A business needs to have the ability to properly understand their consumer base so they are able to produce products and make marketing strategies that will appeal to the target audience. Consumer psychology allows the business to obtain Information that will lead to understanding the consumers. Marketers want to understand many factors related to the consumers personalities and how it influences his or her behavior toward purchasing a product or service. For a successful marketing message the business must understand consumer psychology.
Consumer psychology is the study of how an individual’s personal beliefs, thoughts, perceptions Influence his or her decision to purchase a good or service. Consumer psychology Is defined as “The study of Individuals, groups, or organizations and the processes they use to select, secure, use, and dispose of products, services, experiences, or ideas to satisfy needs and the impacts that these processes have on the consumer and society”(“Consumer Psychology,” 1994, Para. ). Consumer psychology places concerns within various psychological concepts to help better understand the consumers. Acton, n. D). How consumers process information, use judgment, and make decisions are a few psychological concepts that Influence consumer psychology. Decision making gives the Individual the chance to choose between to possible actions. The choice of the Individual can alter the outcome of what will happen on the product purchase. For example an individual is thinking of investing some money in the stock market this would be alternative one. The second alternative would be to save the money for a different expense rather than buy stock.
A choice can change the outcome of purchasing a product or not things like amount of cash available, demographic variables, past experiences, and personality traits. All 4 of these can be factors that can change an Individual’s decision. As a marketing team would find this Information useful they must be able to utilize a person’s mind set and use persuasion to convince the individual the product or service is intended for them. Deferent alternatives allows for choices to be change or altered that is hen the marketing team needs to alter the opinions or thoughts of the individuals to help sale their product.
In society social learning helps build new opinions and expectations in mass amounts of people and represents the core of consumer psychology (Acton, n. D). Social learning helps depict how the behavior and attitudes of the target audience affects the purchase of a good or service. An individual’s behavior or attitude toward a product can alter his or her chance of purchase, if the marketing team is allowed to change the behavior of the individuals they are able to cake advertisements that can persuade individuals or at least change his or her mind about a product.
Having an understanding or opinions and expectations of the general public rather than Just a age group, diversity, etc. Consumers also take the influence of time into perspective when making decisions. Individuals have time that either extends toward the past or is extending toward the future. Either way past events can alter or influence behavior toward a company or product and likely could affect future expectations of the product. For example an individual researches meat at the local Wall-Mart and is dissatisfied with the taste of the product.
The individual heads down the road to the local mom and pop store and grabs the same meat but at a higher price and enjoys every bit of the deliciousness. This individual is prospective toward Wall-Mart has probably changed and could affect whether his or her family shopped at Wall-Mart in the future. For successful marketing to individuals, Wall-Mart would have to convince him or her why they should return to Wall-Mart to purchase goods rather than the mom and pop store. Although saving money at Wall-Mart seems like a plus, often that does not become a factor unless money is an issue.
However, this is likely the hardest spot of marketing trying to convince a consumer that has had several bad experiences since coming to the store. Various psychological aspects of consumers affect the purchase of a good or service as well as how the marketing team is able to develop their advertisement to target the right audience. Understanding the human mind and the thought process allows the team of marketing people to persuade the individuals award new or old purchases of products.
The thing with marketing strategies it is best to have a clear understanding of the consumers and how things affect his or her behavior, attitude, thoughts, and past to devise an advertisement that will promote the product correctly (Pepper, 2010). If the promotion does not affect or pertain to the target audience chances are the marketing team did not complete their research correctly and this will affect sales. Overall marketing communication must co-exist with consumer psychology to form advertisements that can be directed toward the nonuser otherwise chances are they will have a hard time selling the product.
