Consumer Psychology

                                                                             

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The key object of every marketing strategy is to develop lucid customer-specific solutions that are superior to competing solutions. To achieve this objective with precision involves understanding the psychology of the target markets who are supposed to be the beneficiaries of that solution.  Developing the solution is only one part of the equation, the target market needs to be aware of the solution, they must believe that it is unique to their needs and also have faith that it is superior to competing ones available. This part of the equation even makes the relevance of understanding the consumer’s psychology more crucial.

Consumer psychology is the study of how humans respond to product and service related information and experiences. Consumer psychologists study consumer activities associated with the purchase, use, and disposal of goods and services, including the consumer’s emotional, cognitive, and behavioral responses that precede, determine, or follow these activities (Jansson-Boyd, 2010)

Different consumers may purchase the same product for different reasons.  For example a customer may chose a bank because of proximity to the person’s office or house, others because of a certain “sense of belonging”, others because of the bank’s colour combination, others because of specific solutions the bank offers or the fact that the person’s peers bank with that particular bank.

The key goals of consumer psychologists are to describe, predict, influence, and/or explain consumer responses and they do that through the deployment of various research approaches that are quantitative like lab research or qualitative like interviews, focus group interviews, and projective techniques, amongst others. Research methods like projective techniques are important for eliciting information that an individual will be embarrassed or unwilling to divulge and it involves asking a question soliciting why “someone” or a “friend” may behave in a particular manner.

 

It is interesting to note that not all consumer decisions are rational and that sometimes consumers make decisions and cannot give a logical reason as to why they made that purchase or will give a logical reason to attempt to rationalize a decision. Sometimes, these decisions are driven by the consumer’s sub-consciousness and the key goal of the consumer psychologist is to look for that deeper meaning that is probably irrational.  

 

Consumer Psychology has implications for all facets of marketing and marketing communications strategy like product development, branding, positioning, social marketing, public policy, political campaign strategy, amongst others.

In developing new products, it is imperative to conduct research to test the target market’s reactions to various variables in order to ensure that when the product is finally launched it meets the specifications and expectations of the target market.   

The core of marketing strategy is the STP (Segmentation-Targeting-Positioning) process. The strategist must select the target market and then decide what image he intends to create in their minds. However, to determine what image to create in the minds of the target market, it is better to understand what attributes are relevant to the target market and that information is well delivered. Positioning is thus effective when there is a convergence between how the organization intends to be perceived and how the target audience actually perceives it.

At a point in time in Ghana, it became “uncool” to be seen drinking Club Beer as it was perceived as a beer for old people.  Club also realized that its target market were becoming conscious of their health and shied away from drinks “spiced” with sugar. Club Beer re-branded and positioned itself as a contemporary drink that is sugar free. It also leveraged on peer-based communication to position the drink as an authentic Ghanaian brand to be shared with friends. Within a relatively short time, it can be stated that Club Beer’s repositioning has been hugely successful. Cursory market observation indicates that its key competitor “Star” Beer, which was deemed the market leader sometime back, is seeking to “fight back” with “no sugar added” communications and by using R2Bs; a popular hiplife group, to promote its “Star quality”.

In deciding a pricing strategy, the marketer can use consumer insight gleaned to determine whether to use a low price or a relatively high price. If the orientation of the target market is to perceive low price as low quality, a marketer will avoid pricing the product low. For some consumers, higher pricing offers some psychological comfort of value for money and a feeling of self-worth so this affords the marketer the opportunity of pricing and communicating that feeling of self-worth accordingly. However, marketers must understand that even though a customer may believe that high pricing denotes quality, a whole gambit of value needs to be delivered. For example, the product communication, packaging, service delivery associated with the product, as well other value laden packages need to reinforce the intended brand positioning.

Fill (2010) argues and rightly so that the fundamental goal of marketing communication is to change consumer’s attitude. Simplistically, the consumer’s attitude can relate to the cognitive (appealing to the consumer’s logic), affective (appealing to the consumer’s emotion) or conative (appealing to the consumer’s action tendencies). Therefore, to change the consumer’s attitude, you must understand which component of the consumer’s attitude needs to be changed in order to develop the right communications strategy. For example, does the customer erroneously believe that your bank has many hidden charges?  Does the customer dislike your company because they believe you do not invest in the society?

Attitudinal change is also fundamental to a social marketing campaign which in turn is driven by Consumer Psychology. Social marketing involves communicating an idea or information to the public, aimed at serving the public good. For instance, if in formulating an anti-HIV campaign, research indicates that the people become sexually active at a young age, are unwilling to abstain, pre-marital sex is ingrained in the values of that particular society, then the trajectory of communication will be geared towards the use of condoms as opposed to abstinence, and policies will involve the introduction of sex education at a relatively young age.  

The use of consumer psychology is also evident in political campaign strategies deployed by the various political parties. The strategy deployed is to identify the key variables important to a particular group of people in a specific locality and propagate those issues or variables in their communications. These variables could be emotive-based or rational-based, but whichever the messages, they seem to work, especially in a country like Ghana where emotive-based appeals have equal if not more power than rational or fact-based appeals.

Consumer Psychology goes to the root of marketing strategy and has implications for developing highly effective and precision-based communication campaigns by providing a sound understanding of the target market or audience.  

The study of consumers helps firms and organizations improve their marketing strategies by understanding issues such as;

• How consumers think, feel, reason, and select between different alternatives (e.g., brands, products, and retailers)
• How the consumer is influenced by his or her environment (e.g., culture, family, signs, media)
• The behaviour of consumers while shopping or making other marketing decisions
• Limitations in consumer knowledge or information processing abilities influence decisions and marketing outcome;
• How consumer motivation and decision strategies differ between products that differ in their level of importance or interest that they entail for the consumer
• How marketers can adapt and improve their marketing campaigns and marketing strategies to more effectively reach the consumer.

 

 

By Nana Yaw Kesse