An analysis of discerning customer behaviour: an exploratory study

Abstract

The customer who shows picky behaviour is the hardest group to fulfil with the existing products, which hampers the efforts of enterprises to grasp customer requirements accurately. The purpose of this article is to present and discuss the significance of managing and responding to these discerning customers for the enterprise. By analysing the internal mechanisms and external behaviour representation, the basic characteristics of discerning customers were defined. Combined with the analysis of discerning customers' value, this article established the interaction model between the discerning customers and enterprises' response from the two perspectives of enterprises and customers. Gaps and propositions to stimulate future research about discerning customers are offered. Finally, the three-dimensional game matrix of discerning customers and enterprises revealed the win–win results which can help enterprises make effective decisions to increase the competitiveness of the product or service.

Keywords:

• the discerning customer
• customer behaviour
• response
• game matrix

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to express their sincere thanks to the anonymous reviewers and editors for their contributions. This paper is financed by the Research Projects of the Social Science and Humanity on Schemed Fund of the Ministry of Education: The Research of Product Quality Supervision in Online Shopping (No. 11YJA630143).