Gemma 0:23
Hello hello everyone, and welcome to this Friday afternoon’s podcast. Happy bevvy o’clock, as always, I hope you’ve had an amazing week. And now it’s time to grab your bevvy of choice, sit down, put your feet up, and enjoy. And please do it because you deserve it. Right? Absolutely. 

So it’s that time again, where you get to listen to my incredible voice for the next little while. And I’m here to give you some hot tips and info all about consumer behaviour. Dun dun dun. 

Now, what is consumer behaviour? It’s the study of people’s association with buying things. Now this actually fascinated me back a million years ago, when I was in uni, I loved this subject. I love my giant textbook on it. Because believe it or not, we all have emotional and mental behaviours before and after making a purchase, no matter who you are. We’re all human, right? And yes, we all do this, most of us actually do it without even actively knowing. All human brains have emotional responses around purchasing goods, and of course services. So let’s get set into consumer behaviour, the next in my marketing 101 series. 

But just before that, why am I doing small marketing pocket rocket podcasts? Well, first of all, of course, we want to give you all of the information, because we love that. Information is power. And these marketing 101 podcasts are to give you an insight into the world of marketing, into its different areas, breaking it down, and really stopping that overwhelm because I’m a marketer, I love marketing, done a four year degree, love everything about it, but I know it can be extremely overwhelming. But what I want to share with you is areas and different bits and pieces of it because it really really is just so interesting, so awesome to understand for all of our business owners. So let’s get stuck into it ladies, I digress, what is consumer behaviour? 

So, like I said earlier, consumer behaviour is the study of the buying tendencies of all of us humans. So, there are many stages that we go through before making a purchase. So there’s various factors that affect these stages. Okay, so we have factors such as cultural, social, personal, and psychological. Now, all of these affect the buying decisions of people, which means consumer behaviour makes up a giant part of marketing and the marketing process to really understand people. So delving deeper into this and what influences people to purchase a specific product or service. There are categories and factors that influence consumer behaviour, like I said earlier. 

So let’s look at the first one, personal factors. Okay, so an individual’s interests and opinions can be influenced by their demographics. What are demographics? We’re looking at age, gender, culture, so all of these are really, really going to affect the way people make a purchase. It can go down to childhood, it can be cultural, it doesn’t matter. But all of these factors affect that. So what are the psychological factors? Well, let’s think a person’s response to a marketing message is going to depend on their perceptions and their attitudes as a person, right? So for example, I might really respond well to a certain marketing message, it may resonate with my attitudes, it may resonate with my perceptions of the product, of life, of anything. And that can be completely different to someone even like my brother, my best friend, my mother, my cousin, it doesn’t matter, but different people really respond to a marketing message depending on their perceptions and attitudes of life. 

Then we jump into social factors. Here, this can encompass economic factors as well. Okay, so social factors are your family, your friends, education level, social media influence, your income, all of these things really influence consumers’ behaviour. Okay, so it really, really starts to get in depth here. So they’re the factors that actually influence consumer behaviour. Now let’s look at what are the types of consumer behaviour? Marketers have broken this up into four types of consumer behaviour. The first two have what we call a ‘high involvement’. So there’s a really, really high involvement in making that purchase. And the second two have a ‘low involvement’, there’s not much thought going into buying this product or service. So, number one is what we call a complex buying behaviour. Number two is what we call a dissonance reducing buying behaviour. Number three is habitual buying behaviour. And number four is a variety seeking buying behaviour. Let’s not let that overwhelm hit, it’s all good. So we determine these four buying behaviours, like I said before, the level of involvement that we show towards making this purchase decision. And then the amount of risk involved also determines and creates these four different buying behaviours. 

So for example, higher priced goods tend to have a higher risk, which means people are then of course, having a higher involvement in making these purchase decisions, can be quite a risk if it’s a large amount of money. So here’s where we look at things, for example, like a car, or even house. Let’s delve into complex buying behaviours, this is the first buying decision. Now, this is where consumers are buying an expensive product, it’s usually quite an infrequent transaction. And as people we’re highly involved with the purchase decision, and we really thoroughly research before committing to this large investment, this is where the risk of buying the product is very high. So at this point, we’re also consulting with friends and families and even experts before making the decision. 

Okay, so that is complex buying behaviour. Now, the second on the list, we look at dissonance reducing buying behaviour. Customer involvement here, or consumer involvement, is still really high. And this might be due to high price and infrequent purchase, or it could be due to the fact that there’s a low availability of choices, and not much difference among brands or businesses. So in this stage, consumers are usually forced to buy goods or services that they don’t actually have too many choices. So, therefore, they’re actually left with quite limited decision making. So even though it’s quite a high investment in this stage, the decision making can be quite limited. For example, here, as marketers, we look at running after sales service campaigns, things that really, really deliver focused messages to get people to buy from us in this stage. 

Now, moving into the third, where involvement becomes really low, we have habitual buying behaviour. So this is something we all do, habitual buying behaviour is where a customer has a really low involvement in a purchase decision and as people were perceiving only really a few differences between brands. So this is where we’re all buying products or services that we use for our daily routines, so we don’t need to put a lot of thought into it. We either buy our favourite brand, or one we use regularly, one our parents used, one that’s available in the shops, or even the one that costs the least at the time. So as consumers we just go and buy the thing, right? There’s no brand loyalty usually within habitual buying behaviour. We don’t research, we don’t need information regarding this purchase. Things that can affect it, we can be influenced by TV ads, radios, our favourite jingles, an Instagram ad we saw, it’s pretty basic here, your favourite chewy, favourite cleaning product, it’s not too much of a difficult thing within habitual buying behaviour. So this is where, for businesses and brands that have a product or service that falls into habitual buying behaviour, it’s really important to make some really powerful ads and compelling content with a jingle, with something fun for people to ‘oh, I want that thing over that thing. That one’s more fun.’ You know what I mean? Get a little bit fun here. 

Now, finally, we go into the fourth. So again, the involvement is low and this is the variety seeking behaviour. So customer consumer involvement here is low. But there are actually significant differences between brands and businesses. Within here, usually, as consumers, we don’t actually do a lot of brands switching. So it depends, some do some don’t. So the cost of switching brands here is actually quite low, you’re not making a huge sacrifice or anything in order to try something else. So here is where consumers probably want to try something else. Usually, because maybe we’ve had that same loaf of bread 50 times. We’re a bit curious for the other one, or maybe we’re just bored, right we all get bored. 

Here as a marketer, we really want to persuade that habitual buying behaviour. So here you’ll see for example, in supermarkets, if a big brand is really influencing shelf space, where your point of sale is, things right at the front of you registers, things at the front of petrol stations, this is where that sort of market influence comes into play, where people know that there are significant differences between brands and not that swayed to change, but they can be easily swayed. What affects this consumer behaviour? So, we’ve had a look at the four types of consumer behaviour. So, we have complex buying behaviour, we have the dissonance reducing buying behaviour, we have variety seeking buying behaviour, and we have habitual buying behaviour. 

Now, something is going to influence all of these behaviours, what affects them? We look here at what influences our decision making. So, we have many factors in here, again, we have things like marketing campaigns, economic conditions, personal preferences, beliefs, group influences, marketing campaigns, this really, really is usually the number one influence, this is where marketers really need to research ways where they can tap into your brand, really influence, we need to market in a way to tell people that ours is the right product or service over the others. So of course, this is where your market research comes into play. This is where deeply and intimately understanding your target audience comes into play. And it’s so so critical because this is where and how you influence your marketing and sell your product or service. 

Now economic conditions. Obviously at this point, conditions this year are obviously affecting people in different ways than ever before. But previously, this comes into income and savings of a customer. Of course, if you have more money, you’ll probably purchase more expensive products or services. A person with a low income, lower savings will purchase more inexpensive products. Economic conditions now in 2020, obviously are very, very different than they have been before. Then we move into personal preferences, right? We all want something that we want, we all have personal preferences over something else. We have different beliefs, we have different attitudes. Again, the way we respond to an ad or to marketing or to a blog is always going to be different to the person even sitting next to you right now. And within personal preferences, it leads all the way back to what I said at the start, of age, occupation, lifestyle, culture, all sorts of factors are going to influence people’s consumer behaviour. And then finally, we have something that we call group influence. Are we a sheep, do we follow what other people buy? Do we choose to buy it because they have, because our friends have told us to, what’s popular, what’s not? Some people want the popular thing. Some people don’t want the popular thing. Recommendations. What are people saying about a particular product or service? So this is where it all becomes so, so, so critical. And I really hope at this point you’re seeing how all these bits and pieces of marketing really start to merge together and fall into place. And I hope you understand why I’m so passionate about this, because I just love it. 

So what’s the role of consumer behaviour in marketing, apart from everything, right? As marketers, we need to understand the buying behaviour of consumers for what we’re marketing to do well, so once we understand the behaviour of how people are making a decision to purchase the thing, then we’re able to change that in a way to get them to purchase the thing. It’s really important for us as marketers to understand what prompts, so what’s prompting our consumer to purchase a product or a service, what’s stopping a consumer from buying a product or service. We get really, really deeper and deeper into the psychology of people, of consumers. Why they feel a certain way about making a certain purchase, what they feel about a particular product or a brand overall. And of course, how consumers get influenced by their immediate surroundings, by their group influence, by family members, friends, co workers, and so on. So it really, really, really is in depth. But I hope that you’ve really got an understanding of consumer behaviour. It’s just, it’s the shiz, I love this stuff. 

So finally, let’s look at what does understanding consumer behaviour do for you and your business? You’ll feel more confident in your marketing strategy. Of course, if you’re really, really understanding what’s influencing people, what’s influencing their behaviours, the type of buying behaviours and consumer behaviours, you’ll really start to feel more confident that your marketing strategy and your copy, your material is on the right path to influence those decisions, you’ll be able to make more informed decisions, or perhaps on what to do next, or maybe what to change, different ads you may want to target, different content pieces, it’s to really, really help you to act strategically, and make really, really clever, informed decisions. And finally, of course, it helps you communicate more powerfully with your target audience, drawing in your ideal clients and customers, really getting to what it is they need and understanding how they’re going to make this decision. Really, really is just create such powerful communication. 

Okay, brilliant, everyone, ladies, that is a wrap. And as always, as I always say, all of you amazing kick ass women and fellow work wives. Please, please remember you’re not alone. Collaboration is power. And most importantly, we all get it.