iscovered with regular buyers of Buick automobiles. Chapter 5 Characteristics of the Buick Buyer Market research has shown that the Buick buyer is a typical middle- aged American male. He is middle-class, conservative, and not subject to many impulse buying decisions. This buyer tends to follow a fairly regular pattern, one that repeats again and again over many decades of car buying. Figure 5-1: The Buick Buyer The typical Buick buyer believes that a new car should be purchased every three years. At the beginning of the third year in the life of the buyer's current car, the Buick buyer will begin his shopping cycle. First, he will begin to pay attention to television advertisements about the new models and styles available. (He will typically not notice ads for compact cars, sports cars, or pick up trucks.) Then, after several months of tuning into the ads and about three months before the time for a buying decision, he will begin to visit automobile dealerships. He will test drive cars, discuss colors and accessories with his wife, and begin to zero in on the purchase decision. Ultimately, two or three dealers will then be played against each other for the final purchase decision. Figure 5-2: The Slow Buying Cycle eXcellence in Telecommunications The Telco Churn Handbook When we understand the consumer's shopping cycle, we realize how buying (and churning) decisions are made. Churn and the Buick Buyer Given the buying cycle just described, we can define what we mean by Buick Buyer churn. Since a Buick buyer typically buys every three years, there are two kinds of churn that we will want to be aware of. Catastrophic Churn for Buick The Buick buyer will only decide to get a new car in less than three years if he becomes very unhappy with his current car or if some truly amazing alternatives become available in the short term. This kind of churn is, by far, the worst for the seller, because the out-of- cycle churn means that the consumer is very unhappy with the last purchase decision. We call this catastrophic ch