaviour when they
make decisions of buying construction supplies.
Table 4. Consumers’ evaluation of marketing communications upon buying decision
Number of respondents, %
Type of MC
Significantly
Does not Negatively
Influences Indifferent
influences
influence influences
1 11.4 32.2 30.9 22.4 3.2
2 8.2 30.9 35.3 23.7 1.9
3 12.9 36.3 28.7 19.6 2.5
4 9.1 26.8 37.2 24.3 2.5
5 7.6 27.1 39.7 23.7 1.9
6 13.2 41.6 28.7 15.5 0.9
7 10.1 30.6 37.2 20.5 1.6
8 19.9 30.6 29.7 18.3 1.6
9 51.1 34.7 8.2 5.4 0.6
10 30.9 35.3 19.9 12.9 0.9
11 17.0 24.6 35.0 22.4 0.9
12 36.6 39.1 13.9 9.8 0.6
13 19.6 24.0 31.5 23.7 1.3
Source: created by the authors
Televised advertisements influence or significantly influence 43.5 % of the respondents upon buying
decision, whereas almost twice less or 22.4 % feel they are not influenced by advertisements on television.
Since 56.5 % of the respondents are indifferent to or unaffected by televised advertisements, we can conclude
that the influence of television as a mass medium on making the decision of purchase is less substantial
than, for instance, on the search of information and the assessment of alternatives.
The same trend at this stage of buyers’ behaviour applies to advertisements in newspapers and magazines.
Only 39.1 % of the people polled admit possible influence of advertisements in newspapers and magazines
on their decision of a purchase of construction supplies. Accordingly, for 60.9 % the buying decision is
unaffected by advertisements in these media. Consequently, there is not much sense for companies to spend
funds on advertising unless it is designed to simply inform consumers.
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