COP3 Research: How Consumerist Habits Effect Design and Marketing

Consumer behaviour has a huge impact on both design and marketing as it can make obvious to marketers what it is that the public want to see. This is how design trends come about and then change so quickly. Having already looked at how digital marketing has altered design trends, it is the consumers reaction that determined the success of that trend, and how they will be continued.

http://smallbusiness.chron.com/effect-consumer-behaviour-marketing-organization-17934.html

The Effect of Consumer Behaviour in Marketing of an Organization

by Rena Dietrich, Demand Media

Debit and credit cards provide information for marketing databases.

Consumer behaviors control the type of marketing strategy that organizations such as small businesses employ, so they conduct studies to determine which strategies are likely to prove most effective. Small businesses need to know the members of their target audience, what they want, where they are located and how they'll react to product promotions. They gather this information via surveys and studying data regarding the past behavior of consumers. Data is obtained from a variety of sources such as marketing databases, sales history and the Internet.

Sales Forecasts

Organizations study past consumer behaviors to determine future sales. Sales forecasts estimate the expected sales for a particular market during a specified time period. Sales forecasts cannot be higher than the market potential and usually fall short of expectations. Different methods exist for forecasting sales, most of which revolve around obtaining information directly from past buyers. Some examples of forecasting methods are quantitative and qualitative. Quantitative forecasts predict the sales of products based on past results and qualitative forecasts predict sales based on expert opinions in the field.

Research Surveys

Research surveys are conducted for the purpose of studying consumer behaviors. They help companies learn what consumers want, as well as how they respond to advertising. They also help pinpoint potential problems. Some examples of research surveys are new-product concept tests, product use tests and brand name recognition. Organizations conduct surveys in person, on the phone, through the mail and online. These surveys target specific population groups who share a similar set of characteristics.

Internet Research

Companies, including small businesses, use the Internet to conduct much of their research, monitoring the Web-based behavior of consumers. Based on their findings, organizations determine the right prices, attributes and sales promotions for their products. They also reveal the optimal places and market conditions in which to sell. The Internet is a cost-effective tool marketing research tool because it pinpoints target areas and is flexible enough to adapt to the changing demands of consumers.

Market Sensing

Market sensing processes can help small businesses develop a competitive advantage by giving them a deeper understanding of customers. Organizations use different resources to study consumer behavior, and the process of compiling that data into a marketing and management information database is called market sensing. The database provides the framework for integrating information and presenting it to management for decision-making purposes.

http://smallbusiness.chron.com/effect-email-marketing-consumer-behaviour-1453.html

The Effect of Email Marketing on Consumer Behaviour

by Kristie Lorette, Demand Media

Emails can affect consumers behaviors.

Email is a common form of communication used for both personal and professional purposes. With businesses coming to understand how effective email marketing can be, email marketing is gaining in popularity. Email marketing tests and studies reveal that email marketing can affect consumer behavior, even convincing consumers to go to websites for more information or to make a purchase.

Cost

Email marketing is cheap; according to Responsys, a marketing company, email marketing costs businesses less than one cent per email sent to consumers. In comparison to cost, the rate of return a business sees from email marketing is high. The immediacy of email marketing can urge customers to buy within minutes of the consumer receiving and reviewing the email.

Interactivity

According to Forrester Research, email marketing makes up about 11 percent of interactive marketing. Since email marketing opens up the line of communication between a business and a consumer, it is a form of interactive or two-way communication. In essence, a business can garner a response from a consumer by sending an email introducing a new product or service, ask for customers' opinions in the form of a survey or send out a coupon for the consumer’s next purchase.

Positive Consumer Behavior

Email marketing is used by businesses to influence the buying decisions of consumers. Approximately 97 percent of businesses are using email marketing to try to convert email recipients into buyers. It must be working because, according to a Smith-Harmon survey, 76 percent of subscribers have made purchases from an email marketing message. Email marketing has not only led to an increase in sales online, but also influences purchases offline. Some offers can be printed and redeemed at the physical location of the store or restaurant. Responsys says that timing, relevance and personalization are email characteristics that can affect how the consumer reacts to the email marketing message.

Negative Consumer Behavior

It also seems that email marketing can bring out negative behavior in consumers. For companies that send unsolicited emails or too many emails, consumers can be impelled to hit the spam button. Some consumers define spam as email from a company that they don’t want to hear from even if they have previously done business with the company or are subscribed to receive information from that company. If the business sends too many emails, the consumer starts to get annoyed and, rather than unsubscribe, 55 percent of email users admit to hitting the spam button instead.

Conversion

Businesses have quickly learned that email marketing is a highly effective way to reach and convert target audiences into paying customers. Email marketing makes it easy for businesses to mark consumer behavior by tracking patterns that emerge when the emails are sent. For example, a business can track how the same email marketing message sent with two different subject lines performs by tracking how many consumers opened one email as compared to the other. Consumer behavior can also be tracked with click thru rates, or how many consumers visited the company website or social media page by clicking on a link in the email marketing message.

http://www.ehow.com/info_8310773_effects-consumer-behavior-marketing.html

Effects of Consumer Behavior on Marketing

Marketing is the business discipline that deals most directly with consumers. Marketers take cues from consumers before making any decision, whether on a product development issue, advertising strategy or pricing plan. Because marketing is inseparably tied to the marketplace, there are a range of different effects consumer behavior has on marketing. Understanding the link between consumer behavior and marketing strategies can boost your business effectiveness overall.

Sales

• Since salespeople can approach and communicate with consumers in a number of ways, individual companies craft sales strategies based on how target customers behave in reaction to different techniques. Some customers are completely turned off by hard-sell tactics, for example, while others are especially susceptible to them. Some customers prefer salespeople walk them through purchase decisions, while others prefer to be left alone until they're ready to buy.

Advertising

• Every detail of advertisements are put in place to appeal to the company's target customers in some way. Advertisers create messages based on proven reactions in their target audience to similar stimulae, to induce them to behave in a similar way. Certain consumer groups are shown to be influenced by celebrity endorsements, for example, while others are completely unaffected.

  Getting people to talk about advertisements is also a factor in advertising strategy. Advertisers carefully study their target audiences to determine exactly what kind of ads induce consumers to start spreading the word about certain products.

Promotions

• The area of price promotions is highly influenced by consumer psychology and behavior. Marketers plan promotional strategies based on statistical models that take a range of factors into account. Marketers consider the exact amount of price discounts, because consumers are proven to take advantage of larger discounts more frequently than smaller discounts. Marketers also consider the way in which discounts are to be redeemed, whether as store-wide price markdowns, mail-in rebates, coupons or other mechanisms, since consumers use different promotional methods in different ways and take advantage of certain methods more than others. Lastly, marketers consider the way in which they advertise promotions to consumers, who react differently to messages sent through various media.

  Mail-in rebates serve as an ideal example of consumer behavior's influence on promotions. The more valuable a mail-in rebate is, the more likely consumers are to mail it in. If a company offers a relatively small mail-in rebate, a significant portion of customers will not redeem it, even though the rebate persuaded them to buy. This brings in more total revenue than an in-store sale, during which all customers pay the reduced amount by default.

Product Development

• Product development no longer takes place in a vacuum. Marketers perform extensive research among their target markets to determine what kind of products and services are missing or underrepresented before beginning to develop product ideas. Marketers consider the way consumers use existing products as a way to spot unmet needs they can serve profitably.