Psychological factors influencing consumer behaviour !

Among the factors influencing consumer behavior, psychological factors can be divided into 4 categories:

1. Motivation (Maslow's hierarchy of needs)

2. Perception

3. Learning, and

4. Attitude or belief system.

Other people often influence a consumer's purchase decision. The marketer needs to know which people are involved in the buying decision and what role each person plays, so that marketing strategies can also be aimed at these people.

Motivation

Motivation is what will drive consumers to develop a purchase behavior. "It is the expression of a need that became pressing enough to lead the consumer to want and then to satisfy it". It usually works at a subconscious level and is often difficult to measure.

The level of motivation also affects the buying behavior of customer. Every person has different needs such as physiological needs, biological needs, social needs etc. The nature of the need is that some of them are most pressing while others are least pressing. Therefore a need becomes a motive when it is more pressing to direct the person to seek satisfaction.

Motivation is directly related to the need and is expressed in the same type of classification as defined in the stages of the consumer buying decision process.

To increase sales and encourage consumers to purchase, brands should try to create, make conscious or reinforce a need in the consumer's mind so that he develops a purchase motivation. He will be much more interested in considering and buy their products.

They must also research, the type of product they sell and the consumers they target, pick out the motivation and the need to which their product respond in order to make them appear as the solution to the consumers need.

Perception

Perception is the process through which an individual selects, organizes and interprets the information he receives in order to do something that makes sense. The perception of a situation at a given time may decide if and how the person will act. Selecting, organizing and interpreting information in a way to produce a meaningful experience of the world is called perception.

There are three different perceptual processes which are

1. Selective attention

2. Selective distortion and

3. Selective retention.

"In case of selective attention, marketers try to attract the customers attention. Whereas, in case of selective distortion, customers try to interpret the information in a way that will support what the customers already believe."

• Selective Attention: The individual focuses only on a few details or stimulus to which he is subjected. The type of information or stimuli to which an individual is more sensitive depends on the person. For brands and advertisers who successfully capture and retain the attention of consumers is increasingly difficult.

Example- Many users no longer pay any attention, unconsciously, to banner ads on the Internet. This kind of process is called Banner Blindness. The attention level also varies depending on the activity of the individual and the number of other stimuli in the environment.

Example- An individual who is bored during a Metro trip will be much more attentive to a new ad displayed in the train. It is a new stimuli that breaks the trip routine for him. Consumers will also be much more attentive to stimuli related to a need.

Example- A consumer who wishes to buy a new car will pay more attention to car manufacturers ads. While neglecting those for computers. Lastly, people are more likely to be attentive to stimuli that are new or out of the ordinary.

• Selective Distortion: In many situations, two people are not going to interpret an information or a stimulus in the same way. Each individual will have a different perception based on his experience, state of mind, beliefs and attitudes. Selective distortion leads people to interpret situations in order to make them consistent with their beliefs and values. For brands, it means that the message they communicate will never be perceived exactly in the same way by consumers.

And that everyone may have a different perception of it. That's why it's important to regularly ask consumers in order to know their actual brand perception.

• Selective distortion often benefits to strong and popular brands. Studies have shown that the perception and brand image plays a key role in the way consumers perceived and judged the product.

• Several experiments have shown that even if we give them the same product, consumers find that the product is or tastes better when they ve been told that it's from a brand they like than when they've been told it's a generic brand.

• Selective Retention: People do not retain all the information and stimuli they have been exposed to. Selective retention means what the individual will store and retain from a given situation or a particular stimulus. As for selective distortion, individuals tend to memorize information that will fit with their existing beliefs and perceptions.

Example- Consumers will remember especially the benefits of a brand or product they like and will forget the drawbacks or competing products advantages.

Learning

Learning is through action. When we act, we learn. It implies a change in the behavior resulting from the experience. The learning changes the behavior of an individual as he acquires information and experience.

Example- If you are sick after drinking 'flavoured milk', you had a negative experience, you associate the milk with this state of discomfort and you learn that you should not drink milk. Therefore, you don't buy milk anymore. Rather, if you had a good experience with the product, you will have much more desire to buy it again next time. The learning theories can be used in marketing by brands.

Beliefs and attitudes

A belief is a conviction that an individual has on something. Through the experience he acquires, his learning and his external influences (family, friends, etc), he will develop beliefs that will influence his buying behavior.

Customer possesses specific belief and attitude towards various products. Since such beliefs and attitudes make up brand image and affect consumer buying behavior therefore marketers are interested in them. Marketers can change the beliefs and attitudes of customers by launching special campaigns in this regard. To change the brands marketing message or adjust its positioning in order to get consumers to change their brand perception.