What is Consumer Behaviour? 10+ Onsite Factors that Affect Consumer Behaviour
Building a great product, marketing, branding, and PR is not possible in the absence of consumer behavior analysis. Every unsuccessful business focused on random vanity metrics such as likes on social media. However, buyer persona is a complex concept in business and marketing. To build a strong brand, to create a strong connection and reputation online and offline among customers comprehensive analysis of buyer persona is evident.
Hence, to solve queries related to consumer behavior, we have sorted out solutions to problems such as what are the key factors of consumer behavior. Including perception, bias, age, personality, experience, culture, social status, etc. Which are the 4 main Consumer Behavior models? The economic model, Psychological Model, Social model, and Family Decision model is part of the discussion below:
Through analysis and implementation, marketers and digital marketing professionals can see significant results in marketing and branding.
For instance, around 70% of millennials with children check the product ratings and reviews before buying them.
Seeing this, most of the e-commerce or online stores like Amazon include product ratings and reviews to convert more customers.
But what exactly is consumer behavior?
What is Consumer Behaviour?
As mentioned earlier, consumer behavior is the study of how a consumer behaves while purchasing a new product.
Now, to understand what is Consumer Behaviour in detail, it is important to know that several factors affect (or influence) a customer’s behavior toward buying a product or service.
We’ll cover that later on in this article.
First of all, we need to understand what makes consumer behavior an important aspect that should be considered while crafting a successful Internet marketing strategy or a marketing campaign.
So, let us understand the importance of consumer behavior right away-
Importance of Consumer Behaviour
It is a very important aspect that influences a consumer into buying your product or service.
Studying what is consumer behaviour gives you a greater insight into your customer’s mindset whenever he/she makes a purchase.
For example: Consumers are more comfortable buying products and services from social media. According to Hubspot’s consumer behavior report on May 20, 2024, 1 in 4 users buy from social media. 45% of buyers are comfortable with card information and 47% are comfortable and keen to purchase from social media apps.
With a good amount of understanding and interpretation, you can easily figure out the best way to make your product more appealing to your consumers.
Such powerful insights not only help you present your products or services in the best manner but also create an impact on your consumers that’ll play a major role in customer retention.
So, how do you get started? It’s simple.
For a quick start, you can refer to the various consumer behavior models that have been devised to properly understand the behavior of customers.
Onsite Factors that Affect Consumer Behaviour
There are a number of factors that actually draw an impact on consumer behaviour.
You should understand that one or more of these factors directly affect the way the consumers are going to interact with your product or service.
“Focusing on customers makes a customer more resilient”– Jeff Bezos
If you really want to sell your products to your customers and if you are aiming towards increasing your sales then it is a must for you to understand the factors that influence consumer behaviour. Unless and until you know what encourages the people to buy your products or services you can’t simply convert them into your potential customers.
Here we have mentioned the essential factors that influence consumer behavior:
- Perception
- Motivation
- Role & Status
- Age
- Personality
- Experience
- Culture
- Social Class
- Lifestyle
- Economic Factors
- Trends
1. Perception
Everyone has their own way of perceiving a situation or a problem. Perceptions and points of view vary based on age, culture, gender, childhood, and so on. Creating a positive, relevant, and attractive perception is one of the core goals of brand building, and marketing.
A customer may want to purchase a product but would not go ahead with this decision if they fail to perceive the product in terms of their needs or requirements.
You have to understand that perception is one of the major factors that can influence your customer’s behavior. Whether it’s you or I or anybody else, we prefer to buy those products only which are helpful in our point of view. No matter how good is that product, if it fails to manipulate our perception towards it then we are never going to invest in that product.
Besides creating a good product you will also have to focus on targeting the perception of your potential customers because that is what can increase your sales, as well as help in strengthening the trust between you, are your customers.
It is quite essential to understand the way consumers think while interacting with your products or services and the decisions they make thereafter.
If you are clear about your customer’s behavior then more than half of your job is done. You can draw your strategies accordingly to influence your users depending on their thought processes.
2. Motivation
Motivation helps in getting your consumers into the comfort zone where they feel confident enough to invest in your product/service. Showing success, achievements, and progress to consumers means inspiring them to invest in your solutions. Brands like Nike promote athleticism and action to attract sporty minds and hands as their consumers. Similarly, athletes promote Nike to establish relevancy.
Let us understand this by a simple example – if a student is not motivated enough to study, will he/she put the 100% effort into studies? No, the same goes for a customer while he/she is buying a product or service.
Nobody can perform a task happily if he/she is not motivated enough to do so. Take any example under the sky and you will find that no person can do his/her best if he/she is not motivated enough for that.
If your marketing campaigns have lacked motivation in the past, then it’s high time that you shift your focus in gaining your consumer’s confidence by keeping them motivated throughout the sales funnel.
Unless and until your customer is motivated to buy your products or services they won’t take any step in the positive direction.
Hence you will have to focus on your marketing skills. Just by creating a good product, you can never be sure that it will alone fetch you the sales, you will have to work on so many factors to achieve your sales goal. No matter how you do it you will have to fill in the motivation in the people viewing your products and then only they will think to buy it.
3. Roles & Status
Everyone has a role to play in their social circles. The way people interact with their social groups highly influences their behavior toward purchasing a product.
Clothes, accessories, electronic devices, vehicles cars, and perfume shows status and position in our culture. A specific group of Consumers feel attraction towards Apple devices, Rolls Royce, and Rolex for showing higher status and positions. Here consumer does not show price sensitivity. They are willing to invest in purchasing that will match their grooming and fashion intent.
It has been wisely said that your environment can actually change the way you think. Customers are also influenced by their social circle.
You can’t sell your products or services to everyone under this sky, your products or services have a domain of their own. A person who needs a car will never buy a bicycle and vice-versa. So you need to think of that. Target your customers wisely.
Popular personalities or influencers can directly change the way people perceive your products which can be, therefore, a crucial factor towards defining your marketing success.
If you market a product in a high-class society which is more useful for a middle-class and lower-class society then it will never fetch you the desired results because you are not marketing according to the roles and status of people. The better you will target your customer the better results you will get.
Social status, thereby, is one of the major factors that need to be taken into consideration.
4. Age
Age is not just a number when it comes to customer behavior as it largely depicts the requirements of different age groups.
By categorizing your consumers based on their respective ages, you can easily decide which products would be suitable for a particular segment of consumers.
Also, it would assist you in defining an audience set and planning your marketing strategies accordingly.
Normally people do not focus much on these small factors but they need to understand that these factors may look not so convincing to them but they are highly effective when determining consumer behaviour.
You need to target the right age-group if you want to ensure a good sale.
While you are framing your marketing strategies it is very important to target people on a different basis – age, demography, etc. When you do so you actually make your campaign stronger and conversion chances are high enough.
5. Personality
Defining your consumers according to the various personalities that each individual portrays can be a well-defined strategy for campaigns.
Consumer personality differs widely and information about these traits can help you in shaping a better digital marketing plan that can reap good results for the long term.
6. Experience
There is a vast difference between consumers who are newly introduced to your product and those who have already experienced it.
Keeping track of how the consumer behaves according to their experience and expertise with the product or service can be quite beneficial for improving consumer experience throughout their journey to making a successful purchase.
7. Culture
Social or cultural factors are the major factors while making a decision. Cultural practices and behaviors might have a direct impact on the behavior of your consumer while making a purchase.
Customers belonging to a particular may have different preferences in accordance with the product.
Therefore, it becomes necessary to portray your products in an appealing manner such that it pleases your audience from various segments.
8. Social class
The needs and requirements of consumers vary according to the social class they belong to. This can widely bring a change in your marketing efforts as a product suitable to a particular social class might not be appealing to others.
So, it is necessary to blend your products and services in such a manner that it impacts a wide range of audiences across different social classes.
9. Lifestyle
Lifestyle is often the most neglected factor while planning a marketing strategy. The lifestyle of a consumer has a direct impact on the way he/she perceives your product.
Marketing your products according to the customer’s lifestyle would be highly beneficial as it helps in the representation of your product according to the consumer needs.
Just like other factors lifestyle of people matters a lot in making their decision on investing their money. Hence you need to target that as well. Figure out that your product is suitable for which lifestyle people and target wisely.
10. Economic factors
Economic factors such as personal income, expenditures, savings, and assets can be a major driving factor toward consumer behavior.
The performance of your product in the market widely depends on this factor. Consumers may prefer to avail your products or services according to their economic stature which makes it even more important to have a definitive study on consumer behaviour.
11. Trends
Some things are meant to appeal to a larger audience!
As trends are the most happening thing to follow, it is necessary to notice how consumers behave with the ongoing trends and whether you should be implementing some tactics and practices for making your product or service a part of marketing trends.
With the knowledge of different factors that affect consumer behavior, it’s now time to look at the various models that you can be followed while understanding consumer behavior!
Here are some trends of consumer behavior reported by Hubspot Below:
- 40% YoY increase in social search
- 33% of Users trust and share information with brands
- GenZ are the highest consumers of products and services on social media
- Consumers want socially responsible brands
- Satisfied purchases on social media create mouth-to-mouth marketing
There is no denying the fact that people in India focus a lot on their budget. Unless and until their budget allows to buy a certain product or service they won’t go for investing in that no matter what, yes exceptions are there but they are rare. Hence you need to target people according to their economic conditions as well.
Consumer Behaviour Models
We have listed 4 key consumer behavior models. Understanding these models helps to enhance the narrow and insightful understanding of consumer behavior. Howard Sheth shared various principles of consumer behavior in the book “The Theory of Buyer Behavior” in 1969.
There are a number of consumer behavior models. The models which are listed below have been developed according to the various factors that influence consumer behavior and the way consumers make decisions:
- Economic Model
- Psychological Model
- Sociological Model
- Family Decision Model
1. Economic Model
According to this model, consumers try to obtain maximum gains by spending lesser amounts. These behaviors are a direct result of factors such as Income, financial investments, and savings.
The important thing to note here is that this model provides an abrupt description of the consumers.
It defines this particular set of consumers on the basis of their income which points out that people making a larger income may tend to make more purchases.
Similarly, if the products are available at a cheaper cost, it would tend to sell more often in larger quantities.
2. Psychological Model
This is again one of the very popular Consumer Behaviour Models which was proposed by A.H. Maslow in which it is derived that consumer needs rise all the time and it keeps the consumer motivated to make a purchase.
The stronger the need, the higher the chances of the consumer to find the product more appealing.
The basic needs of the consumer keep growing exponentially until they reach a higher level of the hierarchy of needs.
This model focuses on consumer needs and depicts how important it is to focus on customer needs to devise a successful marketing strategy.
You need to market your products in such a manner that it satisfies all your consumer needs.
3. Sociological Model
The sociological model is related to the society and social groups that the consumers belong to. For convenience, these groups are divided into primary and secondary parts.
The primary part consists of family members, friends, and close relatives whereas the second group consists of the members of the same social group.
Now, as the needs and requirements vary across different societies and social groups, it becomes necessary to understand the way consumers belonging to these groups interact with your product and services.
This model mainly on the personalities and lifestyle choices of the consumers.
4. Family Decision Model
The family decision model is in accordance with the different roles portrayed by the members of a family that are potential consumers of your product or services.
These are people within a family that act as influencers in marketing products whereas others act as consumers of the product.
Also, the family may also have a person in particular who is responsible for making a decision regarding the used product. Similarly, a person in the family can be a buyer who purchases the product.
This is one of the most important Consumer Behaviour Models that is structured around the various roles the members of a family play and how your strategies should be altered to make an impact on each and every set of audiences that you come across while marketing your product.
Conclusion
Knowing what is Consumer behaviour is the most important aspect that you should keep in mind while devising a marketing strategy or plan.
If you know how your customer is going to behave at every stage of the sales funnel then it becomes quite easier for you to convert a visitor into a potential customer.
Summing up all the consumer behavior key points in the image img-5 below:
If you are talking to a person you can best influence him/her if you know how exactly their behavior is and how they take your words. The same goes with a customer, you can best influence them if you know their behavior.
Understanding the way a consumer behaves will provide you with greater insights into how well your product is performing and what necessary measures have to be taken in order to yield better results.
The above-mentioned factors and model will help you in getting the perfect idea about consumer behavior and it will be a lot easier for you to depict it. If you get any doubt let us know in the comments below.
Joining the Digital Marketing Certification course will enable you to learn and master how to gauge Consumer Behaviours for running result-driven Marketing and Advertising Campaigns.
In case of any queries about the role of Consumer Behaviour in your marketing campaign, feel free to ask us in the comments below.
