Marketing Psychology of Consumer – Brief Guide
Business in simple words is the act of doing a trade of goods and services with an intention of earning profits. Well, a businessman does business to earn some profits. It is not a necessity to understand the common man’s mentality or in other words, the marketing psychology of a consumer.
Though if businesspeople do that, they will definitely rule the minds of their target market. A businessman has to understand the requirements of the common man. Only when they are able to analyze what is required, they will be able to succeed. Just like we have five fingers of different length, there are different types of customers with different thought processes.
Four Categories of Customers
Let us now divide customers into 4 categories:
- Category1. Some customers do not mind spending more to satisfy their ego. For them purchasing the product relates to their prestige. We can rate them as high-class customers.
- Category 2. Some people explore the market thoroughly to get the quality product at a reasonable price. Though it is time-consuming they enjoy doing it and feel they know the right product. Sometimes they have to compromise with the product they get for the money they have. We can call them middle-class customers. Some people make purchases based on their income level also. These people are capable of buying products with general pricing or high price.
- Category 3. People with low income won’t dare to buy costly and branded products.
- Category 4. People just visit the showroom only for fun and time pass, and they don’t buy anything.
Marketing Psychology of Selling
Even though there are 4 categories of customers, the psychology of selling or the marketing psychology of consumer rules the market. For a businessman satisfying all kinds of customers and therefore attracting more customers is a tough job. Moreover, it is the businessman who has to decide what they want to sell through customer’s choice of products. It is one of the factors of earning good profits.
There are two options – either choose a product which can be sold to customers willing to buy it or concentrate only on high valued products. The world is full of middle and low-income people. The number of high-income people is lower.
So, a businessman can get a good turnover if they concentrate on a product used by people in maximum numbers. In such a case, the competitors list will be longer. So, the businessman has to maintain a balance between the competition and the retaining customer’s interest in the product thanks to the marketing psychology of a consumer.
Different Views on Customer
In marketing psychology, they analyze a customer from different angles.
- Economic and Passive Customer: They explain a consumer as an economic person who buys rationally to maximize the benefits from product or service. And from the passive view consumer is submissive to the self-serving interest and promotional efforts of marketers.
- Cognitive Versus Emotional Customer: According to a cognitive versus emotional customer view, a cognitive consumer is a thinker and a problem solver. Emotional Person is a reality of each of us because of deeply rooted emotions and feeling.
- Personal Consumer Versus Organisational Consumer: The term consumer describes two different kinds of consuming entities – the organizational consumer and personal consumer. The organizational consumer buys for modifying, altering or reselling the services/product. The personal consumer buys services and goods for their own application, for the use of the household.
- Potential and Realised Customer: There are three options of identifying the state of a consumer – (a) nonconsumers (b) realized consumers and (c) potential consumers. A nonconsumer is an individual who has no need for a service/product and is not likely to have a need in the foreseeable future. Realized consumers generally conform to our earlier definition of shopper or purchaser, since they take part in buying. And as for the potential consumer, it is an individual not currently purchasing, but may buy at some future point of time
- Final Consumer: Any person engaged in the process of consumption is a consumer. However, these buyers can be identified by the type of market to which they belong. Two major types of the market create an industrial buyer and a final consumer. The final consumer market consists of individuals who buy for personal consumption or to meet the collective needs of a household unit or family.
Marketing Psychology Techniques and Their Importance
Selling a product to the customers will become difficult because of the factors like competition, price, quality, etc. Your competitors may bring out a product which is more beneficial than yours. Sometimes, you can launch a product which is a modification of your earlier product.
All these are marketing gimmicks to retaining the customer interest. So, to remain in the market as a businessman, you should use all sorts of consumer marketing techniques to improve your revenue level. You should be able to make use of the opportunities of the marketing psychology.
Market Segmentation and Consumer Behavior
In marketing, knowing the marketing psychology of consumer and understanding the behavior of the consumer may help to divide potential customers into certain groups. This segmentation is actually the process of dividing total marketing into segments or a target marketing with consumers with common needs or characteristics and selecting one or more targeting segment with a distinct marketing mix.
One market segment consists of a group of customers who are in one group due to similar needs. These segments simplify the complexity of the whole consumer target market. However, they do not cover the personal preferences of individual consumers.
Archetype and How It Is Helpful
The marketing psychology of consumer is a typical example depicting the marketing psychology of a person or thing. Here, in our context, we can consider our products as things while the person is a businessman or a customer. The continuous relationship between the businessman and the customer is the basis of a good business.
If the relationships with customers are not proper, then the businessman has to face a big problem promoting the products. Some of the common archetypes are innocent, outlaw, explorer, ruler, hero, creator or any ordinary male/female. If you study your customers, you will find many clients with the ordinary mentality, innocent, or explorers.
Marketing Psychology Techniques to Improve the Revenue
A marketing technique to improve revenue is social media. The marketing psychology asserts that if one person in a social media group uses one product and finds it very beneficial, they will recommend it to the other members. There is a difference between the marketing team promoting the product and the customers who have used the product.
People will listen more to the person who has experience with the product. Taking into account these remarks, consumers make a decision. Getting customers through online business becomes easy when social media is in. This also results in increasing website viewing and your ranking.
Moreover, promoting in a social media is less expensive in comparison with other consumer marketing techniques. As almost all of the people worldwide are in social media, one promotional message will spread and reach to all the people without your involvement. So be very careful when you send any promotional message. Any error can have negative consequences. In case a celebrity is endorsing your brand, then the followers of the celebrity will attempt to use the product.
Wrapping up – Marketing Psychology
As a businessman, never take advantage of the innocent people excessively. Initially, you may win, but later when the customers come to know that their innocence was misused, this may have a bad effect on your business. When you are dealing with a customer who is an explorer, try to disclose true facts to them. Therefore they will research the facts. In case, they find it wrong, there will be negative publicity for the product.
Creating trust in the mind of the customer is a good thing but remember to retain it. Once there is no trust anymore, customers won’t turn back for your product. There are a lot of techniques to improve your business. However, you need to use the techniques in the right place and time. A wrong timing will have a bad effect. So, you should take any move in the field of marketing psychology carefully and with confidence.