Factors influencing people’s buying patterns
Question:
Discuss about the Consumer Behaviour and Marketing Psychology.
Consumer behavior is the study of how consumers of various products behave. It analyses what motivates consumers to buy products and what are the factors that most deeply affect their purchase. It is important by marketers to understand this behavior of consumers, identify patterns and mold their offerings according to the same (Solomon, 2014). This helps brands in identifying their products that are most liked and products that are not entirely well received by the audience. Studying consumer behavior also helps brands analyze why are consumers buying their products and what are the aspects of their products, channels or delivery that can be modified to suit the public at large (Claiborne & Sirgy, 2015).
This report throws light on various aspects of the behaviors of an online shopping consumer. The reason for selecting online shopper is to depict an increasing advent of this platform for shopping. Secondly, this report aims to help marketers understand why people shop online, what motivates them and how brands work upon improving their services. In order to enable this research, a survey was conducted of participants who have recently indulged in online shopping. They were all asked to answer 10 questions related to their shopping experience (Appendices 1). At present a group of 23 people have filled the survey. It has been ensured that the people filling out the survey come from varied backgrounds, age groups and gender. The answers given by them and the patterns in the answers depicted the following:
The survey conducted clearly evidenced that the interest of people in online shopping is here to stay. 88.96% of the people preferred online shopping over offline shopping. There are various reasons why people prefer online shopping. Most of the people use online shopping to buy clothes and their daily grocery needs (Wu, Chen & Cheng, 2014). However some people also use online shopping to buy furniture, shoes, books and bags. With the increasing speed and changing lifestyles of people, online shopping is definitely the need of the hour (Lian & Yen, 2014). The convenience of online shopping is much higher than offline shopping and the switch in this trend is very clearly visible.
One of the questions in the survey asked people about their most frequently used online retailers. Over 60% of the people mentioned that Amazon.com was the retailer that they go to most often. This could also be because of the large variety of stuff offered by the retailer. Most of the people are truly satisfied with their online shopping experience with amazon. Amazon’s delivery is timely and the sundry range of products offered add the desired cherry on the cake (Li, Zheng, Wang, Sun & Fang, 2017).
Over 90% of the people feel completely secure while making online payments for their shopping. The variety of options to pay online like debit or credit cards, netbanking, wallets and cash on delivery also make it easier and more convenient for people to shop online. Even when people wish to return the products they bought online, the refund for the same gets sent to the users account within 3-15 business days. In this changing lifestyle, it is anyway difficult for people to carry large amounts of cash and hence they prefer paying online for their shopping needs (Roy & Venkateswaran, 2014). Thus this option of paying online comes handy and people do not have to worry about having sufficient amount of cash at the time of delivery.
The impact of online shopping on consumer behavior
Out of the many factors that motivate people to shop online, the influence of social media is particularly high (Hajli, 2014). Social media has been used by various marketers as a tool to communicate with customers as well as market their products. Social media has become an integral part of people’s lives. It is hence very important that the role played by social media is used efficiently by marketers to ensure a higher sales of products.
Social media advertising is the recent advent in the marketing world. It has a major influence on people and hence brands prefer to display their ads on various social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or even Snapchat (Agnihotri, Dingus, Hu & Krush, 2016). The relevancy of the ads on social media platforms are very high as the system uses the cookies stored in the mobile or computer of the user and shows them the ads of the products they actually need.
The power of social media is so immense that if a user has a particular complaint against a particular brand or a shopping experience, they can resort to social media in order to express their views. Due to the high reach of social media, brands are urged to take an action hence leading to better customer service (Kaur, 2016). This influence of social media on people’s shopping choices is rather intense and the marketers today are consistently doing their bit in leveraging on this influence and marketing their products through these social media platforms (Ashley & Tuten, 2015).
Most of the user are entirely happy with their online shopping experience. They truly believe that the platforms upon which users shop online are extremely efficient. Leading brands like Amazon, Walmart, and Flipkart etc. offer a wide variety of products at much lesser prices as compared to shopping offline. This is what makes the experience of shopping online really efficient (Shahzad, 2015). The process of searching for desired goods, shortlisting their needs, adding the shortlisted products to their shopping cart and placing an order is a simple to understand and very convenient process.
Brands offer to save the address of the user in order to establish efficiency for future orders. The online platforms also provide the user with an option to save their payment details which would make the process of future shopping even easier. Online shopping comes with the convenience of the product getting delivered at the doorstep of the user and also saves them the time of going from shop to shop looking for the product they like (Nagra & Gopal, 2013).
There are many factors that influence people’s buying patterns and their shopping needs. These factors may include lower prices, time saving ability, better variety and door step delivery. 60% of the people feel that they prefer online shopping due to its high convenience and lower prices offered by the brands. Over 86.96% of the people agreed that the offers and discounts available online have a major role to play in influencing their shopping needs and patterns. People also believe that shopping online saves a lot of time and in this fast paced world, such a convenient shopping option motivates people to fulfill their shopping needs through online portals.
The convenience of online shopping
In the process of shopping online as well, most people have their favorite retailers. They select this retailers after considering various factors. These factors comprise of the brand name, the prices offered by the retailer, the variety of products offered by the retailers, average customer reviews for that particular retailer as well as the past record of timely delivery from the brand. Over 52% of the people trust the brand name over and above everything else while selecting a retailer to shop from. Which is why most users are loyal to retailers and once they have had a good experience of shopping with a particular retailer, they prefer to shop from the same in the future. Retailers also put efforts in retaining customers by offering customers customized offers, deals and discounts. They target users on their social media profiles with products that they may need at the moment. This is how retailers tend to build long term relationship with their customers.
Conclusion
People’s shopping behavior and pattern has shifted to online platforms over the recent year. This shift in their shopping habit has been dynamic and massive. A survey was conducted to understand people’s shopping behavior. The survey consisted of 10 questions and a wide variety of audience from different income groups and gender were asked to fill the survey. Their opinion were then recorded and analyzed. The results of the survey clearly proved that online shopping is here to stay. Most people have preferred Amazon as their most favorite website to shop from. Their shopping patterns and needs are largely influenced by the social media which is why marketers are now using that as a platform to publicize their products.
People’s shopping behavior is largely determined by the prices and the variety offered by various brands. Most people feel secure making online payments. In fact they find the idea of shopping online much more convenient than visiting various shops and then making a physical purchase. Online shopping has provided people with immense amount of convenience and surely the idea is here to stay.
References
Agnihotri, R., Dingus, R., Hu, M.Y. and Krush, M.T., 2016. Social media: Influencing customer satisfaction in B2B sales. Industrial Marketing Management, 53, pp.172-180.
Ashley, C. and Tuten, T., 2015. Creative strategies in social media marketing: An exploratory study of branded social content and consumer engagement. Psychology & Marketing, 32(1), pp.15-27.
Claiborne, C.B. and Sirgy, M.J., 2015. Self-image congruence as a model of consumer attitude formation and behavior: A conceptual review and guide for future research. In Proceedings of the 1990 academy of marketing science (AMS) annual conference (pp. 1-7). Springer, Cham.
Hajli, M.N., 2014. A study of the impact of social media on consumers. International Journal of Market Research, 56(3), pp.387-404.
Kaur, G., 2016. Social Media Marketing. Asian Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies, 4(7).
Li, Y., Zheng, N., Wang, H., Sun, K. and Fang, H., 2017, May. A measurement study on Amazon wishlist and its privacy exposure. In Communications (ICC), 2017 IEEE International Conference on (pp. 1-7). IEEE.
Lian, J.W. and Yen, D.C., 2014. Online shopping drivers and barriers for older adults: Age and gender differences. Computers in Human Behavior, 37, pp.133-143.
Nagra, G. and Gopal, R., 2013. A study of Factors Affecting on Online Shopping Behavior of Consumers. International Journal of Scientific and Research Publications, 3(6), pp.1-4.
Roy, S. and Venkateswaran, P., 2014, March. Online payment system using steganography and visual cryptography. In Electrical, Electronics and Computer Science (SCEECS), 2014 IEEE Students’ Conference on (pp. 1-5). IEEE.
Shahzad, H., 2015. Online Shopping Behavior.
Solomon, M.R., 2014. Consumer behaviour: Buying, having, and being (Vol. 10). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall
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