CONSUMER BEHAVIOR AFFECTING FACTORS LEADING TO INCREASED COMPETITIVENESS DURING HOLIDAY SEASON

A modern consumer nowadays has availability of enormous variety of products and services to choose from when making purchasing decision. This leads to high competition, and companies have to seek new ways and more effective communication measures to successfully influence decision making process of consumers, as well as be creative to forecast consumer behaviour and increase market competitiveness. This is one of the reasons why behavioural research tools are important parts of management decision process. By being able to precisely define expected consumer activities, it is possible to forecast sales amounts, revenue, turnover, and also predict company development potential, especially in periods when sales hit high levels, for example, during holiday season. Consumer behaviour and actions are influenced not only by products, perception of brand values and effectiveness of marketing communication, but also by cultural, social, individual and psychological factors. Analyses of cross-interactions of these aspects allows to reveal which purchasing behavioural model is the most dominating one when buying goods or services. The aim of this research is to determine the most influencing factors of consumers in Latvia during holiday season, as well as evaluating effectiveness behind various holiday marketing solutions, in order to make argumented marketing decisions to increase competiveness of a company. The research results allow to indicate factors which affect consumption habits, and, based on that, proposals of upgrading marketing solutions for festive periods are revealed, including recommendations for improving marketing communication, appropriate methods of goods and services differentiation, methods of consumer segmentation and other aspects which sharpen competitive edge of a company.