The Psychology of Consumer Behavior – Insights for Marketers

Successful marketers understand the psychological factors affecting consumer behavior, and use this insight to craft marketing strategies that resonate with their target customers. But to do this effectively requires access to appropriate tools.

Marketing psychology draws on behavioral sciences to study what influences people to make purchasing decisions for products and services, as well as strategies corporations and political campaigns use to manipulate these tendencies.

Motivation

Motivation is the driving force that motivates customers to make specific purchasing decisions and engage with a brand. This motivation includes needs, desires, and goals which drive consumers toward satisfying their desires and reaching specific outcomes.

Motivation has been studied scientifically extensively. One groundbreaking work in this regard was by Abraham Maslow who developed his Theory of Psychological Health which centers around meeting basic human needs in priority order and ultimately reaching self-actualization. Other factors which influence motivation include learning and the influence of contextual factors.

Emotions have an enormous effect on motivation; for instance, relaxation could compel someone to visit a spa, while excitement might encourage someone to buy tickets to an NBA game. By understanding your audience and their innate drivers, marketing campaigns that more effectively motivate interaction can be developed.

Attitudes

Consumer attitudes play a powerful role in shaping consumers’ perceptions of products and services they consume and their decision to purchase them. Their attitudes also provide marketers with information to target their marketing initiatives more effectively.

Attitudes can be complex and vary based on many different factors, including an individual’s personality, beliefs, values, needs, lifestyle and environment. An attitude can either be positive, negative or neutral depending on how it relates to an object or situation in question.

Attitudes can often be defined by three components, which include affective, behavioral and cognitive. An attitude’s affective component entails feelings or emotional reactions such as liking, disliking or loving. Meanwhile, its behavioral component indicates an individual’s tendency to either approach or avoid an object or situation; take actions supporting or opposing that object/situation; or maintain a neutral stance.

Decision-Making Processes

Decision-making refers to the cognitive process that results in selecting between alternatives. This can be either rational or irrational and involve both explicit and tacit knowledge – with explicit knowledge being that which is readily known; tacit knowledge being less tangible or accessible.

Consumer decision-making includes five stages: problem recognition, information search, evaluation of alternatives, purchase decision and post-purchase evaluation. Marketers can gain greater insight into this process using qualitative research methods such as focus groups or interviews.

Consumers may also be influenced by opinions from trusted references such as friends and family, which may impact purchasing decisions when selecting restaurants or electronics. Cultural influences also play a part in consumer behavior; marketers can gain insight into these influences by conducting research in various cultures. Experiments provide another method for studying consumer behaviors – either controlled environments or real life settings are suitable.

Social Influence

Social influence has an incredible effect on individuals’ behaviors. While peer pressure, obedience, leadership or conformity all have the ability to sway our decisions and behaviors, there are ways we can avoid falling prey to it.

Informational social influence occurs when individuals rely on others’ choices when they lack sufficient information about a product or technology (i.e., herd behavior). Anticipatory utility also plays an integral part in this form of influence – the value placed upon outcomes from certain decisions made.

Major and minority influences are two essential components of social influence, each having different effects on individuals or populations. Majority influences occur when a majority of a population influences an individual or minority while minority influences occur when individuals or small groups influence a majority group or population. Both forms can result in long-lasting societal change but their direction and magnitude depend on various factors like an individual’s original preferences and levels of uncertainty.