Psychological Factors of Consumer Buyer Behavior

Consumers are complicated. If they bought things based on only a select

criteria, then it would be easy to convince others to buy our products and
services. There would be no need for elaborate ad campaigns and large
advertising budgets. Unfortunately, consumers are influenced by many
different stimuli, and they use many different factors to decide what to buy
and when to buy it. One of the major influencers of consumer buyer
behavior is the consumer's own unique personality.
When we study personality, we are examining the unique psychological
characteristics that create relatively consistent, lasting behavior in response
to the consumer's environment. We usually refer to someone's personality
by traits, such as self-confidence, dominance, sociability, autonomy,
defensiveness, adaptability, and aggressiveness. Personality is extremely
important, because it allows us to build a profile of our customer. It allows us
to really understand who they are, and why they buy. You can use that
profile to better understand how to tailor your products and services to that
buyer, and tailor your messaging to be as affective as possible when selling
to that customer segment.
Consumers aren't the only ones who can have personalities and profiles. So
can brands. Brand personalities are the specific mix of human traits that
may be attributed to that brand. In order to better associate our brands with
our target customers, we try to give them personalities that are relatable.
We use these personalities to tailor the look and perception of the brand and
its messaging in the marketplace so that we can attract specific consumers
to our products and services.
Self Concept

Many marketers use a concept related to personality, called Self-Concept.

The main premise of self-concept is that a consumer's possessions directly
contribute to, and directly reflect their identities. Basically a person "is" what
they have. Therefore, marketers try to understand our target customers by
the things that they own and the things that they buy.
When we know the buyer's personality, when we have defined our brand
personality, and when we have attempted to understand our consumer buy
their existing buying patterns, we then combine all of this along with specific
psychological factors to better understand their buyer behavior. Currently
we look to four specific factors of our target customers when building their
personality profile:
1) Motivation
2) Perception
3) Learning
4) Beliefs and Attitudes
Let's examine these one by one.
Motivation
A motive is a need that has become so sufficiently pressing that it directs
the consumer to seek satisfaction of that need. A consumer has a number of
needs at any given time of their life. Humans are constantly being
influenced by various biological and psychological motivations. Many
common biological needs arise from various states of "tension", such as
hunger, thirst, or some form of physical discomfort. Psychological needs will
arise from a desire for social recognition, esteem, or belonging in familial,
social, or political groups. If one of these motivations becomes strong
enough within the consumer, it "becomes" a need.

Through various research marketers have identified five "categories" of

motivational needs:
1) Self-Actualization: a consumer's self-development and realization
2) Esteem: a consumer's sense of self-esteem, self-recognition, and
social/economic status in the world
3) Social: a consumer's sense of belonging and feeling loved in their
environment
4) Satisfaction: a consumer's sense of security and level of protection in
their environment
5) Physiological: a consumer's basic need for food, water and shelter
Marketers have found that there tends to be a hierarchy of need satisfaction
within the typical human being: Physical needs must be satisfied first, then a
person is willing to seek satisfaction fulfillment, then a person will approach
social needs, then a person will pursue esteem, and then finally selfactualization within their environment. The basic principle here is that a
consumer will almost always try to satisfy the most "pressing" needs first
above anything else. When that need is met, it will stop being a motivator,
and the consumer will "move on" to the next most influential motivator in the
hierarchy of needs.
Marketers need to remember that motivated people are ready to buy. Use
that to your advantage.
Perception
How a consumer determines what they will buy is heavily influenced by their
perception of the situation they are in at that moment in time. Perception
is the process by which consumers select, organize, and interpret
information and environmental stimuli in order to form a more meaningful
picture of the world around them.

One of the most massive forms of environmental stimuli is advertising. On

average, consumers are exposed to 3000 - 5000 advertisements everyday. It
is physically impossible for a consumer's brain to actively pay attention to all
of that stimuli. Add to that all of the other environmental stimuli around
them: smells, tastes, sounds, conversations; it's a wonder that humans are
able to concentrate on anything at all. As a result, the brain controls what
stimuli it will engage with. It is this process that creates perception.
Consumers form their perceptions through the brain's distinct processes of
selective attention, selective distortion, and seletice retention.
1) Selective Attention is the tendency for consumers to screen out most of
the information they are exposed to. We have to work very hard to get the
consumer's attention.
2) Selective Distortion: Every consumer fits incoming stimuli into their
own mind-set - through their own set of "rose colored glasses". Selective
distortion is the tendency of people to interpret information in a way that will
support what they already believe, or what they want to believe.
3) Selective Retention: Consumers will usually forget much of the stimuli
they have been exposed to. Consumers will usually store the information
that best supports their existing attitudes and beliefs (or the ones they want
to have), so selective retention allows them "remember" the good points
they favor and "forget" the negative points that have been made about other
brands that they don't like.
These processes are why marketers use so much repetition in their
advertising campaigns. We have to battle our way into the minds of the
consumer, force our way in, and in the end, convince the mind of the
consumer that our message is the right one to pay attention to.

Learning
When people perform an activity, they are actively learning. Most learning
theorists believe that the majority of human behavior is "learned" behavior.
Consumer buyer behavior is a partly learned behavior. Consumers "learn"
their buyer behavior through drives, cues, responses, and reinforcement.
Each one of these builds upon the other.
Drives are strong internal stimuli inside the consumer's mind that create calls
for action. These calls for action, if strong enough, will create a motive (see
above), and lead the consumer to attempt to move towards an object of
stimuli. That object usually will be what satisfies the need.
Drives create Cues. Cues refer to more "minor" stimui that condition the
consumer's behavior. Cues help the consumer decide when, where, and how
to respond to a drive.
Responses are the consumer's actions based off of drives, motives, and cues
from environmental stimuli.
Responses build Reinforcement, which influences the consumer's future
buyer behavior. If the purchase experience and immediate experience with
the product has been positive, then the consumer will likely consider buying
that same product in the future. If the consumer's experience is somewhat
negative, then they are likely to seek a different product later when the need
has to be fulfilled again.
Beliefs and Attitudes
Through our daily activities, we build beliefs and attitudes that in turn
influence our buying behavior.
A consumer's beliefs are descriptive thoughts that they have about

something, while attitudes are a consumer's "relatively" consistent

evaluations, feelings, and tendencies toward an object or idea. Attitudes put
people into specific frames of mind, and help to move them towards or away
from certain products and brands. Unfortunately attitudes can be very
difficult to change. Attitudes are a part of a consumer's learned behavior
patterns. Changing a consumer's attitudes and beliefs usually will require us
try to change many other perceptions and attitudes in other areas of the
consumer's mind. Often it is easier to position a product into an existing
attitude, than to fight against them and try to change them.
Marketers need to understand these beliefs and attitudes in order to best
position their messaging in front of the target consumer. If we believe some
of the target consumer's beliefs and attitudes are wrong about us, thereby
preventing sales, then we can understand how to launch focused messaging
campaigns to change beliefs about our products and brands.
Consumers are complicated. Their unique personalities have many
facets, and all of them are involved in what is hardly a simple decision when
they are choosing to buy something. It is the marketer's responsibility to do
their due diligence and learn as much as possible about their target
customer. Failing to have some understanding of the pyschological factors of
consumer buyer behavior will result in unfocused messaging, and wasted
marketing dollars. Today's economic reality forces us to do enough research
before starting any creative for our ad campaigns.
Sociological Factors
Social group is defined as having two or more people who will interact to
accomplish individual or mutual goals - one of which is usually purchasing a
good or service to meet a need or desire. The reality is that a consumer's
behavior isn't influenced my just one group; it is influenced by many
different groups. We refer to these groups as Reference Groups.

Reference groups influence the consumer by serving as direct (face to face)

or indirect points of comparison or "reference" in building a consumer's
behavior and attitudes. In a reference group with direct influence, several
individuals may be a part of the consumer's purchase decision. The typical
roles of these individuals are:
The Initiator
The Initiator is the individual that first suggests or thinks of the idea of
buying a product or service.
The Influencer
The Influencer is the individual whose view or advice influences the
consumer's buying decision. This person is sometimes also referred to as the
Opinion Leader. The Influencer is usually has special skills or knowledge,
personality or other characteristics that will exert social influence on other
members of the group. The role of the Influencer or Opinion Leader has taken
on a whole new meaning and emphasis with the advent of social media
platforms.
The Decider
The Decider is an individual with power and/or the financial authority to
make the choice regarding which product to buy. This is usually the
consumer, but it can also be another person.
Buyer
The Buyer is a person who conducts the buying transaction. This is also
usually the consumer, but it can be another person as well.
User

The User is the person (or persons) who will actually use the product or
service that has been bought.
It is important to note that very often consumers are influenced by reference
groups that they do not belong to. We will sometimes refer to these groups
as aspirational groups. One example of an aspirational group would be the
olympic team of the consumer's country. The consumer may aspire, due to
the success of the team members, to "be like them." This may lead them to
buy many of the same products that the team members may be endorsing,
so that they can move towards their goal of acquiring many of the same
traits of those group members. Aspirational groups can exert a lot of
influence over a group of consumers, and their potential to help a marketer
increase sales should not be ignored.
Family Groups
Family Groups are usually considered to be the most important buying
organisations within a given society. Marketers are most interested in the
roles and influence different members of a family group on a large variety of
products and services a consumer may buy. Over time the buying roles of
the traditional husband-wife model relationship have been changing. In most
societies, the wife is usually the primary buyer for the family unit, primarily
in the product categories of food, household products and clothing. However,
with more women entering into full-time work, and more men becoming
telecommuting, traditional family roles are changing. The challenge for the
marketer is understanding how these societal changes affect demand for
their products and services, and how the messaging mix might need to be
changed to attract male rather than female buyers in a given product
category (or vice versa).
Another factor to consider in Family Groups is the stage of life of its
members. Married individuals tend to show strong desires towards buying

products and services which would benefit not only them but also the
members of their family group. A consumer who has a spouse and child at
home usually will buy for them rather than spending on themselves. An
consumer entering into marriage would be more interested in buying a
house, a car, and other household items such as furniture and decorating
products. Every consumer will usually go through a common set of stages of
life, and will show a different buying mindset in each stage. For a common
male consumer this tends to look like:

Bachelorhood: Trends towards alcohol, electronics, vehicles, mobile

technology (Spends Lavishly)

Newly Married: Trends towards purchasing a home, car, furnishings.

(Spends sensibly)

Family with Children: Trends towards purchasing products to secure

the well-being of his familys future.

Empty Nest (Children getting married)/Retirement/Old Age:

Trends towards medicines, health product categories, and products
that are part of an increased lifestyle and income level.

Social Status
One aspect of social status is a consumer's economic status. Marketers take
into consideration the social class of the consumer when tailoring messaging
to them. A social class is a relatively "permanent" and ordered division in a
society whose members share similar values, interests, and behaviors.
These classes have their own distinct reference groups, and often reference
groups in some classes will influence consumers who are members of a
different social class. Different social classes will tend to desire different
categories of products as part of their consumer buyer behavior. For

example, an upper middle class consumer will tend to spend more of their
disposable income on "luxury" items, whereas a consumer from middle to
lower income groups will tend to purchase items that are required for their
own survival over day-to-day comfort.
In the United States, there are four distinct class groups:
Upper Class (3%)
- Upper Uppers: The social elite who live on inherited wealth. They are
philanthropic, own many homes, and send their children to the best schools.
- Lower Uppers: Consumers who earn high income through great ability.
They are active in social and political culture groups, buy expensive homes,
educations and vehicles.
Middle Class (44%)
- Upper Middles: Professionals and corporate managers who don't have a
high family status or unusual levels of wealth. They believe in higher
education, and they want the "better things in life".
- Middle Class: "Average" income white and blue collar consumers who live in
the better part of town. They buy products to keep up with current trends.
They want to be in a nice home in a nice area and send their kids to quality
schools.
Working Class (38%)
- They lead a working class lifestyle at any income level, education level, or
job. They usually will depend on relatives for economic and emotional
support, for purchasing advice, and for assistance in rough times. Family is
the most important reference and cultural group.
Lower Class (16%)
- Upper Lowers: These are the working poor. Their living standard is just
above the poverty line, and they actively strive to advance to a higher class

of life. Often they do not a great education or skills, and they are often
poorly paid for unskilled work and tasks.
- Lower Lowers: These are the visibly poor in society. They are poorly
educated and unskilled. They are usually out of work and depend on the
government for assistance most of the time. They are in the middle of a dayto-day existence.
It is the marketer's job to not ignore any of the reference groups of our target
markets. We must be constantly researching and identifying these groups,
because they will expose people to new lifestyles and behaviors, and change
their attitudes and influence the consumer's self-image. Reference groups
are a vital component of our marketing campaigns.