Analysis of The External Influence Elements to Affect Consumer’s Decision Making

There are many elements in external influence can affect consumer’s decision making. For SQD Athletica there are three important external influence elements.

On one hand, culture is one of the biggest elements. According to Babin and Harris (2018), Consumer culture represents a universal social belief that defines what society is satisfying in a particular society. As we know, there are five kinds of Dimensions of cultural value, there are individualism, masculinity, power distance, uncertainty avoidance and long-term orientation, all of core societal values can influence culture difference. At first, "individualism" refers to a loosely integrated social organization structure in which each individual value his or her own values and needs and relies on individual efforts to seek benefits for himself. Australia society is much more individualism, and people who in individualism society prefer purchasing radically, such as changing frequently. SQD Athletica focuses on produce fitness and lifestyle apparel for male in Australia. Fitness And lifestyle apparel are consumables product for male in Australia because of sport is a very important part in Australia culture.

Next one is masculinity, which means the difference between gender roles in a group that values self-confidence and control; and it is opposite of femininity. People who are masculinity pay more attention on achievement, power and success. People who femininity focus on the quality of life and personal taste. The deciding factor is whether the society gives priority to masculinity or femininity. SQD Athletica focus on both masculinity and femininity. The goal of SQD Athletica is “a brotherhood focused on finding balance, refining style and inspiring men to be fit for life”. SQD Athletica have a ‘SQD life’ part on their website, in this part always put some article by individual, they share their sport experience, showing reader how sport improved their quality of life, and SQD Athletica all your wants about sport or training.

The third one is power distance, the power distance between power and rights distributed among different groups in society and the areas in which people accept these realities of life in society. Low power distance means people have lower respect to power, high power distance means people have higher respect to power. Australia is a low power distance country, SQD Athletica focus on all Australia male adult. Next one is uncertainty avoidance, it is means for an uncertain, vague, uncertain future situation, people will feel a threat and always try to prevent it. People always change their mind when they purchase something as the price, style and quality etc. changed. SQD Athletica frequently updates their product to satisfied customer’s changing requirement. Last one is long-term orientation, it is means highly long-term positioning means that consumers value frugality, pragmatism and persistence, and maintain long-term relationships. SQD Athletica provides high quality of services to customers and use social media try to build long term relationship with consumers, such as Facebook and Instagram.

On the other hand, microculture is also an important external element influence consumer decision making. Microculture means a group of people have similar tasty and values that are subsumed within a larger culture. Such as similar age group, group of people have similar habit, or group of people interested on same thing. SQD Athletica is a new Australia brand and the brand focus on Australia male aged between 15 and 54 who like sport and gym training. There are more than 85% of purchases from SQD Athletica are online. It is means the customer in target market are greatly affected by network information. Therefore, SQD Athletica focuses on website and social media information.

Last important element is situational influences, culture and microculture both depended on the environment that customer living, but situational influences can decide by the brand or product characteristics. There are three situational influence categories: time, place and conditions. SQD Athletica have a mid-year sale every year, it was just the season when the weather in Queensland, Australia was converted from summer to winter at this time. SQD Athletica did anti season clearance. Season is a big influence element for every clothing brand, including SQD Athletica. SQD Athletica updates corresponding season fitness clothing. About place, SQD Athletica only has one shop in Gold Coast, some customer far away from the shop so most consumer choice online shopping. Every customer susceptible to unplanned and impulsive behaviour. SQD Athletica sometimes has “the second one in half price” or “buy one get one free” activity. And SQD Athletica shop provided water and juice in shop, when one customer trying something he’s friend should waiting for he, in that situation the seller will ask does the friend need some water or juice.