Is the study of consumers and the processes they use to choose use consume and dispose of products and services?
Show
Customer behavior is one of the foremost areas of concentration in marketing, as consumers are the bedrock of a company’s success. Businesses must therefore understand their customer behaviors in order to suit their needs and drive revenue. In fact, 66% of customers expect businesses to understand their needs and expectations. But there is far much more to customer behavior than customer desires and expectations. This concept encompasses several facets of customer actions, along with the driving force behind them. This article explores customer behavior, its importance, aspects and how a well-established campaign of market research techniques allows businesses to be well-acquainted with the customer behavior within their target market. Defining Customer BehaviorAlso called consumer behavior, customer behavior denotes the study of customers, particularly those in a target market, including the processes they use to choose, consume and discard products and services. This field of study involves recording and examining customers’ mental, behavioral and emotional responses. Observing customer behavior goes beyond studying behaviors in a customer journey, that is, the actions customers take prior to making a purchase. Rather, consumer behavior studies how customers choose products, why they avoid certain products, their buying behaviors, along with how they interact with a product or service. Thus, this concept transcends looking into what customers want and don’t want. When studying these behaviors, researchers often incorporate scientific approaches, using notions from psychology and economics and even chemistry and biology. Studying customer behavior can also involve studying organizations, especially for B2B businesses. However, B2C businesses can also stand to scrutinize companies as a kind of competitive analysis. Consumer behavior is the study of individuals and organizations and how they select and use products and services. It is mainly concerned with psychology, motivations, and behavior. The Key Aspects that Customer Behavior InvestigatesAs aforementioned, customer behavior takes various elements of customers into account, going beyond its subsets of customer journeys and customer buying behavior, which themselves span different concepts. The following enumerates several key aspects that customer behavior encompasses.
The Importance of Examining Customer BehaviorStudying this concept may appear to be laborious at worst and tedious at best, however, brands ought to avoid omitting it. This is because the aspects of customer behavior paint a critical picture of who customers are, allowing businesses to market and cater to them accordingly. Understanding the customer behavior of customers allows companies to adapt and improve their marketing campaigns, sales promotions, customer service and more. Most importantly, it allows brands to influence their customers more productively. Additionally, by understanding how customers choose, consume and discard products, businesses can identify issues in the products themselves and make innovations. In this way, studying customer behavior helps with product-related issues such as customer development and product satisfaction. Businesses can therefore study it to find gaps and flaws in existing products and improve upon them. Or, they can create products with alternative features and even new products to gain a competitive advantage.
Studying consumer behavior also allows marketers to present their products more effectively, so that they can drive a maximum impact. That way, customers will be more keen on interacting with a business, whether they’ve long known about it or recently discovered it. When customers engage with a business more frequently, they become far more exposed to marketing and advertising messages that can influence them to make purchases. In this way, engaging with a company, whether it is viewing their content or browsing their offerings lodges that company in customers’ minds, which is key for brand awareness. Generally speaking, it is also ideal for customers to have businesses on their minds subconsciously. In fact, a Harvard Business School professor declares that 95% of purchases are made subconsciously in his book, How Customers Think: Essential Insights into the Mind of the Market. This book also discovered that the biggest drivers of unconscious urges are emotions. All in all, examining consumer behavior enables businesses to become more attuned to their customers, thereby allowing them to better tailor their marketing efforts and retain customers for the long term. Customer Behavior PatternsIt is important to identify the patterns that makeup customer behavior. Patterns are not to be confused with buying habits, as the latter refers to inclinations for an action that can become spontaneous, whereas patterns exhibit predictable occurrences. Customer behavior patterns are also contrary to buying habits in that patterns are indicative of groups, while habits are more unique and individual-based. The following explains the four customer behavior patterns:
The Things That Affect Customer BehaviorThere are various influences and facets that can affect how customers behave. Businesses ought to acclimate themselves with these customer behavior factors, in that they all have a bearing on customer behavior and behavior patterns in one way or another. When studying customer behavior based on these factors, businesses will be able to understand it more holistically. This helps in market segmentation and building customer personas, two market research tactics that allow businesses to gain a deeper understanding of their target market. The following lists the critical factors of customer behavior:
How Market Research Helps Businesses Understand Customer BehaviorConducting market research enables businesses to understand all the key facets of customer behavior. There is much involved in market research, all of which can help marketers deliver more effective campaigns. First off, market research encompasses a wide breadth of studies, from secondary research to primary research and from quantitative research to qualitative research. There is a vast pool of available resources, i.e., secondary sources available. These can take the form of industry news sites, statistics sources, published studies and more. While secondary research is an important starting point for conducting market research, it does not address all the specific needs that a business may have, let alone the specific questions that businesses intend to probe their customers with. As such, all businesses should turn to primary sources to understand their consumer behaviors. There are different routes for market researchers to take on this front; effective survey studies are the most useful. This is because surveys allow researchers to understand where their target market lies in all the factors and patterns of customer behavior.
For example, market researchers can conduct surveys to learn more about their customers’ purchasing power and how it relates to what they buy and how much. In addition, they can qualify only certain people from taking a survey, so that they can study respondents who fall within a particular income bracket. Another example involves surveying customers based on their awareness levels of cultural trends and their opinions thereof. In relation to studying customer buying patterns, surveys provide value, in that customers can ask detailed questions about all patterns, whether they are concerned with purchasing methods, the place of purchase, frequency, etc. A strong online survey platform will allow businesses to gain a deep understanding of these aspects, through the use of advanced skip logic, which routes survey respondents to appropriate follow-up questions based on their answers to previous questions. Finally, surveys allow market researchers to make decisions in an organized way, as they help form a customer behavior analysis report. This report reveals:
Improving Business Goals and Scaling by Understanding Your Target MarketCustomer behavior to a business is like blood to mammals. While this may sound dramatic, it analogizes the importance of understanding your target market’s behavior. When businesses fail to study their customers’ behaviors, they are remiss on so many meaningful opportunities. Thus, marketing campaigns of all sizes and calibers are at a much larger risk of failing. Market research, particularly survey research helps combat ignorance of customer behavior. This is because surveys give researchers the freedom to study any factor and pattern that relates to this behavior, arming them with critical insights on how customers shop throughout their journeys. The most crucial component of survey research is using the correct online survey platform. Not all surveys offer advanced skip logic and can qualify respondents based on various demographics and psychographics. Thus, businesses and market researchers must invest in an online survey tool wisely, as it can make or break any market research campaign. Which study is related to the study of consumer behavior?Sociology: Because when we study the social problems, the firms can focus on producing goods which solve such problems and also know how people will react to the introduction of new product.
How is consumer behavior defined?Consumer behavior refers to the acquisition, consumption, and disposal of products, services, time, and ideas by decision-making units. This behavior is pervasive, involving choices made by virtually all human beings in all societies and cultures.
What is Consumer Behaviour and market research?Consumer behavior market research helps companies understand how customers make purchasing decisions for products and services. The research looks at consumer choice and behavior when selecting from different product options.
Why is consumer behavior known as a process?Consumer behavior is a dynamic process because consumer behavior is associated with a variety of influences such as personal, economical, social, and psychological, all these processes are divided into this.
|