EMOTIONS AND HOW COMPANIES UNDERSTAND AND USE IT TO INFLUENCE ON CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR - Essay Example

? EMOTIONS AND HOW COMPANIES UNDERSTAND AND USE IT TO INFLUENCE ON CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR Submission Emotions and How Companies Understand and Use It to Influence on Consumer Behavior Consume emotional behavior deals with the study of organizations, individuals, groups and the methods they use to secure, select, and employ experiences, product, services, or ideas to meet the needs, and the effect of these methods on the society and the consumers. Consumer emotional behavior is a mixture of elements of economics, sociology, psychology and social anthropology. It attempts to examine the behavior processes behind decision making of buyers at groups and individual level (Arora 2013, 53). In addition, it studies the characters of individual buyers, for example, their location and behavior changes to understand people’s need and wants. It also assesses the impact family, reference groups, friends and society have on the consumer. The study of customer emotional behavior depends on the consumer buying conduct. The customer plays three important roles: user, buyer and payer. Research conducted by Foxall shows that it is difficult to predict the behavior of consumers (Foxall 2013, 24). Relationship marketing best analyzes the behavior of the customer because it focuses on the importance of the buyer or customer. It emphasizes on customer relationship management, customization, consumer retention, one-to-one marketing and personalization. Social function is divided into welfare function and social choice. One of the most difficult and important task is to understand why consumers make decisions. For example, a teenager drinks Pepsi from Pepsi Company and not Coke from Coca-Cola Company, or the choice to drive a minivan car and not an SUV. In the examples, the product feature (De Cremer 2008) rarely drives the consumer’s emotional choice. The consumers’ choice is deeper than the features of the product, and so marketers need to understand the drivers of consumers at an emotional level in order to create a persuasive message. To understand what triggers this emotional decision, marketers do qualitative research and quantify the result. The method is effective though the managers are asking the researchers what to do to make the consumers buy their products and not wander away. The traditional method fails to analyze what triggers the consumers’ emotions and focus more on the products and their benefits (Saad 2011, 64). The research ends up with a result that is not sufficient because they fail to get what captures the mind and the heart of the buyers. Researchers also employ Means-end Approach method, which applies interview technique. The method uncovers consequences, personal values and emotions that trigger the choice of the consumers. It consists of full-trained interviewers who gather quality data and get it coded for analysis (Foxall 2008, 32). The researchers gets to understand consumer choice and put advertising messages of their brands or products to get their consumer choice. The message is persuasive and drives consumers’ behavior. There are six methods to get customers to buy products. Customers buy products because of their benefits not the features associated with them. Most marketing and sales adverts talk about features leaving out benefits for customers to figure them out. The first way is letting the customers differentiate between a feature and benefit. A feature is what a service or product does while a benefit is what the service or product means to the customer. The second way is avoiding use of big difficult words. This leaches off emotion. For example, this advert is wrong: Robust implementation of 347986protocol. Something like this is more appealing: One can connect nearly everywhere. The third method is using clear but plain language. A customer is able to recollect the benefits of product if simple strong words that trigger emotions are used. The fourth way is making your benefit concrete .This means making your benefits more specific and avoiding empty adjectives and adverbs. For example, this is wrong: Our software application makes you more productive. Stating it in this manner is right: Our clients report 50% decrease in price about double the company average (Bayne 2013, 49). Keeping a short list of benefits also attracts customers. Most people are able to keep a few thoughts in their mind and a long list would probably cause confusion. Finally put emphasize on what is unique to the company or firm. For example, computers sells at a higher rate of 60% than any other company does. Researchers and marketers have devised a better method of manipulating consumers’ emotions in buying their products. This is through advertisement, which means any paid way of non – personal production and promotion of goods, services and ideas through mass media like magazines, radio, and television and newspapers (Hunt 2008). Today not every advertisement is paid, personal or sponsored. It involves making something known. Manipulation in the marketing world means dealing with something skillfully and efficiently. In defining manipulation companies try to explain what influences consumer behavior and how to control it. There are four theories that try to define consumer behavior. Psychological models, stimulus respond models, sociological models, and economic models. The psychological aspect is studied to help understand the problem .To understand how companies manipulate the minds of the consumers, the aspect that influences the mind of consumers are studied. Motivation is the first aspect. This is what drives or influences a consumer to buy a particular product. The drive comes from the consumers’ wants and needs, influenced by factors like religion, wealth, and sex of an individual. According to Maslow’s hierarchy needs are divided into two; those connected with desires and the essential to live. When consumers meet safety and psychological needs, they look for other desires or wishes. Following this, companies try to manipulate and exploit consumers’ perceptions by offering the needs they require. Consumers have different needs so the companies expose them to the more human wants. Culture has also influences needs (Malhatro 2013, 78). For example, in the developed countries, a social network is a need but in the developing countries, not all have access to the network. Manipulating is not focusing on advertising people needs but creating the need itself and changing the thinking of consumers. Facebook is a good example of a want created. Before, not everyone needed to be on a social network, but the majority of the world presently puts it to use. Perception is also another tool for manipulation in advertisement process. Perception is how someone perceives things and responds to them. Marketers and researchers have proved that people can react differently towards the same stimuli to change in context, situation or time. Reactions have been categorized into three forms: selective retention, selective attention and selective distortion. In selective attention, the customer screens out most of the stimuli, in distortion adjust the current mindset and in retention, the customer remembers information that agrees with one’s belief and attitude. Companies are able to manipulate with their advertisement at a particular time, place and to specific individuals to buy their products. Every product targets a particular group of people. All consumers have exposure to advertisements that can make them buy goods they did not intend to (Samli 2012, 34). Using various research and studies, companies are able to predict their customers’ choice and influence their decision. Blog and discussion changed to methods advertising and monetizing. Used examples are affiliate links, Google ad words or direct payment. Blog authors use the curiosity of people, which is a psychological technique to get them reading their posts. When people make purchases, they undergo different stages: identifying the problem, searching information, the emergence and evaluation of choices, purchase decision, buying and post purchase evaluation. A consumer experiences different reaction and motivation at every level and the decision to buy is limited, extensive thinking or impulse. Companies must influence and manipulate the decision of the customer at every stage (D’amico 2013, 14). For example, when a company changes habits to impulse buying, it is manipulation. In consequence, customers do spontaneous buying without caring much about the little cash spent. Different techniques used to get buyers into buying companies product. There are three techniques: salesperson’s technique, psychological technique and guerilla marketing. The salesperson’s technique uses persuasive methods such as time. This method persuades the customers to buy a certain product because of the restricted time for purchase (Carson 2023, 56). The aim is to frighten people to purchase it before the offer time expires since there would be no other chance to get it at a lower price. The product campaigned about is not usually the cheapest in the market. The companies do it in the pretense of price changes in the future. Buy one get one free is usually a permanent or limited offer. Consumers rush to get the products thinking there would never be an opportunity like that again. The method creates a chance to sell something even when there is no call for it. Loyalty cards are mostly in supermarket and big retails. This is where consumers buy a product that is so much common and offered something free for purchasing it there. This includes, extra voucher for a birthday or collect points. Guerilla marketing is a tool of achieving straight goals such as joy and profit using unusual methods of investing energy instead of money. Guerilla methods catch attention in a strange manner. It gets its benefits during the moment of astonishment and surprise. Guerrilla marketing uses strange innovations such as rousing the public, getting side attention, and causing fear or anxiety (Malhotra 2009, 47). It gets us off guard and leads to an emotional response to its advantage because emotions like shock, laughter and sadness are its great sellers. The marketers versed with the principles of human psychology make people buy what they want. Pricing is another important tool of marketing. Marketers need to devise proper prices for their customers to be fair to the customers and make fair prices (Paracuraman 2009, 23). Companies use tables to give an illusion of price for example a decrease in price to get psychological pricing on the consumers. Companies are also using idols and dreams of people to buy their product (Jacobucci 2010, 90). Manipulation is effected by using ones dreams and emotions like having a good future, life, belonging to a social organization, supreme race, equal life, nationalism and sharing a culture. Marketing has several effects; some customers are obliged to buy a particular product bought by others. The product could be new in the market or the customer want to connect with others like TV, Skype or laptop (Wild 2009, 78). There is a snob effect where one longs to purchase a unique product, which no one else have, or a few people have it. Examples of this could be luxurious clothing, expensive cars like Aston Martin or Rolls-Royce. The less the product is with few people the higher the price (Bradley 2013, 45). The expensive products in the market are few and limited in the market, and the companies that produce them target the affluent populace. Codes of advertising regulate deceitful adverts. Responsible advertising is practiced which includes; disguised advertising technique, accuracy and clarity, price claims, unacceptable portrayals and depictions, safety and advertising to children. The codes devised to protect consumers’ rights because advertisement can influence and manipulate their decisions (Kolb 2008, 65). Advertising has both negative and positive effects on a consumer emotional choice. Companies use the understanding of consumers’ emotions to influence them buy their product. Reference List ARORA, R., & MAHANKALE, N. R. (2013). Marketing research. Delhi, PHI Learning. BAYNE, R., & JINKS, G. 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