Consumer behavior refers to the selection, purchase, and consumption of goods and services for the satisfaction of one’s needs. There are different processes involved in consumer behavior. Initially, the consumer tries to find what commodities he would like to consume, then he selects only those commodities that promise greater utility. After selecting the commodities, the consumer makes an estimate of the available money that he can spend. Lastly, the consumer analyzes the prevailing prices of commodities and makes the decision about the commodities he should consume. Meanwhile, there are various other factors influencing the purchases of consumers such as social, cultural, personal, and psychological. The explanation of these factors is given below.

1. Cultural Factors

Consumer behavior is deeply influenced by cultural factors such as a buyer’s culture, subculture, and social class.

• Culture

Culture greatly influences our behavior patterns when it comes to our desires for goods and services. The influence of culture on our buying behavior varies from country to country therefore marketers have to be very careful in analyzing the culture of different groups, regions, and countries.

• Subculture

Each culture contains different subcultures such as religions, nationalities, geographic regions, racial groups, etc. Marketers can use these groups by segmenting the market into various small portions. For example, marketers can design products according to the needs of a particular geographic group.

• Social Class

Every society possesses some form of social class which is important to the marketers because the buying behavior of people in a given social class is similar. In this way, marketing activities could be tailored according to different social classes. Here we should note that social class is not only determined by income but there are various other factors as well such as wealth, education, occupation, etc.

2. Social Factors

Social factors also impact the buying behavior of consumers. The important social factors are reference groups, family, role, and status.

• Reference Groups

Reference groups have the potential in forming a person’s attitude or behavior. The impact of reference groups varies across products and brands. For example, if the product is visible such as dress, shoes, car, etc then the influence of reference groups will be high. Reference groups also include opinion leaders (a person who influences others because of his special skill, knowledge, or other characteristics).

• Family

Buyer behavior is strongly influenced by a member of a family. Therefore marketers are trying to find the roles and influence of the husband, wife, and children. If the buying decision of a particular product is influenced by the wife then the marketers will try to target the women in their advertisement. Here we should note that buying roles change with change in consumer lifestyles.

• Roles and Status

Each person possesses different roles and statuses in society depending upon the groups, clubs, family, organization, etc. to which he belongs. For example, a woman is working in an organization as a finance manager. Now she is playing two roles, one of the finance managers and the other of mother. Therefore her buying decisions will be influenced by her role and status.

3. Personal Factors

Personal factors can also affect consumer behavior. Some of the important personal factors that influence buying behavior are lifestyle, economic situation, occupation, age, personality, and self-concept.

• Age

Age and life-cycle have a potential impact on consumer buying behavior. It is obvious that consumers change their purchasing habits with the passage of time. Family life-cycle consists of different stages such as young singles, married couples, unmarried couples, middle-aged, etc which help marketers to develop appropriate products for each stage.

• Occupation & Economic Situation

The occupation and economic situation of a person has a significant impact on his buying behavior. For example, higher-income people generally have more purchasing power than low-income people.

• Lifestyle

The lifestyle of customers is another important factor affecting consumer buying behavior. Lifestyle refers to the way a person lives in a society and is expressed by the things in his/her surroundings. It is determined by customer interests, opinions, activities, etc, and shapes his whole pattern of acting and interacting in the world.

• Personality

Personality changes from person to person, time to time, and place to place. Therefore it can greatly influence the buying behavior of customers. Actually, Personality is not what one wears; rather it is the totality of behavior of a man in different circumstances. It has different characteristics such as dominance, aggressiveness, self-confidence, etc which can be useful to determine the consumer behavior for a particular product or service.

4. Psychological Factors

There are four important psychological factors affecting consumer buying behavior. These are perception, motivation, learning, beliefs, and attitudes.

• Motivation

The level of motivation also affects the buying behavior of customers. Every person has different needs such as physiological needs, biological needs, social needs, etc. The nature of the needs is that some of them are most pressing while others are least pressing. Therefore a need becomes a motive when it is more pressing to direct the person to seek satisfaction.

• Perception

Selecting, organizing, and interpreting information in a way to produce a meaningful experience of the world is called perception. There are three different perceptual processes which are selective attention, selective distortion, and selective retention. In the case of selective attention, marketers try to attract customer attention. Whereas, in the case of selective distortion, customers try to interpret the information in a way that will support what the customers already believe. Similarly, in the case of selective retention, marketers try to retain information that supports their beliefs.

• Beliefs and Attitudes

Most consumers have specific beliefs and attitudes toward various products. Since such beliefs and attitudes make up brand image and affect consumer buying behavior, therefore, marketers are interested in them. Marketers can change the beliefs and attitudes of customers by launching special campaigns in this regard.

Source by Asifo Shah