External influences such as marketing and name recognition tend to influence consumer choices.
The influences on consumer behavior would simply be defined in a logical and pragmatic world. The person requests a certain item, identifies his budget, looks for the best price and makes the purchase. To the delight of manufacturers, marketers and advertising companies, a logical and pragmatic world is practically non-existent. Influences on consumer behavior include peer pressure, product name recognition, social acceptance, and the desire for immediate gratification. Actual need is a factor, but it often falls on the lower end of the purchasing scale.
Peer pressure often influences consumers to buy certain products.
Influences on consumer behavior can probably be divided into internal, external, and marketing categories. Within each of these broad categories, there are numerous subcategories. Ultimately, at the point where money changes hands in exchange for goods or services, consumer behavior revolves around perception, need, desire, self-image, or any possible combination.
Demographic factors affect consumer behavior.
Advertising probably plays the most important role in determining the influences on consumer behavior. Consumer choices are greatly affected by a product’s presentation, and in media-driven cultures such presentations are unavoidable. In countries where advertising and the media are not a constant companion, consumers often haggle with merchants and shopkeepers over products and prices. Necessity and accessibility take precedence over the impression created by advertising. On the contrary, the buyer is inundated with advertising images of a product that he usually buys because he wants to see himself as part of that image.
Online reviews of a business can influence consumers.
The internal factors that determine the influences of consumer behavior are sometimes not based on the financial assets of an individual, but on the perception of an economy as a whole. In good times, people tend to spend; in difficult times, people tend to save. Internal influences can also be attributed to regional and ethnic differences.
If most people in a region or neighborhood traditionally buy a specific brand of beer or spaghetti sauce, sales of the product will generally remain constant. Not because the brands are necessarily better, cheaper, or healthier. It’s because buying the same items as your peer group makes you feel like you’re part of the culture or social fabric around you. People like the security of a group, and even the simplest actions can contribute to that feeling of belonging.
Consumer behavior may be motivated by a desire to adapt.
External influences on consumer behavior often revolve around marketing and name recognition. In fact, the ingredients in brand-name products are virtually indistinguishable from the ingredients in generic products. This is especially true of over-the-counter pharmaceuticals, a line of products in which the ingredients must meet certain legal standards. Even if a person realizes this fact, they will usually buy the brand whose name is most familiar to them.
Consumers are more likely to make large purchases, such as cars and houses, when they feel the economy is doing well.
The fact that the price of painkiller A is exactly twice the price of painkiller B makes little difference. A person tends to buy what he knows or trusts, even when the alternative is equally safe or effective. This same decision-making process can be applied to products ranging from cars to televisions to jeans to bananas.