What Is Consumer Behavior? Complete Guide + Examples olvin.com

What is consumer behavior?

We all know the phrase ‘consumer ‘behavior, but what is it? It can be split into two simple parts – the consumers are the individuals and organizations involved in the purchasing and use of a company’s products or services. The behavior is how they perceive and interact with these products or services. This may be either physically or psychologically.

Ways of understanding consumer behavior?

Consumer behavior is a multifaceted concept and can be broken down into different elements. The first step is to look at how consumers perceive a product or service and its alternatives and how they choose between their options.

This then manifests itself in how consumers act in-store, weighing up, and researching their options or purchasing the product or service. It also considers how the consumer is affected by their environment, mainly focusing on three pillars: culture, peers, and media. 

Their culture can completely change their view of a product and how they value it; this could be simply between countries and the social norms in various nations or even from a religious point of view with differences in core beliefs and values.

As well as societal influence, there is an enormous impact from a consumer’s more immediate surroundings: their friends and families. The people we are close to and trust, form a lot of our views and beliefs and consequently affect behavior. This may be from inheriting an opinion or belief from a parent or following a trend in a friendship group.

Naturally, the media plays an inescapable role in forming our views and opinions. We are faced with stimuli from every direction: on your phone, TV, and the daily commute, but how does this affect consumer behavior? As you’d expect, much of this is advertising. With the billions of dollars pushed in front of us every year, the reinforced messages we see undoubtedly impact our purchasing behavior, consciously or not. Similarly, sponsored content and product placement in film and TV impact behavior significantly, with viewed repetition creating social norms for consumers.