CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR IS A TRICK

Consumer behaviour is the study of the way people seek, purchase, use, evaluate and dispose of products and services. It is the psychology of marketing, and it is used to determine why consumers seek one product alternative from the other or you can say why do consumers seek and purchase specifically some brands?  

Is this linked to the ideology of needs or wants? Market has enough space for fulfil our needs but when it comes to wants, consumer is unsatisfied, and consumers seek and purchase the products that can provide them with maximum satisfaction.

Consumer behaviour used by marketers to create the marketing strategy; targeting each consumer effectively once they understand their needs and wants through the research of consumer behaviour.

What is the marketing strategy?

It is a strategy used to maximise limited resources of an organisation to increase its opportunities in sales and achieve a sustainable competitive advantage.

A marketing strategy is created by market research and strategic management department. They look for consumer’s need, their attitudes towards the product and as per that they evaluate their competitors’ products, as per that they start packaging, sales and distribution of a product.

How to research the consumer - Use primary and secondary research. They may do this through: surveys, focus groups, observation, interviews and secondary methods such as online researching.

Marketers may also make decisions for their marketing strategy based on the consumer’s demographic information and lifestyle pattern. This information includes the consumers: income, educational level, occupation, age, and location. This is known as segmenting the market as per the consumer’s need or need based segmentation for specific products like – Textile , food items etc.

This information is used to predict purchasing habits of the consumer and make key decisions in the product they are selling, such as pricing, customizing as per their interest. For example, marketers targeting consumers will a low income in a low socio-economic area will have to be particularly price conscious when pricing their items or spice flooding items they customize their foods in that way .

Consumers are complicated as brain is itself complicated.   If they bought things based on only a select criteria, then it would be easy to convince others to buy our products and services.  There would be no need for elaborate ad campaigns and large advertising budgets.  Unfortunately, consumers are influenced by many different stimuli, and they use many different factors to decide what to buy and when to buy it.  One of the major influencers of consumer buyer behaviour is the consumer's own unique personality.

When we study personality, we are examining the unique psychological characteristics that create relatively consistent, lasting behaviour in response to the consumer's environment. 

We usually refer to someone's personality by traits, such as self-confidence, dominance, sociability, autonomy, defensiveness, adaptability, and aggressiveness.  Personality is extremely important, because it allows us to build a profile of our customer.  It allows us to really understand who they are, and why they buy and what they want to buy.

Brands are made for its consumer, Consumers aren't the only ones who can have personalities and profiles, and so can brands.  Brand personalities are the specific mix of human traits that may be attributed to that brand.  In order to better associate our brands with our target customers, we try to give them personalities that are relatable. 

Currently we look to four specific factors of our target customers when building their personality profile.

·         Motivation

·         Perception

·         Learning

·         Beliefs

·         Attitudes

Motivation
Through various research marketers have identified five "categories" of motivational needs:

Self-Actualization: a consumer's self-development and realization

Esteem: a consumer's sense of self-esteem, self-recognition, and social/economic status in the world

Social: a consumer's sense of belonging and feeling loved in their environment

Satisfaction: a consumer's sense of security and level of protection in their environment

Physiological: a consumer's basic need for food, water and shelter

Perception 
1) Selective Attention is the tendency for consumers to screen out most of the information they are exposed to.  We have to work very hard to get the consumer's attention.

2) Selective Distortion: Every consumer fits incoming stimuli into their own mind-set - through their own set of "rose coloured glasses".  Selective distortion is the tendency of people to interpret information in a way that will support what they already believe, or what they want to believe.

3) Selective Retention: Consumers will usually forget much of the stimuli they have been exposed to.  Consumers will usually store the information that best supports their existing attitudes and beliefs (or the ones they want to have), so selective retention allows them "remember" the good points they favour and "forget" the negative points that have been made about other brands that they don't like.


Learning

Majority of human behaviour is "learned" behaviour.  Consumer buyer behaviour is a partly learned behaviour.  Consumers "learn" their buyer behaviour through drives, cues, responses, and reinforcement. 

The study of consumers in the digital age can help your business improve your marketing strategies by taking a look at some of the reasons why buyers head online to purchase as opposed to going to the store. There are a few key factors to look for when creating a marketing plan that influences a consumer.

·         Understanding of how consumers feel, reason and select products for their use

·         How consumers are influenced by their environment, culture, media

·         Behaviour of the consumer while they shop

·         Product importance for the consumer or ranking

These factors may be obvious for some marketers, but taking just one of these ideas and changing the product’s online strategy may prove to change the entire scope of the consumer reach.

My research work based consumer buying behaviour pattern based on different personality and perception–

My idea is to know our customer as per their personality and perception then idea built up process or can say market strategy process –

·         Concepts on different personality theories

·         Analyse it based on consumer behaviour

·         Market strategy on different industry

Classification based on personality -

·         Compliant  

·         Detached

·         Aggressive

Complaint

Attributes –Good, sympathetic, loving, unselfish, humble, over considerate, apologetic, weakness, dependence

Desire –To be loved, wanted, appreciated, needed, helped, guided, protected,

Dislike – Egotism, aggression, conflict, assertiveness, power seeking

Conclusion – systematic, precise, Hyper efficient and Technical

Product - IPhone 5s

This product fulfil the individual’s desire to be wanted and appreciated

Buying behaviour

·         People should share opinion before any purchase

·         Getting benefit by consulting with friends

·         Talking prior to purchase

·         Moving towards others prior to any purchase

Product design strategy –

·         Innovative , luxurious  , classic , experienced , honest,

·         Product examples – Nokia , Toyota ,  Nike

Aggressive

Attributes – Strength, power, unemotional realism, manipulates others for gaining power, cynical, exhibitionistic

Desire –To excel, achieve success, prestige, admiration, to be superior straight, to control emotion and fears

Conclusion – Bing boss, competing with confidence, adventurous, competitive in sports

Product – TVS Apache RTR

Tagline (Not for weak heart –scarily fast)

Buying behaviour

·         People appreciate my own purchasing

·         Perfect at purchasing

·         Purchase based on own evaluation

·         Hardly belief other’s opinion before purchase

·         Talking with others as time killing

Product design strategy –

·         Innovative , High quality , fast , strong , high quality , high tech , progressive , smart , elegant , bold

·         Product examples – Rolex , Ford, IBM , Bulgari, Adidas, Volkswagen

Detached

Attributes –Non conforming, emotionally distant from others, untruthful

Desire – Freedom from obligation, being unique, independent, reasoning, self-sufficiency, intelligence 

Dislike – Being influenced by others, sharing experience, conformity, showing feelings

Conclusion – promote their self-independence.

Product – Cadbury Diary milk

(Khane walo ko khane ka bhana chahiya)

Buying behaviour

·         Products and prestige

·         Purchase appreciated by others

·         Purchasing luxurious products

·         Purchase based on emotion

·         Counterparts as competitors

Product design strategy –

·         Luxurious , emotional , comfortable , self-centred ,

·         Product examples –  Prada , sonny , Motorola , Mercedes Benz

Big 5 Personality Trait

1)     Extraverts are social, enthusiastic, talkative and assertive. In general, they tend to take on more risk in order to fulfil their need for excitement.

Advantage: They tend to have a higher risk tolerance, which can mean potentially higher returns.

Disadvantage: They may take on too much risk and lose money.

2)    Agreeableness- Those high in agreeableness are trusting, altruistic and optimistic. They need to get along with other individuals.

Advantage: They are cooperative when working with advisers on their portfolio.

Disadvantage: They do not like to offend others and may be hesitant to raise any red flags that they see.

3)    Conscientiousness persons are thorough, careful and diligent. They have the ability to delay immediate gratification in favour of long-term goals...

Advantage: Long-term investors can be patient and restrain themselves from impulsive risk-taking.

Disadvantage: They are too risk-averse.

4)    Neurotic individuals are emotionally unstable. They are prone to psychological distress including depression, anxiety and anger

Advantage: They are drawn to risk because of its emotional appeal, and similar to the extravert advantage, higher risk tolerance can potentially equal higher returns.

Disadvantage: They are impulsive; therefore, they are prone to making emotional financial decisions.

5)    Openness -Individuals high in openness to experience/intellect are imaginative, curious and open to new ideas. They actively seek new experiences. This trait is highly correlated to intelligence.

There is no advantage or disadvantage listed because openness to experience/intellect is the least studied of all the traits.

There is no advantage or disadvantage listed because openness to experience/intellect is the least studied of all the traits.

Understand your buyers

·         Impulsive buyers

·         Extraverts

·         Conscientiousness 

·         Agreeableness 

·         Openness to experience 

Compulsive buying

·         Extraverts

·         Conscientiousness 

·         Agreeableness

·         Openness to experience

Financially unconscious people while buying

·         Extraverts

·         Conscientiousness 

·         Openness to experience

·         Agreeableness      

   

Buying over looks of cover or packaging

·         Extraverts

·         Agreeableness

·         Openness to experience 

·         Conscientiousness

Brand conscious

·         Extraverts      

·         Agreeableness 

·         Conscientiousness 

·         Openness to experience         

        

Free product /sales promotion/discount

·         Extraverts

·         Agreeableness

·         Openness to experience 

·         Conscientiousness 

30 PERSONALITY TYPES

This is my own concept based on consumer buying behaviour, I combine neo Freudian and Big 5 personality traits to customaries the product as per customer’s buying behaviour. I found out 30 different kinds of personality which can help marketers to customize their products.

As per the dataanalysis and combined personality traits in above, we can proceed further for bettermarket strategy as per different buying pattern with demographic pattern.