What affects consumer behavior? by Tej Kohli

Tej Kohli writes another insightful article of product management and factors that affect consumer buying decisions. Read the entire post on Tej Kohli Notes…

By consumer behavior, we refer to the process of selection, purchase, and consumption of goods and services that satisfy their wants. Evaluating a consumer behavior is complex and involves different processes. In the beginning, a consumer tries to find ‘what’ he would like to consume, then he picks only those products that promise greater utility. Once the products have been selected, the consumer prepares an estimate of money which he can readily expend. And finally, he analyzes the current prices of the products and decides as to what he should purchase. Meanwhile, there are many other factors that affects the purchase decision of the consumer including social, cultural, personal and psychological factors. Mr. Tej Kohli has tried to explain all these factors below:

1. Cultural factors

   Consumer behavior is greatly affected by cultural factors like buyer culture, subculture and social status.

1. Culture: culture is an inherent part of every society and an important factor that influences a person’s wants and behavior. The affect of culture on consumer’s purchase decision varies from nation to nation. Hence, marketers have be extremely cautious in analyzing the culture of different regions or even nations.
2. Subculture : Every culture entails within itself various subcultures like religions, nationalities, geographical locations, races, castes and so on. Marketers can exploit these sects by demarcating the market into different small parts.
3. Social class: each society has some type of social class which hold importance for the marketers as the buying behavior of consumers in a particular social segment is similar. Thus, marketers can tailor their marketing activities according to their targeted social class. However, one thing that we should notice here is that social class is not only determined by income but several other including education, occupation, etc.

1. Social Factors

   Social factors also cast a significant influence on the consumer’s buying behavior. Some of the primary social factors are – reference groups, family, role and status.

1. Reference groups: Reference groups have a deep influence in shaping a person’s attitude. The impact of reference groups differ across various products and brands. For instance, a visible product like a dress, shoes car, etc will have a higher influence of reference groups. Opinion leaders are also a part of reference groups.
2. Family : A family member may also have strong impact on the buyer’s behavior. This is why, marketers are researching the roles and influence of various family members . If the buying decision in a particular commodity is influenced by children, then marketers will try to target kids in their advertisements. Also remember – buying roles will change as consumer lifestyles changes.
3. Roles and status: Every individual holds a exclusive role and status in the society depending to which group, family or organization he belongs. Say for instance, a woman is employed in a company as HR manager. Now she possesses three roles, one of HR manager, one of mother, and one of a wife. Hence, her buying decisions will be affected by her status and role in the society.

1. Personal Factors:

   Many personal factors such as age, lifestyle, occupation, economic situation, personality etc can also affect the consumer’s buying behavior.

1. Age : It is a well known fact that person’s buying behavior and habits undergo a drastic change with the passage of time. A family life-cycle consists of different stages ranging from young singles, married couples to retired people. This helps marketers to produce appropriate commodities for each stage.
2. Occupation: The occupation of an individual also has a potential impact on his behavior. The clothing needs of a marketing manager is a particular company will obviously be different from a laborer in the same company.
3. Economic Condition : This one is obvious! Is a consumer has higher income and savings, he is tend to spend more on expensive things. A low-income person, on the other hand, will go for cheaper products.
4. Lifestyle: It refers to the way an individual lives in a society and reflects through the things he has in his surroundings. This can be determined by consumer’s interests, opinions, activities and designs his whole pattern of acting and interacting in the society.
5. Personality : Personality varies from individual to individual, place to place and time to time. Most people assume personality as the outer appearance of a person, but this is wrong. Actually, personality is the totality of behavior of a person under various circumstances which can be characterized by various factors like dominance, aggressiveness, self-confidence among others. All these factors are useful in determining the consumer behavior for a specific product or service.

1. Psychological Factors

   The four primary psychological factors influencing the consumer behavior are: perception, motivation, beliefs and attitudes.

1. Motivation: every individual has different needs, be it psychological, biological or social. While some needs are very pressing, others are not. Thus, a need turns into a motive when it is most pressing to direct the individual to seek contentment.
2. Perception: perception is the process of selecting, organizing and interpreting information in a way that produces a purposeful experience of the society. Perceptual processes can be categorized into three parts – selective attention, selective distortion and selective retention. In selective attention, the marketers try to grab the consumer’s attention. Whereas, in selective distortion, consumer’s try to understand the information in a way that will support what the consumer already believe. Likewise, in selective retention, marketers try to hold information that support what they believe.
3. Beliefs and attitudes : every consumer has a particular belief and attitude towards different products. As such attitudes and beliefs create a brand’s image and influence consumer behavior, thus, marketers show their interest on them. On the other hand, marketers can launch exclusive campaigns to change the customer’s beliefs and attitudes.

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