Marketing Strategies

Consumer behaviour is the study of the way people seek, purchase, use, evaluate and dispose of products and services. It is the phycology of marketing, and it is used to determine why consumers seek one product alternative from the other.
But why do consumers seek and purchase products? This is linked to the ideology of needs and wants. Needs and wants exist if a consumer is unsatisfied, consumers seek and purchase the products that can provide them with maximum satisfaction.

Consumer behaviour can be used by marketers to create the marketing strategy; targeting each consumer effectively once they understand their needs and wants through the research of consumer behaviour.

What is the marketing strategy?
It is a strategy used to maximise limited resources of an organisation to increase its opportunities in sales and achieve a sustainable competitive advantage.
A marketing strategy is created by market research, which the needs, attitudes and competitors products are evaluated, as well as the packaging, sales and distribution of a product.

How to research the consumer
Use primary and secondary research. Marketers must analyse their consumers, as well as using secondary information to make decisions to target their market. They may do this through: surveys, focus groups, observation, interviews and secondary methods such as online researching.
Marketers may also make decisions for their marketing strategy based on the consumers demographic information. This information includes the consumers: income, educational level, occupation, age, and location. This is known as segmenting the market.
This information is used to predict purchasing habits of the consumer and make key decisions in the product they are selling, such as pricing. For example, marketers targeting consumers will a low income in a low socio-economic area will have to be particularly price conscious when pricing their items.
Marketers must also understand the values of the consumer; this will provide them with more success in their marketing campaigns. An example of this is quality; when targeting consumers who value quality, marketers must sell them products that deliver and re-enforce their values.
Marketers will be unsuccessful in any marketing campaign that doesn’t take into account and reflect the values of the consumer.
Values impacting consumer choices are their knowledge, beliefs, morals and customs, it has a significant impact on the products consumers seek and purchase.

Benefits for an organisation
When the marketing strategy and consumer behaviour are intervened, marketers can expect success in their sales, higher profit margins and competitive sustainability in the market place.
The benefits of using consumer behaviour to create a marketing strategy are the knowledge marketer’s gain about the needs and values of their target market. Once marketers understand this, it is most likely their message will be delivered to the correct target market, resulting in an end sale.

The marketing strategies of many organizations can be modified by simply understanding issues such as:

• The psychologies of how consumers think, feel, reason, and select between different options of brands and products.
• The psychology of how the consumer is influenced by his or her environment which include the culture, media to which the individual is exposed, family etc.
• The behavior of consumers while shopping or making other marketing decisions.
• Restrictions in consumer knowledge or information processing abilities have the ability to influence decisions and therefore the marketing result.
• How consumers’ motivation and decision policies change with different products  that differ in their level of importance or interest that they hold for the consumer.
• How marketers can adapt to these psychologies and improve their marketing campaigns and marketing strategies which may create more impact in the minds of the consumer.