Hello and welcome to my blog!
I'd like to thank you for coming by and checking out my posts! Before we dive in, I'd like to set the stage for the next few posts. The purpose of this blog is to explore the area of consumer behaviour, learn about what drives our purchasing behaviour, how products have an impact on us as an individual and the process we all go through before we make a purchase.
To being... what is consumer behaviour anyway?
Consumer Behaviour: In essence, consumer behaviour is a long process that begins when a there is a desired need and ends with the post-purchase face after we have identified the need we ask ourselves if the precast really satisfied the need or not.
Consumer Behaviour is the study of how people make decisions about what the buy, want, need and behave in regards to a good, service, or organization.
Let's look at it this way, when you've been busy running around all day and get thirsty you automatically have a need that needs to be met. This is where consumer behaviour comes in, do you choose water or coke? Do you buy a $2.00 bottle of water of SmartWater at Starbucks or a generic $.25 Kirkland bottle of water at Costco? Do you keep the bottle for future refills or simply get rid of the bottle once you've consumed it?
The concept of consumer psychology is often times ignored, individuals, including myself, can't answer
why they want the things they want. There are many subconscious driver that motivate consumers' decision making. It is important for consumers to start thinking about why they purchase the goods they do and what the reasoning is behind purchases.
When speaking about consumer psychology marketers have a huge impact in understanding and trying to cater towards this phenomenon. The end goal of marketers is to store a chord in the identification of need in the consumer behaviour process. A successful marketer will reveal this need to the consumer they otherwise would have never discovered for themselves. Once marketers are able to reveal this needs subconsciously to consumers the next step is to push their product as top of mind choice to consumers to fulfill this need.
Throughout history many products have replaced our definition of a product. Take tissue paper for example, when you search for tissue paper, most people call it Kleenex. The product has become so ingrained in our language that a company can lose its exclusive rights to it.
After realizing these components in consumer behaviour I stared to think about the products I use everyday that have become the definition of a product.
Facebook
Ever catch yourself saying, "I'll Facebook you?" I personally have, I find myself ditching the phrase "I'll call you" or "I'll text you" anymore. Facebook is enormous to say the least. With more than 1.5 billion people using the social network at least every month, if it were a country it would be one of the biggest next to China and India. Facebook is huge and has become a must use commodity in our day to be able to share with out friends and family every aspect of our lives. It has been engrained so much so that it's hard to think of a time when Facebook didn't exist!
Google
Another catch phrase in every day vocabulary. Don't know the answer to a question or the meaning of a word? "I'm going to Google that." With technology and convenience at our fingertips we have the luxury of easily finding answers to issues and questions. We google rather than research and read, Google has incorporated itself into every day life, making it almost impossible to live in society without the internet, much less search engines such as Google. Stats show that over 100 billion searchers are made on Google on a monthly basis world wide with a 65.2% share of web search volume. This is another example of a product marketed in such a way that is has become a part of consumer's day to day usage.
Just based off these examples its clear to see the effect and impact brands have on our dy to day life and how easy it can be for them to partake in our vocabulary.
Sources:
http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/by-the-numbers-a-gigantic-list-of-google-stats-and-facts/4/
