Resumen
Existing studies of heating products have analyzed the adoption of energy-efficient heating technologies from diverse micro and macroeconomic aspects, such as diffusion of innovation, willingness to pay, business models, energy pricing, etc., but the analysis from a marketing management approach based on end customer insight is still lacking. Understanding the decision-making process of end customers, and the influence of social environment at the diverse stages of the purchase process leads to a focused market strategy, thereby contributes toward overcoming the multi-level segmentation challenge faced by the manufacturers of heating products. In this context, a two-step exploratory research was conducted in December 2013 with end customers of the residential heat market in Hungary. The end customers were found to be active decision-makers engaged in deliberate planning in the purchase of heating products. They start searching for information by turning mainly to online information sources and they actively integrate their social network in all stages of the decision-making process, which means that the role of the installer is relatively less influential along the whole purchasing process. Identified influencing communication channels at the diverse stages of the purchase process may support manufacturers to develop a user-centric marketing strategy by optimizing the communication instruments in their marketing mix by, for instance, including direct end customer communication via online channels and by de-emphasizing offline communication channels.