Importance of Understanding Customer Motives

Importance of understanding customer motives

The task of marketing is to identify consumers' needs and wants accurately, then to develop products and services that will satisfy them. For marketing to be successful, it is not sufficient to merely discover what customers require, but to find out why it is required. Only by gaining a deep and comprehensive understanding of buyer behaviour can marketing's goals be realised. Such an understanding of buyer behaviour works to the mutual advantage of the consumer and marketer, allowing the marketer to become better equipped to satisfy the consumer's needs efficiently and establish a loyal group of customers with positive attitudes towards the company's products.

Consumer behaviour can be formally defined as: the acts of individuals directly involved in obtaining and using economic goods and services, including the decision processes that precede and determine these acts. The underlying concepts of this chapter form a system in which the individual consumer is the core, surrounded by an immediate and a wider environment that influences his or her goals. These goals are ultimately satisfied by passing through a number of problem-solving stages leading to purchase decisions. The study and practice of marketing draws on a great many sources that contribute theory, information, inspiration and advice. In the past, the main input to the theory of consumer behaviour has come from psychology. More recently, the interdisciplinary importance of consumer behaviour has increased such that sociology, anthropology, economics and mathematics also contribute to the science relating to this subject.

2 Social and cultural influences

Culture is 'learned' behaviour that has been passed down over time, reinforced in our daily lives through the family unit and through educational and religious institutions. Cultural influences, therefore, are powerful ones and if a company does not understand the culture in which a particular market operates, it cannot hope to develop products and market them successfully in that market.

It is important to recognise that culture, although immensely powerful, is not fixed forever. Changes in culture tend to be slow and are not fully assimilated until a generation or more has passed. An example of this is the custom of marriage, which has been openly challenged in the UK over the past twenty years. When couples first began to set up home together and raise families outside marriage, society, for the most part, adopted an attitude of condemnation, whereas today there is a much more relaxed attitude to those who choose to ignore the convention.

The twentieth century has witnessed significant cultural changes, for example, changing attitudes towards work and pleasure. It is no longer accepted that work should be difficult or injurious to mind or body, and many employers make great efforts to ensure that the work-place is as pleasant an environment as possible, realising that this probably increases productivity. Employees now more frequently regard work as a means to earn the money to spend on goods or services that give them pleasure, and not just to pay for the necessities of life. The shortened working week, paid holidays and labour-saving devices in the home have all led to increased leisure time that influences how, when and what the consumer buys. Another major cultural change in this century is the changing role of women in society. Increased independence and economic power have not only changed the lives of women, but have also influenced society's and women's own perception of their socio-economic role.

In most Western societies today, when considering culture, we must also consider subcultures. Immigrant communities have become large enough in many countries to form a significant proportion of the population of that country, and marketers must consider them because of their interactive influence on society and because, in some cases, they constitute individual market segments for certain product areas. Subcultures can also exist within the same racial groups sharing common nationality. Their bases may be geographical, religious or linguistic differences and marketers must recognise these differences and should regard them as providing opportunities rather than posing problems.

3 Specific social influences

3.1 Social class

This is the most prominent social influence. Traditionally, one of the chief determinants of social class was income. Since pay structures have altered a great deal in terms of the lower C2, D and E categories moving more towards levels previously enjoyed by the higher A, B and C1 categories over the past thirty years or so, classification of consumers on the basis of 'life style' is becoming more meaningful today. Income aside, social class is an indicator of life style and its existence exerts a strong influence on individual consumers and their behaviour. There is evidence to suggest that whatever income level a consumer reaches during his or her lifetime, basic attitudes and preferences do not change radically. As consumers, we usually identify with a particular class or group, but often it is not the actual social class that is revealing, but that which the consumer aspires to. Income and/or education allows young people to 'cross' social class barriers and adopt life styles which are different from those of their parents. They will tend to absorb the influences of the group to which they aspire and gradually reject the life styles of their parents and relations. It can thus be seen that occupation is a strong determinant towards an individual's behavioural patterns, which includes buyer behaviour.

When studying social class, the marketer should make decisions on the basis of information revealed by objectively designed research, without any preconceptions or associations with inferiority or superiority in 'lower' or 'higher' social groupings. This is the only way that changes in behaviour can be identified.

3.2 Reference groups

This can be described as group of people whose standards of conduct mould an individual's dispositions, beliefs and values. This group can be small or large. Reference groups can range from the immediate family to the place of work. They can also be found in a person's social life. An individual is unlikely to deviate too far from the behavioural norms laid down by the members of a club or hobby group. Reference group theory does not state that individualism cannot exist within a group, but it does suggest that even rigid independent thinkers will