BUYER DECISIONS
What Influences Buyer Decision ?
By Daisy Munee
Why do you buy what you buy ? Does the price of a product influence your decision to choose one brand over another ? Or does the emotional connection with a brand influence your decisions when purchasing a good or service ?
Most times we buy a good or a service to satisfy a need or a want and chances are high that we have an emotional connection to the needs and wants that we have so we choose a product or service that we believe will satisfy the need or want in the best way possible . Other times we buy a product or service simply because someone close to us has told us about the product or service . Our curiosity to want to try out a brand may also motivate us to purchase a good or a service . In some instances , what we see on billboards , our televisions , our school media pages or what we hear being promoted motivates our purchase trends .
Thus , emotional connection , prices , word of mouth from friends and family , advertisements and all sorts of visuals arouse a need to want to try out a product or a service . Sometimes , what we use is highly influenced by what the generations before us used as we grew up . Most are the times you hear people say ‘ I use product ABC because my mother and her mother used it .’
This means that the people close to us , those that we have an emotional connection with , highly influence the choice of brands that we are going to use because we can emotionally identify with that particular brand due to the emotional connections we have with the brand .
As humans , we are always trying to find pleasure in whatever we choose or to avoid pain by making the decisions that we make in our lives and these decisions include choosing the brands that we want to use to satisfy our needs and wants . This means that the need to find pleasure or avoid pain plays a key role in influencing how we do things , which includes our purchasing patterns . Hence marketers need to understand how to ensure that their buyers are emotionally connected to their brands . This is because if brands have strong emotional connections with their customers , then they will enjoy higher pay-offs in the long run as brands will be passed from one generation to another .
“ Why do you buy what you buy ? Does the price of a product influence your decision to choose one brand over another ? Or does the emotional connection with a brand influence your decisions when purchasing a good or service ?”
Although pricing and advertising play a very critical role in the life cycle of the product such as helping in brand positioning in cases where an organization wants their product to be viewed as a high-quality product , people tend to believe the higher the price , the higher the quality , the right pricing can enable the organization realize maximum profits as it maximizes its margins . Pricing also plays a very critical role in introducing a new product to the market as advertising helps in reminding customers of the existence of a product as well as educating them on any new product among other roles .
It is very critical for marketers and businesses to ensure that their brands connect with the customers . This can be attained by ensuring that a brand has personal benefits to its customers . Businesses should ensure that the brand is satisfying the needs and wants of the buyers . Through conducting market research and collecting market intelligence , marketers should ensure that brands either add pleasure to the buyers or reduce their pain points . Marketers should also ensure that their brands have personalities that are aligned to their values and beliefs . They should ensure that the brand has a story to tell and a story that buyers can identify with . In order to connect with customers , marketers need to learn the best method to use when advertising . Not all ads align with the brand one is selling and thus there ’ s need to ensure ads identify with buyers . This can be done by finding out the need the brand satisfies and aligning it with the needs of the market which can easily trigger genuine emotions from the customers leading to emotional connections .
Marketers should ensure that their products are well priced in the market . Right pricing dictates how the customers view a product and how they classify it in their activities thus making pricing a key factor when trying to create emotional connection between a brand and its buyers . Strive to find a correct balance between the price of a product and how well it connects with the buyers ! ■
Daisy Munee is a marketing professional currently working with Capwell Industries Limited . You can commune with her via mail at : Muneedaisy @ gmail . com .
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MAL 46 / 22 ISSUE