Looking Into Your Customer’s Mind – What Happens Between Deciding To Buy Something And Buying It?

Adi Kumar

Dec 24, 2020

5 min read

Customer behavior is always out of the blue regardless of the industry and chances are that it can be influenced by the slightest change in the service you render. Marketers must know what do you think about their brand, the way your thoughts are aligned, and what affects your purchasing decisions in the present. It is because with this information they create a personalized way of communicating with you and present their products to make you take a firm purchasing decision. Realizing your customer’s behavior and offering them as per their desires is what is considered necessary to sustain as a credible brand in this competitive market. Many companies strive to know about their target audience’s habits and preferences over a certain product line by investing a lot of money in customer relations and behavioral researches.
By getting to know what kind of products or features your customer is fascinated by, your brand can make use of the search advertising methods to connect with them and display relevant information related to their recent searches. The websites they have visited on search engines like Google, Yahoo! help your business to obtain data from cookies and pull up those ads that match with their search queries. In this way, companies showcase the real information that their customers want to have, like discount coupons, special offers, etc, and increase the overall engagement. Looking into your customer’s mind allows a business to fully understand the factors basis which he or she makes a rational purchasing decision. These factors can be personal like price value and choice of product, situational factors such as the supply and demand in the market, and social factors like community fondness towards a particular product/service.

Stages Of Customer Purchasing Decisions

Consumer purchasing decisions are affected by numerous factors and the overall process comprises a handful of steps that are essential to go through. A standard purchasing decision includes realizing the actual wants, searching for it over the internet, opting for suitable sellers, evaluating the cost benefits, and then finally making an offer. The following is the detailed information on each step of the process:

Realization Of Needs

The primary step of making a buying decision is to contemplate the wants that require a purchase of a product. These consumer wants come from a problem, for instance, a customer will buy a new pen if he loses his old pen. The problem here is the loss of a pen, which leads to the creation of a need to buy a new pen. Needs also arise due to other factors such as captivating discounts, attractive offers, and advertisements. Therefore, a business must understand the needs of a consumer from your product and how they can be fulfilled by a consumer’s purchasing decision.

Search Analysis

Once the purchase needs are identified and jotted down, the next step is to get over the internet to find suitable searches for the product. In general terms, they shall try to find possible solutions for their problems. Searches could be from online sources like search engines, social media platforms, and offline sources could be from flyers, advertisements, and word of mouth. Here, marketers have to portray the products’ information in a way that is easy to understand and feasible for every potential customer. Product data ought to be mentioned so the customer can make an informed decision, it may include a descriptive feature list, blog posts, customer reviews, etc.

Assessment Of Alternatives

After a customer has considered several product options, the next step comes of evaluating those options basis the needs it will satisfy. However, apart from the needs, the ultimate product option that a customer will choose depends upon its qualitative attributes, such as relevant features, cost, durability, brand image, etc. Since the market is flourished with a variety of products and its alternatives, a customer has a lot of options to choose from, and as a marketer, you need to ensure that your product stays unmatched by the rest of your competitors. If you want their choices to be in your brand’s favor, match your product’s features with the customer’s needs.

Ultimate Purchase Decision

After inspecting a set of options and matching your desires as per the product features, as a customer you have arrived at the final stage that involves the purchase decision. Now, the process includes the role of both the customer and the marketer. As a marketer, the role would include reminding the target audience about the product’s features and business offers. Targetting and retargeting the customers impose the need to make a purchase.

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How To Understand A Customer’s Mind?

Relevant consumer purchase-decisions studies show that even before a customer acknowledges a particular product, he or she explores its market availability and reviews from previous customers. As a customer, you can explore and evaluate the available options to find the right kind of product for you. The information related to these products is subject to resemble your needs and anticipations, thus remaining product-focussed. Apart from the marketing techniques and distinctive advertising approaches, it is also perceived that customer behavior is affected by the shop’s ambiance, the expertise offered while indoor shopping, and the overall time it takes to make the payment for the purchase. If the complete process runs smoothly, it counts as an added advantage to the brand’s image. However, these factors exist only in offline stores, since E-commerce platforms govern via enormous choices of products and options that attract the masses. With the introduction of numerous online platforms, the power is now in the hands of the customer to decide at the earliest. Online shopping allows them to get benefits such as a saved-cart facility, express delivery, item comparison, etc.
Inspect other’s liking and fondness related to a product, often it is observed that customer decision is majorly influenced by what others think about a product and their observations. It is important to generate genuine and useful customer reviews from your target audience to increase your recommendation rate. Eventually, a customer will most likely choose a product if it already has a couple of good ratings. That is why marketers strive to gain five-star reviews from their customers in the initial stages of shopping to ensure that the future shopping experience is positively affected. Time and again marketers make use of content blogs and expert how-to reviews on the business website to gain a professional edge over its competitors. Saffron Edge helps to influence such customers who rely on our expert recommendations and consider your opinions as to quality benchmarks. If you want to know more about the same, please click here.