Ch. 6 - Consumer Decision Making

Consumer Decision making is one of the most unpredictable behaviors in the business. Consumers are always changing their interests, based on different fashion, different hobbies, life situations (marriage, divorce). Therefore, each company has to work on predicting the decisions its customers will make and what they will want out of the product. The consumer decision making process includes 5 steps:

First step: NEED RECOGNITION

After watching a few commercials about your favorite fighters, a fight fan or maybe a regular sports fan recognizes the need to watch the outcome of the build-up of the fight. They want to see who will win, and how it will happen. We are humans, and fighting is in our DNA, so theoretically most of us will be tempted to see the fight.

Second step: Information Search

People who saw UFC before they know how intense and interesting the fights could be and therefor, they information about the product is already there. As far as consumers who haven't watch UFC yet will start YOUTUBEing past fights of the fighters to see if they are good, exciting, bad, or even worth watching.

Third Step: Evaluation of Alternatives

There are alternative promotion companies that feature fighting events, such as Bellator fighting championship, World Cage Fighting, Bamma. Most of them actually show their fights on free tv. However most of their fighters are unknown and are amateurs compared to UFC fighters. In the past the champions of other fight promotions joined UFC and most of them weren't as good due to higher competition. So consumer will either watch UFC on FOX or Payperview for championship fights to get the best quality fights.
Forth Step: Purchase

Payperview runs about $44.99 to $59.99 per event which has 9-11 fights. Is it worth it? It depends on one's budget. Most of the time a group of friends get together and chip in a few bucks each and enjoy the show on high definition TV. They can go to a sport bar and watch it for free (however sportbar has to pay 900 for payperview), or they can purchase a ticket and watch it in arena full of energy of psychotic UFC fans.

Post Purchase Behavior:

If the fights were as good as a consumer expected then they are more likely to watch those fighters again next time. If the fight were boring then its bad business for UFC. that is why UFC give out bonuses to fighters for exciting fights that do not make it to the end, there for someone get KNOCKED out.