How consumers’ buying behaviour happen
As a human, we all do purchase goods and services. Is it happen spontaneously? You may be thinking, we just think and buy what we wanted to buy. Nope, several factors have influenced consumers’ minds. It may be a personal factor, psychological factor, social factor, or cultural factor. Or it can be a mix of the above factors.
Let’s consider a simple example, people tend to dress up as a recently trending movie character or tend to buy some particular movie theme item. Why?
If you are a Harry Potter fan you may tend to buy harry potter themed necklaces, phone back cover, bags, or clothes. So on and so forth. So, if a consumer just thinks and purchase, why the recently trending movies, TV-series, TV shows, favorite actors, or actresses’ attires, consumers’ family backgrounds affect the consumer minds. Now let’s consider the relevant factors step by step.
What are the types of buying behaviours and product decisions?
Impulse purchases
Imagine when you look at the magazine, you saw a new body lotion has arrived at the market, or imagine when you are scrolling down your e-bay, Ali-express, or Facebook app you just saw a new moisturizer cream. Then you purchase it without much thinking about it. This is called impulse purchase but this happens with low-priced items. (This is just an example, there can be consumers purchase this item putting much effort into it — Limited Decision Making)
Routine Purchases
This purchase type happens when you buy something daily, weekly, or monthly. Just imagine you used to buy a hot Milo or a Nescafe cup every morning but you will spend very little time to decide whether you buying or not buying this cup and you won’t need any reviews from your friends to do the purchase. So this is called routine purchase.
Limited Decision Making
Imagine you want to buy a Bluetooth headset or a sofa set. (Higher priced items) Then you may research the item. Let’s consider the Bluetooth headset, before buying an item you may ask your friends about the quality of it, the distance, brand, etc. This is called limited decision-making.
Extensive Decision Making
Imagine you want to buy a car, house, television or a computer. Then you have to invest a substantial amount of money. So you just don’t go through the advertisements and pick a house and buy it. You will spend a substantial amount of time researching about the options and asking from friends and different people. This is called extensive decision-making.
What are the factors influencing consumers’ buying behaviour?
Personal Factors
Age of the consumer
If you are a teenager you may consider trendy clothes, accessories, shoes. You will spend a considerable amount of time buying a stylish item. But if you are a middle age like thirties, you may like to look formal if you in your workplace. Kids want toys, sweets, etc. So you see here age matters to buying behaviour.
If you are a girl you may want stylish items like earrings, cute teddy bears but a boy’s desires may differ from a girl’s. Then being male, female, or other genders affect the buyers’ behaviour.
Education of the consumer
Imagine you are a bookworm or a university student. Then you may spend much time reading books and educational articles but a person with low or no education may buy fewer books or another education-related item than a highly educated person.
Income Level of the consumer
Usually when the higher the income level, the higher the level of purchasing. But this may not always happen in developing countries and rural areas. But in the urban areas, when their income level goes higher they may purchase more.
Status in the Society
Why people tend to buy branded watches and clothes when the non-branded item do the same function. Why some people prefer to use Gucci bags, apple smartwatches than other normal bags and watches. So you know, many people enjoying higher status in the society and then they tend to buy luxury items.
Other Personal Factors
There are some other personal factors like consumers’ lifestyle, personality, and size of their families.
Psychological Factors
Learning
Imagine you bought a new brand chocolate ice cream and you felt it tastes than other ice creams. Then you will buy the same ice cream brand next time. Through this learning process, buyers acquire new attitudes and beliefs.
Attitude
Imagine you bought a new moisturizer cream and it does nothing. Then you never bought this cream or maybe any product of this brand. So you may have positive or negative or neutral attitudes towards products or brands.
Beliefs
People may have different beliefs based on their opinions, knowledge, and faith. So people may have some beliefs about certain brands. Some people think wearing a branded clothes or watches helps to get attraction from others or ABC makeup brand makes a good look in you. So these beliefs will influence when you are buying products.
Thinkers and Feelers
Imagine you want to buy a car, then you may carry a copy of consumer reports and your decision will depend on the logical, reasonable criteria. Now imagine the other side of it, your friend buys a car depending on the comfort and the luxury seats. So your friend decides on how the car feels to him or her.
Situational Influences
Physical Surroundings
Imagine there is a supermarket near your house or near to your home town and there is a supermarket called ABC situated way more from the town. The employees of the ABC supermarket are not very friendly with consumers and not organized items well. So what would you choose? So now you know, the location, decorations, and layout matter.
Time Factor
Imagine you have received a voucher today, so you may buy more goods. So consumers make different choices depending on the hour of the day, the day of the week, or the season of the year. If it is a rainy day, you will buy hot chocolate or some hot drinks.
Momentary Conditions
Imagine you are on fire today, everything goes well. So you may want to buy more goods or foods. But it can depend on the consumer, sometimes you may want to buy and eat a lot of foods when you are sad too. Now you can see the mood of the consumer matters.
Reference Groups
Group of people at a workplace, club members, or neighbours called reference group. We can say family is the main reference group. Sometimes you may buy Edinborough sauce and jams because your mother buys them. You may use Nike products because many people in your workplace use them. Then the influence member’s attitude will affect others.
Roles and Status
We all know sometimes, people purchase products to confirm their status in society. Why people buy branded clothes. Why some people want to buy Gucci bags than other bags.
So let’s say, there is a senior executive and junior executive in a company. The senior executive may want to enjoy higher status in the company than the junior executive.
Cultural Factors
What is culture? We can say it is about religion, race, tradition, etc. There are subcultures inside the culture.
Culture
We know, cultural values passed from one generation to another generation. Cultural values affect consumer buying behaviour because habits, clothing, etc. everything is influenced by culture. In some countries drinking alcohol is restricted. If a woman drinks alcohol, it may not be accepted in some countries. Some countries have coffee cultures. When you buy a new dress, your culture will be influenced by you, wearing a bikini will be accepted for some country or someplace but some are not. So you will be influenced by your culture before you purchase something.
Sub-Culture
Each culture consists of sub culture. So you know, Indian culture contains subcultures like south Indians and north Indians. Bogan, hipster, Emo, goth, bikie, haul girl, and brony are today popular subcultures. These will be influenced to you even when you buy a new dress. So now marketers adopted a multicultural marketing approach.
