Factors that Influence Consumer Behaviour
Consumer behaviour refers actually to the buying behaviour of the ultimate consumer, present in a market. there are many factors, characteristics and specifications influence the decision of the individuals in buying a product. This also influence the shopping habits, brand awareness and purchasing behaviours of the people based on which the marketers plan marketing strategies. A consumer’s purchasing decision is regulated by numerous factors emerging from social, political, economic and psychological aspects (Gifford and Nilsson 2014). The buyers visit the retailers after they are convinced with the need and validity of the products. Before the products are purchased there are several steps that the consumers follow unintentionally. Moreover, their buying decisions are led by culture, social class, membership groups, family, personality and the current cultural trends matching with situational environment. Therefore, the companies use social networks and other platforms for advertising campaigns more efficiently and organising way so that they meet the needs of the customers to increase their sales.
The behaviour of the consumers depends on the various factors which the marketers need to understand deeply. These behaviours can be applicable either for individual consumers, or in context of any consumer groups. For instance, there are great influential factors which encourage the people to buy. One of them is their friend’s recommendations another is their family traditions that influence them to select one particular brand for use.
Consumer behaviour includes the usage as well as disposal of the products and the study the factors that the method used for purchase of any product. Product usage is of the greatest attention for the marketers, as it can impact on place where and how the product is best placed and how the marketers can reassure bigger consumption. As there are numerous environmental problems that effect from the product disposal, it can be an area of gaining knowledge. The customer behaviour includes various services, ideas along with tangible yields. The effect of the customer behaviour in the social order is also of utter significance. For instance, the aggressive marketing of high fat foods, or aggressive marketing of easy credit, may have a serious repercussion for both the national health as well as economy. Therefore, the marketers need to study the various factors of the consumer behaviours before the reach for the target market.
Social classes have been defined as the groups which are more or less homogenous but ranked against one another in order to form a social hierarchy. It is the social class that brings together the individual values, lifestyles, behaviours and interests into one. Every society in the world possesses some kind of social groups and these are important for the retailers and the organisations because they follow the similarities of demand pattern. Some studies have found out that identification of this demand pattern of a social class help the sellers to tailor their marketing activities (Peek et al. 2014). Moreover, this social classes have particular social perception of any brand or a retailer. This regulate the buying behaviour as well as purchasing habit of that particular class. Different social class has different lifestyle that affect often change their purchasing behaviour. The consumers from a lower economic class can be extra focused on the price of a product whereas a purchaser of higher economic class will be interested to judge other elements like quality, features, innovation even the societal benefit he may gain from that product.
Understanding Consumer Choice
Proper understanding of consumer choice is vital for understanding the consumer behaviour. The more the sellers understand the process of the consumers’ choice or preference making, better the companies will understand the factors of buying decisions and marketing mix will be designed (Sparks, So and Bradley 2016). There are 5 stages of consumer choice which the consumers follow unconsciously while making purchasing decisions. These are demand recognition, searching information, assessment of the substitutes, buying choice and post buying behaviour. These consumers can have different social classes or families with different attitudes or perceptions and even different experiences in life, follow this same model of consumer choice. Under the economic model, the customers make rational economic selection of purchasing where they rigidly follow these steps. Here the consumers review all the available choices then compare before making any choice. On the other hand, the choice of the passive as well as emotional consumers can be easily manipulated because these people make choices through advertisements or guided by emotions (Thompson 2014).
Motivation drives the buyers to develop a buying behaviour. it is an expression of need or fulfilling demand that become stronger in the psychology of the consumers to lead them to satisfy that need. This feelings of need are latent in the minds of the consumers and work in the subconscious level making it difficult to measure. Each of the individual has diverse needs for instance social needs, physiological needs and biological needs. Some of these needs are less pressing whereas other press more. These needs, latent in the mind, get instigated by the increasing specificity. Thus these needs become motive when press the person more and seek immediate satisfaction. Thus, motivation is directly related to the consumers’ needs and instigate their purchasing decision process (Gunter and Furnham 2014). Therefore, one of the chief criteria of the retailers or the companies to encourage their customers to purchase more by creating brand awareness, make them conscious and reinforce the feeling of need in the minds if the customers so that these increase purchase motivations and eventually company’s sales. Moreover, these initiatives of purchasing motivation will help in consumers’ consideration and instigate them for buying a product of a particular brand (Hamari, Sjöklint and Ukkonen 2016). For understanding which way to follow to motivate the customers, the brands must target a particular segment, research and identify the needs and make their products as the solution to satisfy such needs.
Motivation and its Impact on Consumer Behaviour
Proper understanding of cultural factors is vital for planning marketing strategies because consumer behaviour is largely affected by their families, friends and their cultural environment (Arnould and Thompson 2015). These factors are changed the values, preferences and common behaviours that vary country to country and culture to culture. The brands make marketing strategies based on the expectations, behaviour and perceptions of the consumers. This is the reason why different companies can make profit in different countries whereas some companies have to confine themselves within few countries (Rani 2014). This is because of their offered products which can be accepted widely in some culture but not applicable in some cultures. Some brands sometimes communicate in diverse ways, even create specific products for some definite cultural groups. In this aspect, religion, age, gender and family also play a vital role in judging consumer behaviour.
Personality of an individual as well as self-concept reveal the set of exact characteristics. It is the continuous interaction between psychological characteristics and identity which ultimately result in consumer behaviour (Oyserman and Schwarz 2017). This constant interaction is reflected in their personality traits which modify their confidence level, sociability, autonomous nature, charisma, ambition, curiosity, adaptability and openness to others. Their occupation, economic stability and lifestyle are chief regulating factors that motivate the customers in their purchasing decisions. In one hand the economy of a person denotes his lifestyle and interests and on the other hand, personality is reflected in his buying opinion and activities (Cross et al. 2018). As these factors vary from person to person but study of their dominance, self-confidence and perception help the sellers to determine consumer behaviour for one particular product as well as service.
Proper utilization of the power of social media has proved to be advantageous for the sellers as they get great scope to communicate with their consumers. Social media allows greater penetration through which the company can assuredly convey their messages. This allows the organizations to increase their visibility which permits the consumers to communicate their opinions about any brand or product (East et al. 2016). Social media platforms permit huge dissemination of information about products or services. Some of the platforms help the customers to change their identities from only common consumers to researchers. The brands collect customers’ reviews which help them to renew or alter their marketing and service strategies. Social media platforms allow social data gathering for both the consumers as well as the sellers.
Impact of Cultural Factors on Consumer Behaviour
The sellers identify the trends and the new customers which ultimately help them in market segmentation (Schütte and Ciarlante 2016). The more the consumer have data available, the more they will make the buying preferences which fits his needs. Before purchasing, the consumer may log on to some social media networks and see what other people think about some particular products along with the process the companies use to handle customer service. Through the social network channels, the brand gain consumer loyalty which ultimately leads the companies to strategies more efficiently. The consumer behaviour can also be realised through various related services such as discounts, giveaways and coupons because these services guide the brands to judge current trends and demand of the market in building the brand’s reputation.
Consumer behaviour is largely influenced by different situations and their life experiences. Despite the fact that these are actually impermanent product not conditions. Situations actually determine whether the consumer will be buying a product or purchase a supplementary product or would not but anything. The consumer behaviour based on the situational factors is completely different from the personal and product factors. These situational factors largely depend on the specificities of particular time and location. Moreover, this does not comply with the personal knowledge or evocative attributes which are used to bring an organized and demonstrable effect on one’s present behaviour (Latif et al. 2018). On the other hand, the critics argue that situational factors are the effect of a situation emerged from the consumers’ psychological procedures as well as explicit behaviour. Situational factors emerge from the locations, time and considerations which greatly impact on the buying decision of the consumers.
Situational factors can extend, abbreviate and cease the buying process of the consumers. This involves with the social factor, physical and psychological factors as well as purchasing reasons of the customers. The spatial essentials relate to the physical substances like brands, products, shopping centres, even interior decorations can alter the consumer behaviour. The desired physical surroundings of the stores including their environment and employee behaviour attract the consumers to visit the stores several times. On the other hand, the social surroundings associated with purchase involve fundamental interactions among different people present at the time of making purchase decisions and ultimately purchasing process. The social situation ignites the consumers to buy yet set what to buy and how much to buy and when. By accepting the social condition in which the consumer is, the companies can considerably affect their buying decisions. In addition to this, time has been proved to be one of the most substantial situational factors that affect the purchasing decisions of the consumers.
The Role of Personality in Consumer Behaviour
The modern consumers have become researchers therefore; they need time for research. Moreover, these customers may have severe time restraints that press them to make their purchasing decision fast or hold-up for some time. In this present day world, the customers do not have time to waste in researching and comparing products. Therefore, the marketers plan such strategies that accommodate all the needs of the customers. Purchasing reason is also an important factor that significantly gets affected by the motive to buy a product as each product achieves different necessity of the consumers (Cohen, Prayag and Moital 2014). This is the reason why the companies design different offerings for different segments of the consumers which directly apple their target markets. Beside these factors, the individuals’ temporary moods and momentary situations influence their buying decisions greatly. Therefore, in understanding the consumer behaviour, the marketers make strategies after judging these factors.
Political consumption is a vital side of consumerism and greatly affect the buy ng decision of a particular segment of a market. It denotes the constant intersection between the consumer research and their political sociology. Political consumption records the contemplation of both ethical as well as political motives when the consumers decide to buy a definite product. Its key forms are the purchasing of any desired products distinguished by some certain ethical and political features for example sustainability, corporate responsibility and social justice. Political and ethical factors also effect the consumers in their ideology as well as understanding the needs of any products including brands or companies (Solomon et al. 2014). The political consumers are more active and dynamic than average population in other forms of political participation. Political reasons influence the customers to support a product in the market or boycott one based on political and ethical ground. However, the boycott of products directly affects the reputation of the companies as well as brands.
Therefore, it can be concluded that customer behaviour is one of the most vital fact for the marketer as this decide the success of the products or services of the companies in the market. Therefore, a consumer oriented market service provider works as a psychologist in order to procure consumers. The affecting factors can be judged from behavioural discussion and made favourable to achieve consumer satisfaction. All these mentioned factors have noteworthy influence on consumers throughout the purchase as well as consumption process. Hence, consumer purchasing behaviour is a way to success in a market
References:
Arnould, E.J. and Thompson, C.J., 2015. Introduction: consumer culture theory: ten years gone (and beyond). In Consumer Culture Theory (pp. 1-21). Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
Cohen, S.A., Prayag, G. and Moital, M., 2014. Consumer behaviour in tourism: Concepts, influences and opportunities. Current Issues in Tourism, 17(10), pp.872-909.
Cross, S.N., Ruvalcaba, C., Venkatesh, A. and Belk, R.W. eds., 2018. Consumer culture theory. Emerald Publishing Limited.
East, R., Singh, J., Wright, M. and Vanhuele, M., 2016. Consumer behaviour: Applications in marketing. Sage.
Gifford, R. and Nilsson, A., 2014. Personal and social factors that influence pro?environmental concern and behaviour: A review. International Journal of Psychology, 49(3), pp.141-157.
Gunter, B. and Furnham, A., 2014. Consumer Profiles (RLE Consumer Behaviour): An Introduction to Psychographics(Vol. 5). Routledge.
Hamari, J., Sjöklint, M. and Ukkonen, A., 2016. The sharing economy: Why people participate in collaborative consumption. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 67(9), pp.2047-2059.
Latif, S.A., Omar, M.S., Bidin, Y.H. and Awang, Z., 2018. Analyzing the effect of situational factor on recycling behaviour in determining the quality of life. Journal of Asian Behavioural Studies, 3(6), pp.11-17.
Oyserman, D. and Schwarz, N., 2017. Conservatism as a situated identity: Implications for consumer behavior. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 27(4), pp.532-536.
Peek, S.T., Wouters, E.J., van Hoof, J., Luijkx, K.G., Boeije, H.R. and Vrijhoef, H.J., 2014. Factors influencing acceptance of technology for aging in place: a systematic review. International journal of medical informatics, 83(4), pp.235-248.
Rani, P., 2014. Factors influencing consumer behaviour. International journal of current research and academic review, 2(9), pp.52-61.
Schütte, H. and Ciarlante, D., 2016. Consumer behaviour in Asia. Springer.
Solomon, M.R., Dahl, D.W., White, K., Zaichkowsky, J.L. and Polegato, R., 2014. Consumer behavior: Buying, having, and being (Vol. 10). Pearson.
Sparks, B.A., So, K.K.F. and Bradley, G.L., 2016. Responding to negative online reviews: The effects of hotel responses on customer inferences of trust and concern. Tourism Management, 53, pp.74-85.
Thompson, C.J., 2014. The politics of consumer identity work. Journal of Consumer Research, 40(5), pp.iii-vii
Order an Essay Now & Get These Features For Free:
Turnitin Report
Formatting
Title Page
Citation
Outline
