The consumer is a very common term that is discussed in everyday life. How could it not be, consuming is an activity that has even become a habit that cannot be abandoned? But what about consumer behavior? Consumer behavior is an important factor that must be understood to capture the market.
Consumer behavior is the key for any entrepreneur to know the key to their marketing strategy. To understand consumer behavior, the following article will help you understand what is meant by consumer behavior to its benefits and implications for a business.
Definition of Consumer Behavior
Consumer behavior has many definitions. In economics, there are many opinions of economists who try to define consumer behavior. Some of them define consumer behavior, such as:
- According to Schiffman and Kanuk, consumer behavior is the way consumers make decisions until those consumers end up shopping to get what they want.
- Meanwhile, according to C. Mowen and Minor, consumer behavior is an explanation of a process in determining decisions made by consumers about a product.
- The outlines of the definition proposed by several economists make consumer behavior a process carried out by consumers toward a product, either a good or service. The process consists of searching, selecting, buying, using, and evaluating to satisfy consumer needs and wants.
Consumer Behavior Theory
For more details, consumer behavior is studied in consumer behavior theory. Consumer behavior theory is a science that studies how a person makes decisions as a consumer when making a purchase. This theory helps business people to use these behaviors by making predictions about their consumers.
4 Benefits of Understanding Consumer Behavior
When businesses understand consumer behavior, they have an advantage in understanding their target market. As a result, businessmen can produce products or services that are suitable for the target market and follow consumers’ buying habits. In addition, businessmen can experience four other advantages, such as:
1. Understanding the Consumer’s Environment
Businessmen will easily learn how the consumer environment influences consumer behavior. The environment in question may be geographical or sociological.
2. Determine Pricing Strategy
Understanding consumer behavior can be beneficial to businesses when determining pricing strategies. Pricing not only determines the face amount but also which payment method the consumer chooses.
3. Knowledge of the Most Needed Products or Services
Understanding consumer behavior is a step in the right direction to researching products and services that characterize a business. This can help a company make decisions regarding the selection of products or services that are most needed by consumers.
In addition, companies can also offer products or services that are in line with the latest trends in society.
4. Understanding Alternative Consumer Choices
The concern that every businessman has is what happens when the products that represent his business have been sold in the market. This can be overcome by studying consumer behavior, as businessmen can understand alternative consumer choices.
Businessmen can add benefits that are not owned by the widely used main product. In addition, business people can replace some product elements with other elements that are better to attract consumer attention but to use the same product.
4 Models of Consumer Behavior
How a consumer determines the process of a product varies, of course. This consumer behavior can be categorized into several models. In general, there are 4 categories of consumer behavior, namely:
1. Constrained Decision Making
Some of the consumers will experience constrained decision-making. The purpose of this limited duration is that consumers need to do as much research as possible but little thinking before making a decision.
For example, if someone intends to go to campus and has not eaten breakfast beforehand.
To achieve an appropriate goal, the person chooses a restaurant near campus with a variety of options, such as restaurants that are affordable, offer favorite menus, or are within the closest distance. At this point, the person must also make a limited decision.
2. Comprehensive Decision Making
This behavioral model usually occurs with a purchase that involves a large financial investment or may have a personal impact that needs to be considered. Consumers tend to take as much time as possible to think before making a decision.
An example of this behavior is when someone wants to buy a home. Many considerations of financial factors and personal factors should not be underestimated.
3. Impulsive Decision Making
Impulsive behavior is an unplanned purchase. This purchase was made spontaneously with little thought. Most impulse purchases are irrational and only fulfill a momentary desire.
4. Decision Making Based on Routine Reactions
A brand known for certain products, both of which are dynamic duos, tends to become the main choice of consumers’ purchase targets. It is assumed that consumers do not need much time to think about buying the product. If they want to buy product x, then brandy is the solution, and vice versa.
The Influence of Marketing On Consumer Behavior
Marketing or marketing activities require an appropriate strategy to ensure that the process of marketing a company’s products and services runs smoothly.
It is undeniable that using the right marketing strategy will satisfy the target market, which is a company’s consumers. Therefore, it can be concluded that marketing has an important impact on consumers.
The use of an appropriate and attractive strategy will add value to a company so that consumers will tend to remain loyal to a particular company because it can meet their relevant needs.
Consumers will remain loyal to and like certain company brands if the marketing strategy matches the characteristics or personality of those consumers.
Knowing and analyzing consumer behavior in more detail is once again the key to developing a business. Many things can be done to identify your consumers’ behavior, such as finding out what they always search for in their device’s search engine.