5 Stages of the Consumer Decision-Making Process Explained

Key Takeaways:

• Awareness
• Research
• Consideration
• Conversion
• Post-purchase evaluation

The purchase decision making process can be fairly long and complex with some products or services.

Buying a house or a car is a great example. You are likely to do much more research and planning before making a decision.

Lower cost products can also be influenced by this though as consumer behavior increasingly relies on accessible information. Opening multiple tabs to review options, looking at a brand's Instagram or Trustpilot before buying is all common user behaviour.

Understanding the five stages of consumer decision making can help to guide your marketing activity, to ensure that it aligns with what the consumer wants, needs and benefits from seeing.

Not all purchases will go through this process, sometimes impulse will take the consumer right to decision and conversion, however, as a framework to use and review there are five key areas to look at.

There are many other models such as the HubSpot Buyer’s Journey:

Awareness

Consideration

Decision

Others include a fourth stage for “Delight” or similar terminology.

In principle, all of these systems follow the same framework so you only really need to understand this conceptually to level up your marketing performance.

We find five stages useful as it breaks the decision making process down into the most granular stages.

Let’s explore what each of the steps are.

Awareness

The first stage of the process is when the customer realises that they have a need for the product or service that you offer.

This stage is driven by consumer behavior, often influenced by a pain point or a desire to achieve an aspiration

Examples:

John regularly goes to the gym. He takes his spare clothes and what he needs in a carrier bag, as he’s progressively becoming more into what he’s doing, he needs to take more items as he doesn’t have what he needs sometimes. John is now aware that he needs to buy a new backpack specifically for gym use.

Emma works in a finance team, she spends a lot of time doing manual data formatting in spreadsheets. A plugin offers the ability to fast track manual formulas and formatting which would allow her more time to spend on insight finding which would potentially lead to career progression.

The motivator can be something external such as hearing a song on the radio that you liked and then wanting to buy a concert ticket or it could be something internal that benefits your day-to-day.

In either case, these are tied to emotions and as such, messaging to capture engagement here needs to evoke emotion.

Example ads activity: Broadly targeted audiences on Meta based on those who match your existing customer traits. Offering content that captures engagement and introduces the user to your product/service and brand. 

Messaging: You need to evoke emotion here to capture engagement as the user isn’t aware of your offering. Our emotion response system is much faster than our rational, logical system. UGC style video creative here works particularly well as the user can see someone going through their pain point or wanting to achieve their aspiration in an accessible way. 

Considerations: This is the part of the consumer decision making process which you can drive, you will likely see lower direct returns here as the user needs to work through the other stages of the process. It’s important to remember that you will raise awareness to consumers who will then choose to enquire or buy elsewhere as well as with yourself, this is unavoidable to a degree.

Research

There are many mediums now that consumers use to find information.

Example research channels:

Google search

Microsoft (Bing) search

YouTube demo videos

TikTok unboxing videos

Instagram

Amazon search

The consumer here is looking for options on who and what the solution could be for their problem or opportunity. Having a presence is crucial in any marketing strategy as you are capturing demand once there is intent, rather than trying to create it.

Search engines by their nature are the go-to place where this occurs. Google and Microsoft Ads offer the opportunity to capture these valuable users. 

Many users will also consult social channels now to gain an idea of who the best offering is to solve their problem or opportunity.

Example ads activity: Google search and shopping ads. The user will be searching for a ‘non-brand’ product or service term such as “best men's gym bag”. The term itself isn’t the sole indicator of intent as users are broader with their search query now due to expecting their devices to serve them more relevant results. You can target YouTube using keyword searches in Google from the past 7 days with a ‘Custom Intent’ audience. This can plug gaps in your search activity, reaching the same user on a different network.

Messaging: The consumer here knows what they are looking for so you need to focus your pragmatic messaging on why your offering is the best offering that matches their needs. This should include feature/benefits and unique selling points over emotion based messaging.

Considerations: This is the most likely stage to drive a return for your business as the user has intent for the product or service and will buy following these clicks. Saturating spending here before moving further up the journey to awareness will streamline budget on demand capture before demand generation. If you’re a new to market offering, this is something that won’t be available to you until you’ve created awareness in the market for your proposition.

Consideration

This as a decision making stage very often occurs bolted onto the research phase, as consumers evaluate their consumer choices

Here a customer is weighing up options, reviewing your offering with your competitors, buying direct or getting it from Amazon and much more.

With the exception of highly considered purchases, it’s unlikely that a user would consider options under a separate timeframe than research.

We’ve all done it before, we Google a product or service that we are in-market for and open 3-4 of the results in tabs from the same one search.

Understanding consumer behavior is critical in identifying where customers go to inform their considerations.

For a product business, it’s very likely that Amazon will be cross-referenced. Instagram and Trustpilot are also two very common checkpoints when a consumer is considering where specifically to buy from.

How to optimise for this stage: Where will customers go when they are considering buying from your business? Social is a common place where a user wants to see that you post and is responsive to customers to instil trust that if they buy from you and there is an issue, you will engage. Social also allows the user to see other customers who have purchased and how the experience was positive. This activity supports driving conversion rate. Review platforms are another common consideration point. Do you have a presence? Have you made it clear on your website which review platform is your chosen one? If the user has to search they may find a low number of reviews on Google My Business when you actually have hundreds of 5-star reviews on Trustpilot.

Messaging: Removing hesitations is the way to get the consumer from consideration into conversion so do you know what your customers' primary buying hesitations or internal questions are? Are the answers to these questions clear and prominent on your website? This is invaluable information to find out and to use to improve your buyer’s journey. Gather this information and review your website messaging.

Example ads activity: Remarketing campaigns via Meta ads can work to re-engage with those who have visited your product pages but are yet to commit to converting. Use the messaging learnings to run ads which address buying hesitations. 

Conversion

Someone has decided to buy from you, great news!

There are still areas to think about and optimise here.

Many customers will search your brand name having found you in the research phase.

If you are in a competitive sector, it can be necessary to bid on your own brand term via Google and Microsoft Ads to ensure that you capture the click when someone is ready to buy.

Once you have been found there are also on-site hurdles which can block the consumer from committing to the decision that they are trying to make.

A poor user experience, clunky cart processes, or high shipping costs can all impact the purchasing decision. This can also drive customers to buy from you on Amazon which whilst you still get the sale, sees much lower margins due to channel fees.

How to optimise for this stage: Ensure that you have Brand campaigns on via search ads if you have competitors bidding on your brand term. Use tools such as GA4 and Microsoft Clarity to understand where users are dropping out in your website conversion journey. This can help to remove hurdles and increase conversion.

Messaging: Setting expectations in the cart, checkout and follow up emails is a great way to ensure a positive customer experience. Not knowing what’s going to happen next can cause customer care queries and lower reviews if there are delays.

Example ads activity: Running remarketing activity to those who added to cart but who didn’t complete a purchase can be highly effective here. Using feed based campaign formats on Google and Meta, you can allow the customer to get right back into the website, to the product that they were engaging with, rather than needing to go through multiple steps again. Cart abandon email workflows also help with efficiency here.

Post-purchase evaluation

Once the customer has purchased, the work has only just begun.

Many businesses focus heavily on new customer acquisition and don’t maximise the value of their existing customer lists.

Engaging with customers post-purchase helps you align with consumer behavior trends, adding value to their journey

If someone had a good buying experience, you want them to be sharing content on your social channels so that you can showcase it to others in the research and consideration phases.

Collecting reviews via a platform such as Reviews.io, will allow you to display website widgets which drive conversion rate across the board.

How to optimise for this stage: Ensure that you’re collecting reviews, this is usually done via an automated email from the review provider. Use email workflows to request the customer shares their purchase on your social media channels. Utilise Meta remarketing to cross-sell other related products as they are available, paired with email campaigns or workflows, this will work to drive your customer lifetime value. Implement a referral platform such as ReferralCandy or MentionMe to encourage your customers to refer their friends for further acquisition. 

Messaging: Your message here needs to reflect that you’re addressing an existing customer. Exclusive discounts, offers or first-look at new products all work well as messages to make the customer feel valued and appreciated by your brand.

Summary

As we’ve seen there are 5 stages in the consumer decision making process.

It could take someone 20 minutes to go right through from awareness to conversion and into the start of post-purchase evaluation.

It could also take them many weeks or months depending on your sector and what it is that you offer.

The strategic approach is to start at the end and work back. If you have all of the efficiencies in place, once you start to push harder with volume on the front end, you will see performance. For many businesses, there’s enough demand to capture in search that you don’t need to drive awareness, for others there isn’t.

Having abandoned cart flows and remarketing in place before spending heavily in search, will ensure that you’re not losing out on sales where the consumer is reviewing other options.

Deploy, review and optimise.