Affects consumer behavior

What affects consumer behavior?

Many things can affect consumer behavior, but the most frequent factors influencing consumer behavior are:

1. Marketing campaigns

Marketing campaigns influence purchasing decisions a lot. If done right and regularly, with the right marketing message, they can even persuade consumers to change brands or opt for more expensive alternatives.

Marketing campaigns can even be used as reminders for products/services that need to be bought regularly but are not necessarily on customers’ top of mind (like an insurance for example). A good marketing message can influence impulse purchases.

2. Economic conditions

For expensive products especially (like houses or cars), economic conditions play a big part. A positive economic environment is known to make consumers more confident and willing to indulge in purchases irrespective of their financial liabilities.

The consumer’s decision-making process is longer for expensive purchases and it can be influenced by more personal factors at the same time. 

3. Personal preferences

Consumer behavior can also be influenced by personal factors: likes, dislikes, priorities, morals, and values. In industries like fashion or food, personal opinions are especially powerful.

Of course, advertisements can influence behavior but, at the end of the day, consumers’ choices are greatly influenced by their preferences. If you’re vegan, it doesn’t matter how many burger joint ads you see, you’re not gonna start eating meat because of that.

4. Group influence

Peer pressure also influences consumer behavior. What our family members, classmates, immediate relatives, neighbors, and acquaintances think or do can play a significant role in our decisions.

Social psychology impacts consumer behavior. Choosing fast food over home-cooked meals, for example, is just one of such situations. Education levels and social factors can have an impact.

5. Purchasing power

Last but not least, our purchasing power plays a significant role in influencing our behavior. Unless you are a billionaire, you will consider your budget before making a purchase decision.

The product might be excellent, the marketing could be on point, but if you don’t have the money for it, you won’t buy it.

Segmenting consumers based on their buying capacity will help marketers determine eligible consumers and achieve better results.

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Customer behavior patterns

Buying behavior patterns are not synonymous with buying habits. Habits are developed as tendencies towards an action and they become spontaneous over time, while patterns show a predictable mental design.

Each customer has his unique buying habits, while buying behavior patterns are collective and offer marketers a unique characterization. Customer behavior patterns can be grouped into:

1. Place of purchase

Most of the time, customers will divide their purchases between several stores even if all items are available in the same store. Think of your favorite hypermarket: although you can find clothes and shoes there as well, you’re probably buying those from actual clothing brands.

When a customer has the capability and the access to purchase the same products in different stores, they are not permanently loyal to any store, unless that’s the only store they have access to. Studying customer behavior in terms of choice of place will help marketers identify key store locations.

2. Items purchased

Analyzing a shopping cart can give marketers lots of consumer insights about the items that were purchased and how much of each item was purchased. Necessity items can be bought in bulk while luxury items are more likely to be purchased less frequently and in small quantities.

The amount of each item purchased is influenced by the perishability of the item, the purchasing power of the buyer, unit of sale, price, number of consumers for whom the item is intended, etc.

3. Time and frequency of purchase

Customers will go shopping according to their feasibility and will expect service even during the oddest hours; especially now in the era of e-commerce where everything is only a few clicks away.

It’s the shop’s responsibility to meet these demands by identifying a purchase pattern and match its service according to the time and frequency of purchases.

One thing to keep in mind: seasonal variations and regional differences must also be accounted for.

4. Method of purchase

A customer can either walk into a store and buy an item right then and there or order online and pay online via credit card or on delivery.

The method of purchase can also induce more spending from the customer (for online shopping, you might also be charged a shipping fee for example).

The way a customer chooses to purchase an item also says a lot about the type of customer he is. Gathering information about their behavior patterns helps you identify new ways to make customers buy again, more often, and higher values.

Think about all the data you’ve already collected about your customers. The purchase patterns are hiding in your e-store’s analytics and you can either look for insights manually or integrate a tool with your eCommerce platform such as Shopify or WooCommerce to get automated insights about behavior patterns.