At the heart of every business is the need to understand their customers and what makes them tick. Having in-depth knowledge of who your customers are is good, but knowing why they buy something is even better.
Through consumer behaviour research, businesses can study several facets of how customers interact with your company and their motivations behind purchasing a product or service. The insights gathered from a well-executed study enable brands to create offerings that resonate with their consumers.
Defining Consumer Behaviour Research
Consumer research focuses on studying customer actions and underlying motives during the buyer journey. It involves a thorough analysis of consumers’ behavioural, mental, and emotional processes when selecting and using products or services. This includes:
{% icon icon_set="fontawesome-5.14.0" name="Alternate Arrow Circle Right" style="SOLID" height="15" purpose="decorative" title="Alternate Arrow Circle Right icon" %} Buying Habits
{% icon icon_set="fontawesome-5.14.0" name="Alternate Arrow Circle Right" style="SOLID" height="15" purpose="decorative" title="Alternate Arrow Circle Right icon" %} Influential Factors (Personal, Psychological, Social)
{% icon icon_set="fontawesome-5.14.0" name="Alternate Arrow Circle Right" style="SOLID" height="15" purpose="decorative" title="Alternate Arrow Circle Right icon" %} Customer Sentiment Around Alternative Products/Services
Importance of Consumer Behaviour Research
1. Segmentation
Conducting consumer research provides companies with a complete understanding of their buyer’s tendencies and preferences. Thus, helping them distinguish and segment their customers from one another.
Even though businesses cater to a specific demographic, you could still have variations in each consumer group in terms of their wants and needs. Determining those variations through consumer research helps paint a clear picture of your buyer personas, allowing businesses to tailor their strategies and cater to each persona or segment accordingly.
2. Personalization
Performing a thorough analysis of customer behaviour gives companies the opportunity to provide personalized content that is unique to their customers. Being more attuned to customers allows companies to optimize and adapt their tactics (e.g., marketing efforts, sales promotions, customer service) for better customer engagement and satisfaction.
3. Product Improvement and Development
Studying consumer behavior is essential in gaining actionable insights that fuel current and future product development. It could be used to identify desirable and undesirable product features, uncover potential opportunities, and test new concepts.
By asking consumers questions such as what they like or dislike about the products or services, what changes they would make, and what they feel is missing, businesses can identify problem areas that they could improve upon to increase the success rate of new products or ideas.
4. Customer Retention
Knowing your target market is not just effective in attracting new customers, but it is also useful in retaining them as well. When customers are satisfied with the product or service they receive, chances are they will repeat that purchase and continue to engage with that business.
Frequent interaction with the company leads consumers to become more exposed to content such as emails, ads, or websites, that could influence them to make purchases. This increases the consumer’s familiarity with the brand and, in turn, also increases brand loyalty.
Consumer Behaviour And Marketing Research
Consumer behaviour is one of the various disciplines being studied under the umbrella of market research. Market research investigates a broad market segment while a consumer behaviour study narrows down its scope to a specific product or brand.
Businesses can apply various market research techniques to uncover all key aspects of consumer behaviour. From the vast pool of sources available today, researchers can turn to secondary sources such as government statistics, news reports, and academic journals to study consumer behaviour.
While secondary sources are a good starting point for collecting data, businesses would benefit more from conducting primary research to understand their customer’s behaviour. By facilitating primary or first-hand consumer research themselves, companies will be able to address any specific needs or questions that they may have.
Understand Your Target Market Through Civicom® Marketing Research Services
Civicom® Marketing Research Services is the leader in providing creative and technical excellence for the success of your global market research. Our suite of services includes interview and focus group facilitation, a mobile insights app, an online community platform, multimedia curation, plus other useful tools created for your research needs.