Psychology Behind Purchasing Decisions

Marketing and Psychology are Deeply Interlinked

This is a topic that transcends lifecycle marketing and applies to your marketing function as a whole. Consumer psychology has been a personal research interest of mine since A-Level – that’s the best part of a decade ago. More specifically, I have always been fascinated by how the events in an individual’s life can greatly influence their perception toward marketing, and the resulting purchase of certain products.

?I am such a fan of the consumer decision-making process that my final university project was titled -

“How personalisation can improve the effectiveness of email automations within Klaviyo using AB testing”.

In this project, I examined how formal and informal changes in copywriting can impact open rate, click rate and conversions. These copy changes were based on previous research into consumer psychology and applied to a comprehensive consumer decision-making process model.

And before you say...

"But Nathan this is academic work, not a real-world application"

FALSE. This project was done on a real client.

I applied consumer psychology frameworks to one partner who manages an e-commerce store making $16m in annual recurring revenue. If I can use this framework for growth, you can too!

This blog is a quick read but will deliver high value when it comes to thinking more about the positioning and delivery of your marketing messaging, rather than applying the one-size fits all approach.

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The Core Decision-Making Framework (Blackwell et al., 1980)

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This importance of this framework is that it recognises the consumer as being the focus of marketing activity, and stipulates that a ‘successful’ business must understand and utilise knowledge of the customer to achieve business objectives (such as customer acquisition or retention).

More specifically, businesses can account for environmental and individual differences within their marketing efforts, as the more favourable the marketing stimulus (to the specific users), the greater influence you will have within the decision-making process.

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Marketing Gone Wrong

Whether it’s an image, word or colour, a myriad of elements within your marketing message acts as a stimulus to those who see it. Let’s take a closer look at the impact of colour with a real-life example.

With reference to the Blackwell, Engel and Miniard’s (1980) decision-making model, perception of colour falls under ‘Information Processing’ as consumers are required to carry out an information search. Information is stored into our memory through stimuli from the external environment, this is the perceptual process (Solomon et al., 2016).

Tofle et al. (2004) stated emotional reactions evoked by colour are of learning associations based on culture and characteristics of an individual. In Gregory (1971) top-down processing, these associations are known as a ‘perceptual set’ which stem from a person’s schema influencing the perception of a stimulus (marketing message) upon an internal search.

?The importance in sensitivities of marketing messages can be highlighted in the application to Pepsi using the top-down processing model.

Originally, in the 1950’s Pepsi in Southeast Asia was regal blue (See Image 1). However, Pepsi changed the colour of the stimulus to light ice blue (See Image 2). In this area of the world, light ice blue carries association of death and mourning which is then applied to Pepsi’s current marketing message and resulted in a loss of market share to Coca-Cola (Czinkota and Ronkainen, 2007).

Pivoting Marketing Messages to Stay Relevant

It is not surprising that as time passes, our perception to certain stimuli changes. One of my favourite examples that I got to witness growing up was the fast-food industry, specifically McDonalds.

I am sure many can remember the combination of red and yellows together, but it is no coincidence these were their core colours. Still to this day, the colour red can create a sense of urgency and stimulate appetite (Singh, 2006), whilst yellow can be described as cheery and attention grabbing.

Between 2009-2010, the fast-food giant began to reposition its brand to a ‘healthier’ fast-food by introducing the colour green – sounds simple, but it worked. Why? Because the colour green (especially at this time) was perceived as organic and healthy.

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?The Key Takeaways?

1.????Think About Your Target Customer

There is credibility to having a customer persona. After all, every individual has similarities and differences. And it is likely that people who purchase your product will share similar values and even pain-points (although we cannot bucket people perfectly).

With your customers, the stimuli they are made aware of in the form of marketing messages can be perceived differently. So, when you’re creating an ad, landing page, or email. Pause and think about your customer first. Is your message truly created for them? Is the benefit you’re communicating aligned with the solution they require? Re-visit the decision-making framework to support your reflection.

These reflective moments in your marketing can turn a good campaign into a great one.

2.???Your Customers Knows Best, Listen to Them

The faster you harness the power of community, the faster you can learn and subsequently tighten messaging that works, creative that can cut through the noise and campaigns that deliver better results.

When speaking to founders, I often hear something along the lines of “but asking my customers questions makes us look amateur”. However, when you place yourself in the perspective of the customer, having a company that values my opinion and listens is a company that I am much more willing to support and stick with. After all, it is hard to find brands that do this effectively.

Take time to reach out to your customers with the greatest AOV and CLV, be human and learn from them. What do they love about the product, what do they dislike, and what do they think you can do better at. This information is invaluable and can help you support potential leads in their decision-making process.

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3.???Test, Test, Test

Another cliché saying, but here we go… there is no such thing as failure. Once you’ve spent time reflecting on your customer and the marketing that may work, get executing.

Measure what is working well and what isn’t. Create a log of your learnings and take them forward into your future marketing efforts.

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Experience Growth with GrowTrio

My name is Nathan, my team and I have generated $40m for e-commerce brands using Klaviyo email & SMS marketing. If you're interested in becoming a success story and partner, you know where I am!

Just drop me a LinkedIn message, email ([email protected]) or go ahead and book a free call https://calendly.com/nathan-growtrio/15min?month=2023-06 ?

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