The Psychology of Consumer Behavior
Consumer psychology research explores how consumers make decisions when making purchases, and seeks to understand the motivations underlying such decisions, whether those motivations be negative (e.g. avoiding pain and discomfort), or positive (such as seeking pleasure or gaining status).
Consumer psychologists focus on large-scale issues like financial management and environmental impact. Through their research, consumer psychologists can improve marketing strategies while also benefiting patients.
Understanding the Decision-Making Process
Businesses and marketing agencies frequently struggle with determining which strategies will persuade customers to purchase their product. One key solution lies in understanding consumer behavior – including emotions and motivations that play into purchasing decisions – so companies that employ consumer psychologists can anticipate customer behaviors better and identify any psychological influences on them.
Consumer psychologists can help marketers and business owners better understand these differences to develop more successful advertising campaigns. A customer may behave differently when buying beverages than when searching for vacation resorts as the latter often involves greater risk and requires several members of a family to be satisfied simultaneously.
Consumer psychologists also investigate how personal factors, like age, culture, profession and beliefs influence how someone makes decisions. With this data they can predict which products, services and promotions will appeal most strongly to consumers.
Understanding the Motivations of Consumers
Consumer psychology seeks to understand what drives consumers to buy goods or services. Businesses that gain an insight into what motivates consumers can use this information to strengthen their marketing strategies; for instance, when selling kitchen disinfectants it may be better to emphasize benefits over prices when discussing sales strategies.
The Motivation-Need Theory (MNT) is a popular approach to understanding consumer purchasing behavior. Based on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Human Needs, MNT asserts that consumer motivation to fulfill lower level needs drives decision making processes such as researching products that offer this level of protection based on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs hierarchy. For example, their desire for safety may drive their search and ultimately their purchase decision process.
Other theories of purchasing motivation center around a consumer’s level of involvement in decision-making processes. If their purchases involve minimal psycho-social risk (for instance when buying groceries), such as buying their grocery, the process is considered low involvement while when being influenced by other people is involved, it becomes high involvement.
Developing Effective Marketing Campaigns
Consumer psychologists devote much of their time and energy to understanding which products and marketing messages resonate most strongly with specific types of shoppers. This information helps businesses develop more targeted advertising campaigns while customizing products to meet customer demands.
Complex buying behavior often occurs when customers become highly involved with their purchases, particularly for expensive, high-risk items like cars and new appliances. Customers will spend considerable time investigating differences among brands before making their final selections.
Habitual purchasing behavior refers to purchasing low-cost, regular items like salt, sugar, toilet paper and black pepper in an effortless fashion. Consumers will typically select one they know well or one readily available in their shops, even though there may be small variations between products they purchase. Consumer psychologists can assist companies by developing marketing strategies designed to promote this behavior.
Changing Lifestyles
Lifestyle factors and values often play a big part in driving purchasing decisions. Consumer psychology examines these interactions between these components.
As consumers’ lifestyles change, they may look for products and services more aligned with their current circumstances. For example, someone moving locations may desire a car more suitable to their commute.
Lifestyle studies allow marketers to develop more humanized portrayals of their target customers through lifestyle research. Lifestyle experts can uncover behavioral variations not reflected by typical demographic data and use this insight to craft more targeted marketing campaigns and increase market value of products or services they sell, like restaurants who may attract more customers by emphasizing quality food and service with lifestyle studies; in turn they may promote their high-end menu options to those who appreciate fine dining.
