Last Updated on November 24, 2022 by Arif Chowdhury
You must learn how consumers make buying decisions if you expect them to purchase your products.
People do product analysis. They make comparisons between competitors. Approximately 87 percent of purchasing choices are based on internet research, most commonly online stores or Google.
Of course, the quality of the item and vendor credibility is essential. But what if the goods meet the customer’s demands and they have faith in the vendor? What factors influence a buyer’s choice after the essentials are in position?
So if you wish to persuade people to buy from you, you must recognize factors influencing consumer choice.
What factors influence consumer purchasing decisions?
This guide presents the nine most common facts influencing the buyer’s purchase decision. However, there are more, and researchers are still in debate.
Factor #1: Buyer’s recommendation is an excellent tool.
What are the factors that influence consumer behavior? Many recent types of research have proven what we currently realize: Potential clients read reviews and select what to purchase based on them.
Online evaluations are trusted by 88 percent as often as individual buyer suggestions, and 39 percent search for user feedback frequently. Yet, only 12% of those polled said they had never read a buyer review.
So you better start collecting feedback on your website. For example, if you offer everyday items, you may wish to extract evaluations from a third-party site to showcase as much as possible.
You may use structured data in search engine results to obtain review ratings from top-rated items. Our research on the influence of review ratings found that they may boost CTR by up to 36.7%.
More user reviews will help protect your brand against the occasional difficult-to-please consumer. Nasty comments, on the other hand, should not be deleted. On the contrary, if those reviews are few and well-written, they can improve sales.
Many bad reviews naturally put off consumers, who will search elsewhere.
Quick Note: Many factors affect customer buying behavior, such as personal factors, psychological factors, social factors, economic factors, and purchasing power. You must target a social class based on these factors to maximize your revenue as a brand.
Recommended Reading: 5 Effective and Proven Brand Strategy for Small Business (Practical Guide)
Factor #2: Recommendation from various sources.
Buyers make purchasing selections using a mixture of old and new search methods and interactions with close friends and family, even though social media platforms and Google reign supreme.
The most frequent ways for collecting data before making a purchase, as per a 2009 survey by Harris Interactive, are:
- Using the corporate website (36%);
- Interaction with a salesman or other corporate representative in person (22%);
- We have a face-to-face interaction with someone who isn’t affiliated with the organization (21%).
Factor #3: Confusion when choosing the right product.
There is well-known research on jam taste. For example, scientists polled a large group of people to rank jams from best to worst in terms of flavor.
The researchers then repeated the experiment with a separate but theoretically comparable group. They requested the taster to rank the jams by flavor and describe their reasoning this round. The sequence had shifted.
The initial group thought the jams were the most delicate tasting and were deemed worst by the second group.
The explanation is that the cognitive brain was abruptly drawn into an activity it didn’t fully comprehend. Suddenly, societal pressures (i.e., what they should pick) emerged, diverging responses from what people truly loved.
Quick Note: If you want to beat your competitors, don’t focus on marketing logic; instead, focus on customer emotions.
Factor #4: Crowd recommendation is highly influencing.
Most of our tastes are developed and learned due to society’s norms.
Clam soup is used as an instance in the Washington column. It was thin decades ago. However, it is now nearly evenly thick. What went wrong? Restaurants began to add flour to make the chowder thicker and thicker at some time. As a result, customers now regard it as an “authentic” bowl of clam chowder.
These acquired preferences may just as readily include features that, objectively, don’t make an item any better—and, in some cases, may even make it even worse, especially about smoothness.
Factor #5: Make it simple and precise.
The human inclination to favor ideas that are common and easier to implement is known as cognitive fluency.
For advertisers, this implies that the simpler an offer is to comprehend, the more likely consumers are to purchase it.
For instance, researchers have proposed that stocks in organizations with simple titles beat those with difficult-to-pronounce names. Fair assumption? No.
Recommended Reading: How to Build a Sales Funnel within Your Content? (Practical Guide)
Why does an unlimited plan draw more clients?
It takes time to comprehend and compare various cell phone packages. Choosing the ideal solution takes time. No one wants to invest their time researching call and text cost calculations. So, what are people’s options? They decide to go with the unlimited package. It’s not always the best deal, but it’s simple to comprehend.
Unlimited plans are the most profitable for cell phone providers, so they have an added motivation to produce other complicated packages. If you go over your allowed minutes on a plan with a set amount of minutes, you’ll be charged a lot of money. It’s meant to make you move to a package with a usual high price if you prefer something else.
Quick Note: Remember to create an FAQ page within your business site. It will draw a significant amount of search traffic and be a powerful resource to gain credibility and trust within your audience.
Factor #6: Reputation and rich structure are highly influencing.
The study of Joan Meyers-Levy indicates that the bottom underneath individuals may affect their judgment of goods.
Meyers-Levy states, “People feel comfortable standing on carpeted floors.” “Ironically, consumers will consider the more ‘cushy’ goods to be those closest to them.”
In this study, subjects who stood on a smooth carpet perceived the distance to an object and the item’s look to be welcoming. However, while individuals were walking on the soft carpet, those who inspected the goods found it less comfortable.
Factor #7: Social media greatly influence.
As of now, there needs to be more data on the effect of social media on buying choices. For example, according to one research, 67% of customers are more inclined to purchase from companies they follow on Twitter.
Source: smartinsights.com/digital-marketing-strategy/long-term-social-media-engagement-leads-increased-sales
According to another study, social networking seldom leads to in-store sales. According to the data, just 2% of orders came from customers who arrived via a social network. Using traditional email marketing and search results was a more efficient way of driving visitors to customers.
The first study was focused on the opinions of the individuals involved, while the second was focused on the results of monitoring their CTR from social media posts and ads; they did not include the benefits of social media in their analysis.
The correct solution is that social media affects purchasing choices, but the incremental influence may take months to years to develop. Trying to persuade people to purchase something by screaming “buy this” will only appeal to a few.
A third of the audience has yet to buy an item through social media. Moreover, a small percentage purchase anything besides Facebook through a social channel.
Quick Note: Social media is a perfect way to introduce your brand and product and also a great way to promote and sell it. Also, remember if you need to utilize it correctly, it will also be your brand’s downfall.
Factor #8: Emotions over logic.
Is decision-making done using reasoning or based on emotions? About another research work in their description of the business world.
After a consumer makes an emotional choice, comparative characteristics are more significant than often thought to be. So to get the results they wanted, it’s how they conducted their research.
Factor #9: Subconscious mind affects significantly.
Marketing strategy has for many years held the belief that consumers use intentional and logical thinking processes when making purchasing choices. What science teaches us is that our thoughts are inaccurate. Decisions are often made on an unconscious level.
In many instances, the subconscious decides how individuals will choose.
Conclusion.
I tried to elaborate on what factors influence consumer purchasing decisions in this guide. Yet, more to come; you may want to conduct your marketing research.
No two humans are exactly alike. We’re just getting started in learning all of their interests. However, when studies have been done, it has been discovered that individuals prefer things at the top or on the right. Why is that?
It’s yet to be discovered. When we do not consider the goods, we make purchase choices. Yet nowadays, new issues remain regarding how humans think and make decisions.
The questions in neurology remain unanswered, but we can keep bringing findings to use today.