As well as understanding a market in terms of trends, competitors, segments and so on, organisations supplying products or services also need to have an appreciation of the way customers behave when coming to a specific purchase decision. In addition, organisations need to understand how this behaviour varies between different groups of customers in order to ascertain the ways in which markets can be segmented. Without this knowledge, suppliers will find it difficult to choose between the alternative elements of the marketing mix to construct a product offering which will find favour with those customers it has decided to target.