Psychology of Consumer Behaviour

Psychology of Consumer Behaviour

One of the most complicated things is to understand the human mind. More than 90% of all our learning’s are incidental. Even advertising is considered to be incidental. Advertising does its job in the human mind, and human mind does its job using memories.

The human mind is divided into two parts:

·         Conscious mind

·         Subconscious mind

The behavioural elements like Awareness, perception about a product or a brand, thinking and acting are all associated with the conscious mind.

The subconscious mind influences or behaviour in response to a stimulus.

Definition of consumer behaviour

“Customer behaviour study is based on consumer buying behaviour, with the customer playing the three distinct roles of user, payer and buyer. It attempts to understand the buyer decision making process, both individually and in groups. It studies characteristics of individual consumers such as demographics and behavioural variables in an attempt to understand people's wants. It also tries to assess influences on the consumer from groups such as family, friends, reference groups, and society in general.”

Consumers hold certain feelings toward brands or other objects. Sometimes feelings are based on the beliefs or may be feelings which are relatively independent of beliefs.

Example:

• A person feels nauseated when thinking about a hamburger because of the tremendous amount of fat it contains
• An extreme environmentalist may believe that cutting down trees is morally wrong, but may have positive affect toward Christmas trees because he or she unconsciously associates these trees with the experience that he or she had at Christmas as a child.

Psychology of consumer behaviour is also defined by the equation stated below.

Affect = Moods + Emotions

Areas of application of affect:

·         Experiential perspective: Role of affect in motivating consumer behaviour (role in high involvement decisions, leisure pursuits, etc)

·         Attitude Formation:  Product, Ad or other object

·         Information processing: Influence memory, cognitive capacity and attention

·         Choice behaviour: Select option that makes one feel the best

·         Post purchase process: Brand loyalty, complaining behaviour, satisfaction etc