Revealing the Why in Consumer Buying Behavior

Consumer Market Research Sheds Light on Why Customers Buy

Jul 11, 2009

Why are consumers compelled to purchase the offerings of one company over those of its competitors? Consumer market research can shed light on this important question.

Gaining insight into the “why” part of consumer buying behavior is an essential component to any company’s success. Understanding the motivations that underlie purchase decisions is essential to creating relevant products and services. This knowledge is also crucial to developing targeted marketing communications programs. Paramount to the attainment of this insight is consumer market research. A few of the more popular consumer market research methods are focus groups, market research surveys and online market research.

Consumer Market Research Methods Include Focus Groups

In The Focus Group Guidebook, published in 1997, author David Morgan advises one to “consider focus groups when investigating complex behavior and motivations.” Holding focus groups with a company’s most loyal customers is an excellent consumer market research method of uncovering why they prefer its offerings. By administering focus groups, a company can determine how a brand fulfills customers’ needs and wants. This knowledge can provide insight into how these longstanding customers can continue to be retained and how new prospects can be acquired.

It should be noted that while focus groups can reveal a tremendous amount of information about consumer buying behavior, this information may not be entirely accurate. This can occur in part because focus groups reveal the attitudes of only a small group of participants. And these attitudes might not reflect the sentiments of the target market at large.

Consumer Market Research Surveys

Conducting market research surveys is another effective consumer market research method of further assessing why consumers choose a particular company’s goods and services over other brands. These research surveys can be administered in a variety of ways, including in person, via e-mail, through the mail and over the Web. Web-based surveys are becoming increasingly popular as a result of the ease with which they can be created and distributed, and their quick response rates.

Marketers must ensure that market research surveys are created in a manner that achieves the most honest feedback possible: This might include making it clear that participants’ identities will remain anonymous. Furthermore, extra care should be taken to ensure that participants are really who they claim to be when conducting surveys online: Administering a survey on a medication for elderly people to a group comprised primarily of teens posing as elderly participants would render the survey useless.

Online Market Research

Performing online market research can garner a great amount of honest insight into consumer buying behavior for a particular good or service. Searching the Internet for consumer opinions through chat rooms, forums, Web sites and blogs will reveal a lot about their purchase motivations. What feedback is being conveyed about the brand in an impromptu and casual environment?

As previously discussed, focus groups and surveys can produce tainted results. By contrast, rather than attempting to extract information from consumers through formalized and limited methods, online market research merely seeks to uncover information that the target market has voluntarily placed in the public sphere. Because of its hands-off approach to information gathering, online market research can result in a more accurate rendering of consumers’ brand opinions than the aforementioned research methods.

Taking Charge of Consumer Market Research for Increased Business Success

The information gleaned, through the use of consumer market research, on why consumers purchase certain products and services can be used to create offerings that speak directly to their wants and needs. It can also be used to design marketing campaigns that are more consumer-focused, rather than merely product-focused. By acquiring this knowledge and applying it to these and other worthy goals, companies can increase customer retention and acquisition, generate more sales and maximize their bottom lines.

The copyright of the article Revealing the Why in Consumer Buying Behavior in Business Management is owned by Ottavio Storace. Permission to republish Revealing the Why in Consumer Buying Behavior in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.