Consumer behavior: How understanding your audience drives marketing success

In this post, we dive into consumer behavior – an incredibly fascinating topic, in my opinion, as it deals with the psychology behind marketing.

Marketing is fundamentally about understanding your target audience and tailoring your strategies accordingly.

In other words, it’s about people.

To effectively target your marketing strategies, it’s essential to know and understand your audience’s behavior.

What motivates them to purchase from one brand and not another? What values and emotions come into play when making buying decisions?

In this post, we take a closer look at all of this.

Let’s get started!

What does consumer behavior mean?

Consumer behavior is a broad term that covers users’ actions before, during, and after a purchase – in other words, any type of behavior throughout the users’ respective buying journeys.

This can involve a range of different behavior patterns, such as impulse buying, purchases based on influencer recommendations, considering purchases via reviews, and more.

Consumer behavior is thus a highly complex concept, and there are several different ways to view it, depending on whether you approach it from an economic, psychological, or sociological perspective.

In recent times, a lot of development has occurred in neuromarketing, which also takes consumer behavior into account and can measure the cognitive and emotional processes that accompany a consumer’s journey when purchasing a product.

Why it’s important to understand your target audience’s consumer behavior

As mentioned, consumer behavior is a fundamental characteristic to understand about your target audience, as it will help determine which marketing strategies will be most effective.

This involves crucial data about your audience’s needs and motivations to make purchases, and the more data you have on your customers’ consumer behavior, the better you can reach them with your marketing efforts.

The most common types of consumer behavior

What’s exciting about consumer behavior is that there isn’t just one behavior to consider. People are complex, and so is their behavior.

For this reason, you can roughly categorize four types of consumer behavior, which can serve as a guideline to understand the motivations behind a target audience’s actions.

Complex consumer behavior

Complex consumer behavior is characterized by extensive considerations before a purchase, often involving more expensive investments like a house, a car, or similar.

There will be a high degree of involvement, as there is a need to compare many brands and types to ensure the most successful investment possible.

Variety-seeking consumer behavior

Variety-seeking consumer behavior comes into play when there are many brands to choose from, but a lower risk and thus a lower level of involvement associated with switching between them.

This could involve products like snacks and beverages, but also perfumes and personal care items.

Habitual consumer behavior

People are creatures of habit – and some more than others!

Habitual consumer behavior occurs when purchasing everyday items like milk, toothpaste, etc.

Here, there is typically little difference between brands, and users often don’t consider alternatives, opting instead for the product they usually choose.

Dissonance-reducing consumer behavior

Dissonance-reducing consumer behavior, as the name suggests, refers to the attempt to reduce a minor conflict that may arise for the consumer when making a purchase decision.

There may be little difference between brands, but if the user is unsure of the features and qualities they want, there will be a high level of involvement, involving many considerations and a close examination of reviews to avoid regretting the final purchase.

This could involve products like washing machines, vacuum cleaners, etc.

What are consumer behavior types based on?

The consumer behavior types mentioned above are based on a wide range of sociological and psychological factors.

There may be cultural factors or parameters based on the social contexts the target audience belongs to, which determine the habits of the group when making purchases.

There could also be psychological or more personal factors influencing the motivation to make a purchase and the behavior behind it.

The motivation for a purchase can be a complex issue to delve into, and there are now many theories and models to analyze this.

One of them is the classic Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, but other theories have also emerged.

Here, purchase motives for online consumers are also important to consider, especially when taking into account the proportion of purchases made online.

How to obtain information about consumer behavior

Information about your target audience’s consumer behavior can be obtained in several ways.

Among the most classic tools for gathering data about your audience is Google Analytics, which can provide a general overview of your audience’s specific characteristics, their activity that led them to your website, and finally their behavior once they’ve landed on your site.

Hotjar is another example of a tool that offers heatmaps of your website, providing insight into user behavior once they’ve clicked onto your site.

CRM systems like HubSpot are also excellent for obtaining information about your target audience’s consumer behavior.

Here, you can gain insight into consumers’ interaction with your email marketing, conversion rates, and much more.