Consumer Behaviour Archives - YouCom

Buyer Behaviour 2

Philip Wimbledon — Fri, 01 Jun 2018 07:00:21 +0000

All is not quite what it seems when brands look at the consumers of their products. Some consumers simply ‘copy’ their friends to be like them. Others deliberately choose to be different.

The decision-making process is complex and led to a whole large module of marketing under the heading buyer behaviour. Many buying decisions are made when the customers don’t know the real reason for their purchase.

Many decisions are made unconsciously or emotively. Some reasons for buyer behaviour are logical and reasoned. Others are emotional decisions.

Brands over time learn the ‘best’ way to sell their products or service but only the best brands likely to remain the longest as market leaders, understand that this way fluctuates over time.

For example, Pepsi sell their product as a brand image representing a lifestyle of young, hip, trendy, cool, fresh, different. They appeal to the emotional decision of buyer behaviour. They do not sell their product as ‘logical’ or as a performance product.

A good advertising agency will research the client and understand this, as well as identifying when that brand may need to change their understanding of the key market buyer behaviour.

Pepsi has learnt that their key customer is influenced by the emotional decision for though they may say they buy “because it tastes better than Coca-Cola”, that may not be true (logical) and instead they are buying “because it’s Pepsi”.

Consumers attach their own personal value to a brand. The Pedowitz group state that personal value has two times as much impact on buyer behaviour as business value does.

They also agree that as much as 68 percent of consumers for your product who identify a personal value with your brand will pay a higher price for it. It is therefore a good investment to build the personal value via a good advertising campaign as you are able to increase the GM to recover it.

When brands advertising campaigns fail to attach the personal value to their brand product, the Pedowitz group show only 8.5 percent of buyers would pay the higher price. Most would simply choose the competitor product.

Emotion, created by the personal value attributed to a brand product, precedes the customer’s conscious decision and materialises in conjunction with the rational decision-making thought process.

Therefore, the highest value of ROI for an advertising campaign lies in how much personal value (and emotion) a brand can attach to consumer buyer behaviour. Probably one reason why there are so much cat videos online…

Follow the YouCom Media news posts to see the next developments.

Glossary:

GM – Gross Margin

ROI – Return on Investment

Required reference:

YouCom Media News, Jun 2018, London, ‘Buyer Behaviour 2.’

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Buyer Behaviour

Philip Wimbledon — Tue, 14 Nov 2017 06:56:57 +0000

The first stage for any agency drafting a marketing communications strategy is to identify, research and ensure understanding of the brand’s target market together with their buyer behaviour.

Buyer behaviour is not as simple as you might think. Brands cannot simply choose an audience and think they know how to communicate with them. Buyers respond in different ways to the continual and relentless marketing communications aimed at them.

There will be general buyer behaviour practices but also variables such as motivation, perception, adaptability, memory, attitude, personality, pre-disposition and group behaviour (the collective).

Understanding buyer behaviour can be gained from asking five questions;

Who is the buyer? (target market or decision-making body)
Why do they buy? (or why they don’t buy your product or your competitors)
How do they buy? (behavioural patterns)
When do they buy? (when can determine where)
Where do they buy? (a fragmented market place leads to accessibility)

Of these questions, marketing managers really need to know ‘why’ the audience buys. The answers won’t be constant, the buying behaviour of a target market is constantly changing.

Their reasons change, the market changes, the products change, competition changes and of course technology changes. A brand sending out their communications in adverts to their target audience may do well one year and have a disaster the next.

A brand may use an agency to develop their communications strategy and then go it alone thereafter only to find it stops working because a new app has been launched which changes their target audience’s buying behaviour.

The amount of effort a consumer is prepared to put into any purchase depends on the amount of money spent, how often they will need to buy and the perception of risk.

If it is a new car, the risk is high, the expense is high, buyer behaviour changes and the message of the advertising needs to change.

If it is a tin of baked beans, it is a routine purchase, risk is low, frequency high, expense low etc. The buyer behaviour in that example will be fast decision making and low involvement with the product.

The marketing manager must understand the buyer behaviour of their target market, before, during and after purchase.

Good qualitative research will reveal insights into that behaviour and so too will the latest PEST research.

Buying models like A.I.D.A will help understand the stages through which the buyer passes offering a checklist for which to compare marketing strategies.

With better understanding of the buyer behaviour, brands can gain greater ROI from their marketing communications.

Follow the YouCom Media news posts to see the next developments.

Glossary:

PEST – Political, Economic, Social, Technological

AIDA – Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action

Required reference:

YouCom Media News, Nov 2017, London, ‘Buyer Behaviour.’

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Digital Behaviour

Philip Wimbledon — Sat, 01 Jul 2017 21:14:44 +0000

To meet performance targets and objectives, marketers must understand consumer’s digital behaviour. Are your customers spending more time on their tablets or their smartphones? On their desktops or their laptops?

Despite all the media coverage about how consumers like instant news wherever they are, computers still count for 66 percent of the time spent by people reading online news whereas mobiles count for less than 20 percent.

In addition, marketing staff need to analyse what stage of the buying cycle to target which message. Consumers spend the greater amount of time researching a new purchase on their mobiles, but the majority still make the final purchase on their computer or tablet. It seems we need the bigger screen when making a commitment to buy.

Consumers generally prefer bigger screens for video, computers for the purchasing stage, mobiles for location-based services and research, with wearable media for sports. But brands shouldn’t think they must employ a cross-device advertising approach, it may be that just mobiles or just tablets are enough depending on the product and the intended outcome for the consumer.

Consumers accessing health related services and products (think visits to the NHS website) do so using their mobile with a concrete 82 percent choosing that device. 67 percent use their tablet to look at properties.

Government websites are visited by computer users commanding 83 percent of activity from that device type. Only 22 percent of consumers use their tablet for shopping, versus those using their mobile or laptop.

But for entertainment including YouTube, Netflix and Spotify or shopping and books, the type of device is evenly matched. Therefore, brands targeting these industries have the choice of a more device neutral approach.

At YouCom Media we will plan your campaign with you, adjusting messaging to the devices most likely favoured by your target audience at the stages of the customer lifecycle necessary to achieve success.

Follow the YouCom Media news posts to see the next developments.

Required reference:

YouCom Media News, Jul 2017, London, ‘Digital Behaviour.’

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