What influences consumer behaviour?

Consumer behaviour encompasses the set of processes and actions involved in decision-making before making any purchase of a product or service. For a company, it is essential to understand why a consumer decides to make one purchase over another, adapting different strategies to their behaviours.

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What is consumer behaviour?

Consumer behaviour includes all those choices and actions taken by a person when buying, using, or disposing of products or services. Therefore, it involves a set of factors and mental processes that affect the purchasing decision, its use, and subsequent feedback.

There are several types of consumer behaviours, which are as follows:

1. Dissonance-reducing buying behaviour: This refers to when a consumer finds it difficult to differentiate between similar products.
2. Complex buying behaviour: This type of behaviour is displayed when making significant investments, such as when buying a car, a house, or other similar acquisitions.
3. Habitual buying behaviour: This is based on general indifference to brands, purchasing out of necessity or habit rather than loyalty.
4. Variety-seeking buying behaviour: When the consumer tries different brands, easily opting for other products.

What factors influence consumer behaviour?

To develop any effective marketing strategy in a company, it is essential to understand the consumer behaviour, desires, and requirements of its potential clients to make a purchase or take any decision.

Some of the influential factors in consumer behaviour are:

• Social effects: Refers to the influence exerted by social groups, influencers, or close people such as friends or family on purchasing decisions.
• Cultural effects: Involves the values and beliefs of clients, as well as cultural norms that can affect how a product or service is perceived.
• Personal characteristics: Age, gender, income, or personality are factors that influence the purchase of a product or service.
• Psychological effects: Involves the attitude, motivation, and perception of the consumer.

Stages of consumer behaviour in a purchase

There are several stages a customer goes through when making a purchase.

1. Recognition: The consumer takes on the initiator role. At this point, they identify a need.
2. Information search: The stage where they adopt the influencer role. They seek reliable first-hand information for evaluation.
3. Evaluation of options: They take the role of decision-maker. Based on the gathered information, they conduct an analysis and comparison including factors like price, quality, delivery, returns, etc.
4. Purchase action: Role of decision-maker and buyer. After analysing the options, they buy the chosen product based on several criteria.
5. Consumption: Role of user and evaluator. They try the product/service and evaluate their satisfaction regarding the use of the purchased item.

How to measure digital consumer behaviour through KPIs?

Some of the most effective KPIs to measure a marketing strategy are:

• ROI: Return on Investment, quantifies the performance of investments made in advertising and marketing.
• CAC: Customer Acquisition Cost. Calculates the average cost of acquiring new customers.
• CLV: Customer Lifetime Value. Its goal is to create a long-term relationship with the customer.
• Conversion rate: Measures the number of users who visit the website and make a purchase or subscribe to a service.
• Bounce rate: Percentage of users who leave the page without performing any specific action.
• Customer retention: Number of consumers who make repeat purchases after their first purchase.
• Time on site: Measures the time users spend browsing a website or app.

How to measure offline consumer behaviour through KPIs?

The most effective KPIs to measure an offline marketing strategy are the following.

• In-store traffic: Measures the number of people visiting an establishment during a specific period.
• In-store conversion rate: Refers to how much customers spend on average in each purchase.
• Visit frequency: Measures how often a customer visits an establishment within a specific period.
• Dwell time: The time a consumer spends on average in the store.
• Return rate: Frequency with which a customer returns to the store after their first purchase.
• Satisfaction: Collection of customer feedback through surveys or direct comments (more challenging to obtain than with digital methods).

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