Marketing and Consumer Behaviour

A little more understanding, a little more action

Introduction

Understanding consumer behaviour gives marketers a handle on how to turn target audiences into purchasers. Recognising what role motivation and perception play and how they feed into both planned and unplanned purchasing behaviour will make your marketing more effective. Having this insight into the mind of the consumer will put the holy grail, of influencing consumers to purchase, within your reach.

Main concepts of the purchase decision making process

What drives a customer to consume? It could be as a result of a planned decision, in which case they follow clearly identifiable stages each open to influence from marketing. Inside the mind of an NCVO customer, the process will look very much like this:

Stage 1: engaged in their planning, a potential customer recognises a lack in their knowledge about what the future holds and the relevance of this to their planning.

Stage 2: they search for information to address this lack, clarifying for themselves that NCVO services can do this. The customer might get information from: commercial (adverts), public (radio, TV), the old failsafe – friends and family, and experiential (following Foresight’s ‘light touch’ guides, or looking on the Foresight website). Here the quality of promotion and positive word of mouth from prior customers is invaluable in influencing their choice.

Stage 3: the potential customer evaluates the information gathered, assessing all options. Hopefully NCVO marketing is reassuring and positive enough to move them onto the next stage.

Stage 4: the purchase.

Stage 5: post-purchase assessment by the customer of whether they are happy with the product. This is a key point at which to build brand loyalty. NCVO Foresight does this through a series of interactions starting with a follow-up email asking what the customer thought of the purchasing experience, and offering them a chance to ask questions. A phone call...