Introduction
How many times a day do you make any decisions? What should I have for lunch today? What should I wear today? If you notice, you make a lot of buying decisions almost every day, without even giving them much thought. However, these decisions are quite significant to marketers. Decoding the processes behind these certain decisions provide valuable information that can prove quite useful for marketers to boost their revenue.
For instance, there are times when we walk into a certain store and we notice something that attracts our attention to a reasonable extent. We feel a sudden urge to buy that certain product or service without giving it a second thought. Retailers and marketers usually spend millions of dollars each year to try and generate that sort of feeling in their target audience or customers.
They invest a fortune in video and print ads, social media campaigns, web campaigns, and branding to make the customer feel a connection to a certain product and ultimately persuade the customer to decide on purchasing that certain product.
In the following article, we will discuss what consumer behaviour is, why it is important, different types of consumer buying behaviour, factors affecting consumer behaviour, and types of buyers.
Meaning of Consumer Behaviour
The study of the processes that the consumers or customers use to pick, utilize, and dispose of services and products, including the customers’ mental, behavioural, and emotional responses is known as consumer behaviour. When it comes to consumer behaviour, the study generally incorporates ideas from several scientific fields including biology, economics, chemistry, and psychology.
To define consumer behaviour in simple words, the actions a customer takes both online and offline before buying any specific product or service can be referred to as consumer buying behaviour. These actions might include engaging with posts on social media, regarding the shortlisted products or services, consulting search engines, and various other actions.
For any business, it is quite important to properly understand this process as it is pretty effective when it comes to assisting their marketing efforts. When a business understands the psychology of their target audience and how they react to any certain product or service, it becomes quite convenient for them to develop particular strategies that can assist them in generating more revenue.
Importance of Consumer Buying Behaviour
Deeply studying and understanding consumer buying behaviours is quite significant as it allows marketers to grasp what influences the buying decisions of their customers. If marketers understand how their customers decide on a certain product, they will become able to identify which products are obsolete and which ones are in high demand.
In addition to filling the gap in the market by the above approaches, understanding consumer buying behaviours is also of significance as it assists marketers in deciding how they should present their products in specific ways that can generate a maximal impact on their customers. The secret key to engaging your customers and persuading them to purchase your products or services is to understand how consumer buying behaviour works.
A consumer behaviour analysis can come in handy to study the behaviour of your customers. A specific consumer buying behaviour analysis should reveal the following:
- What are the opinions of consumers about various alternatives (products, brands, etc.)
- What influences consumers to pick a certain option among various options
- The behaviour of a consumer during researching and shopping
- How the environment of a consumer influences their behaviour
Classification of Consumer Buying Behaviours
The buying decision of any consumer majorly depends on the types of products or services they need to buy. For instance, the behaviour of a consumer is surely going to be quite different while buying a cup of coffee than while buying a suitcase.
The level of involvement that a certain consumer shows when it comes to making a purchase decision can prove beneficial to determine consumer buying behaviour. However, the following are certain types of consumer buying behaviour that will allow us to dig deep into the concept besides allowing us to understand the consumer buying behaviour process much clearly.
1. Complex buying behaviour
This type of buying behaviour is usually encountered when a consumer is buying an expensive product or service. This kind of transaction is infrequent for a lot of consumers. Therefore, they are highly involved and quite sensitive to the purchase decision. Generally, consumers are expected to research thoroughly before making the final decision of whether or not to purchase the product or service.
A consumer behaves quite differently when it comes to buying a product that is either expensive or unfamiliar to them. In such situations, a consumer usually seeks advice from their family, friends, and experts before finalizing their decision.
For instance, when a consumer is purchasing their first car, the decision is quite considerable for the consumer as a high economic risk is involved. There is a lot of thought on how the family and friends of the consumer will react to this decision and how it will change their social status after purchasing the vehicle and so on.
In this kind of consumer buying behaviour, the consumer is most likely to pass through a learning process that will eventually develop certain beliefs in their mind regarding the product besides developing a certain attitude before finally making a thoughtful purchase decision.
For this type of customer buying behaviour, marketers are advised to have a deep understanding of the services or products. They should help their consumers to better understand the product they are offering, since it will assist the consumer to come to a positive decision. It is also quite significant to create certain advertisements in such a way that results in influencing the consumer’s beliefs and attitudes.
2. Dissonance-reducing buying behaviour
When it comes to dissonance-reducing buying behaviour, the involvement of the consumer is quite high, which might be due to either high price or infrequent purchase. In addition to this, the consumer has less availability of choices and they are buying a product or service that is easily available due to less significant differences among various brands.
The customer will have limited decision-making ability, which will force him to choose from limited brands. . In such a case, the consumer buys products without performing extensive research due to time limitation, budget limitation, or the availability of the product.
For instance, if the consumer wants to buy themselves a new collapsable table that is suitable to take with them for camping, they abruptly decide due to the limited availability of brands and options. The main criteria in such a case are going to be just the use and features of the table.
From a marketer’s perspective, proper after-sale service camps should be run, that should aim to deliver focused messaging. Such campaigns should work on providing support to the valuable customers of the organization besides convincing them to continue trusting their brand for future purchases. The sole purpose of such campaigns should be building referrals and repeat purchases by offering certain incentives and discounts to the customers.
3. Habitual buying behaviour
This kind of behaviour is depicted when a certain consumer is having low involvement in a purchase decision. In such a case, the consumer is deducing just a few important variations between different brands.
For instance, when a consumer buys certain products that they utilize for their daily routine, they usually do not consider putting a lot of thought in making a decision. Either they will buy the brand that they have been using constantly or their favourite brand. They might end up buying the only brand available in that certain store or the budget-friendly one.
For instance, when a customer needs a loaf of bread, they will consider buying the brand that they are familiar with without even giving it a second thought or, in other words, putting a lot of research and time into it. Many daily routine products including sugar, toilet paper, salt, black pepper, biscuits, etc., all fit into the category where the customer does not put a lot of thought into making the purchase. They just go for it. There is no brand loyalty in this type of behaviour. Also, the customer does not need any sort of specific information when it comes to purchasing such products.
Radio, print media, and television are examples of mediums that influence habitual buying behaviour. Consumers buy goods based on brand familiarity. Due to that reason, marketers should consider using repetitive advertisements for the sake of building brand familiarity. They can also implement useful tactics like price drop promotions to initiate product trials.
4. Variety seeking buying behaviour
The last type of consumer buying behaviour involves low consumer involvement. However, the consumer encounters significant differences among brands. In such cases, consumers tend to do brand switching quite often.
As the price of certain similar products from different brands is almost similar, the consumers consider trying out products from other than their regular brands either out of curiosity or boredom. Consumers tend to buy a variety of products not due to dissatisfaction but mainly due to an urge to seek variety.
As an illustration, when a consumer wants to buy cookies, they consider buying them from a brand of their choice, without giving it much thought. However, when the same consumer wants to buy cookies at some point in the future, they might consider buying a different brand just to check out their taste. Therefore, brand switching is, often, encountered without intention in such cases.
For such types of consumer buying behaviour, businesses should adopt certain strategies. The market leader might persuade habitual buying behaviour by introducing a lot of related products with different product versions to choose from. Marketers should avoid out-of-stock conditions besides sponsoring repetitive advertising and offering lower prices. They could also offer special deals and discounts along with free samples to gain the attention of potential customers.
Types of Buyers
After going through consumer behaviour definitions and types of consumer buying behaviour, the next key topic worthy to be discussed is the types of buyers. Generally, there are a lot of buyer types. However, there are four most dominant types of buyers you should expect to encounter as a marketer.
1. Analytical buyer
This sort of buyer is the one motivated by logic as well as information. He or she will thoroughly research and go through all sorts of data on competing products and brands before making a final informed decision.
2. Amiable buyer
The amiable buyer wants everyone to be happy. This sort of buyer is warm and friendly. When there is a perception of a win or lose outcome, these types of buyers are often paralyzed by huge decisions.
3. Driver buyer
The driver buyer is most concerned regarding how others view them and whether or not they follow. The driver buyers are considered the trendsetters and they are more concerned with their appearance instead of the relationships that they form during a certain transaction.
4. Expressive buyer
Unlike driver buyers, relationships are quite significant for expressive buyers. Being ignored during a certain transaction or feeling isolated are somethings that they detest the most. Instead, they want to be taken as the most important asset of their seller.
Factors Affecting Consumer Behaviour
There are a variety of factors that influence or affect consumer buying behaviour. However, in this section, we will mention just a few with a brief description of them.
The following are four factors that influence customer buying behaviour:
- Cultural factors ‒ There are a certain set of values and ideologies that a group of people is associated with being a part of a community. When a consumer comes from a certain community with specific values, their behaviour is most likely to be influenced by the culture relating to that specific community.
- Social factors ‒ The buying behaviour of a human being is influenced a great deal by the people they live around. A consumer, being a human, will try to imitate fellow human beings and will wish to be accepted in society. Therefore, their buying behaviour is most likely to be influenced by the people they socialize with.
- Psychological factors ‒ Another major detriment of consumer buying behaviour is human psychology. Although these factors are quite difficult to measure, they have a huge impact on the buying decision of a certain consumer. The attitude, beliefs, and perception of a consumer majorly influence their buying decision.
- Personal factors – The factors that are personal to the consumers also play a vital role in influencing their buying behaviour. As the factors are personal, they differ from person to person which results in developing a variety of perceptions besides producing variable consumer behaviour depending on the personality of the consumer.
Conclusion
Consumer behaviour, generally, refers to the actions that a customer performs before making a purchase decision. These actions generate a specific consumer buying behaviour that varies from person to person depending on their personality.
Studying deeply the consumer buying behaviour is quite significant for the seller. It will allow them to develop certain strategies to present their products in a much better way that can surely boost their overall revenue. Marketers can conduct consumer behaviour analysis to determine the behaviours of their consumers and the data gained through analysis can be used to develop techniques and strategies to gain the attention of more potential customers.
The types of consumer buying behaviour classify the different types of behaviours that marketers encounter with their consumers. The classification of consumer buying behaviours is of much significance as it can prove quite beneficial in better comprehending and grasping the psyche of potential customers.
Certain behaviours that are developed among various customers are influenced by social, personal, cultural, and psychological factors. These factors affect the buying decision of a consumer to a great deal. Marketers should properly understand the buying behaviour of consumers to accurately predict future sales events.
At this point, you probably have become aware of how significant it is to understand the buying behaviours of your consumers to boost the revenue of your business in the long term. If you are looking for a simple, efficient solution to assist you in analyzing the buying behaviours of your consumers accurately, consider using Grabb Ai.
Grabb Ai uses advanced machine learning algorithms to segment your customers and predict their intentions. It recommends the perfect timing for prioritizing certain customers and offering specific products to them. Want to know more? Let us know so that we can accommodate you with our top-notch artificially intelligent solutions that will not only increase your sales but will also boost the reputation of your organization.
