Consumer Psychology and Its Relationship to Marketing Communication Psy/322

Consumer Psychology and its Relationship to Marketing Communication

PSY/322

Consumer Psychology and its Relationship to Marketing Communication

Consumer psychology takes on an approach of relating how our thoughts, beliefs, feelings, and perceptions influence how people buy and relate to goods and services. Marketing communication uses these variations of feelings and attitudes and creates a campaign designed to make consumers aware of a particular brand. Marketing communication helps to develop brand personalities that the consumer can relate too. “A company’s marketing communications are designed to make the consumer aware of the product or service, induce purchase or commitment, create a positive attitude toward the product, or show how it can solve the consumer’s problem better then a competitive product” (Schiffman & Kanuk, 2002, p. 263).

In Bettman’s article Consumer Psychology (1986) he focuses on the psychology and behavior of consumers and how they relate to product purchases and consumption in everyday life (p. 256). Bettman (1986) describes consumer psychology as the understanding and explaining of the psychological factors that influence the choices, purchases, and consumption of products that consumers make (p. 257-258). There are several areas that he covers in relationship to consumer psychology and how marketing communication can affect these very choices.

He relates memory to consumer purchases and how vital packaging information and the presence of pricing can influence a general purchase (Bettman, 1986, p. 262). “Prior knowledge and experience have been found to have strong effects on consumer memory” (Bettman, 1986, p. 262). Consumer memory is a correlation of strong product branding and strong visual messages that an advertisement can trigger. Marketing communication is used to unlock memories and feelings by playing on the emotions of a particular group or culture to successfully gain brand recognition through the use of...