Being able to convince a consumer that a product offered is what they ought to be buying encompasses the central objective for both marketing and advertisement agencies that represent a given corporation. While marketing prepares various tactics and strategies, advertising serves to implement them and spread the message (Shethna, 2016). Success in the positioning of a brand as the best possible solution to a consumer’s needs or problems, companies must take advantage of the various psychological, demographical, lifestyle, and psychographic tenets that explain and subsequently predict what people spend their hard earned money on (Shethna, 2016). In general, no more than four basic factors dictate the decision making process of the average consumer.
Initially, a customer’s needs serve as the primary motivation behind their expenditure behavior. When one is hungry, they purchase food. To feel safe, they purchase protective gear. For appearing stylish, they purchase brand name apparel. Enabling self improvement and accomplishment to realize their purpose leads to the purchase of an education. The former is specifically known as the pinnacle of the hierarchical pyramid of human needs first introduced by psychologist Abraham Maslow (Mott, n.d.). The more simplistic and basic the need is, the greater a customer’s priority it becomes to fulfill it with a solution (a product) (Shethna, 2016). When a corporation is able to convince a consumer that their service or product meets of their many drives for motivation, they can be seduced into purchasing what is being sold. Therefore, the basic task of advertising is to remove any confusion and solidify the association of the product with the fulfillment of the consumer’s needs (Mott, n.d.).
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"Psychological, Lifestyle and Psychographic Factors: Influence on Demand".
The selective manner in which the brain maps, observes, and processes information from the surrounding world forms the basis of human perception. To acquire attention, a company can use humor, surprise, various shock tactics, or any other mechanism that almost forces a group of people to listen and watch. Upon receiving the necessary undivided attention, a customer must be induced to remember a company’s message without unwanted filtering through a distortion of personal philosophy and outlooks (Mott, n.d.). Information sticks best through repetition, and such a basic concept explains the meaning behind the display of the same ad over and over. In addition, it explains why it repeats the most important part of its message so many times, such as a musical rendition of a phone number (Mott, n.d.).
Consumers can acquire information necessary to make their decisions from advertising and especially when related to products whose categories stretch past their own experience. In the event that a commercial message convinces a consumer to simply try a product yet post-purchase experiences fail to satisfy, a consumer learns to avoid said product even if it changes in the future to the point that it negates any prior dissatisfaction (Chand, n.d.). Consequently, the advertiser must attempt to educate consumers a new message surrounding the previously faulty product in order to remove prior conditions and favor the new information.
This mental conditioning directly explains the ways in which gift bundles with purchases, “but wait, there’s more”, and reward systems work to train a consumer to prefer one product in a given category over a different product (Chand, n.d.). Advertisers and marketing agencies spend so much of their budgets on this very strategy for the simple fact that a consumer’s belief about a service, product, or seller directly affects what they buy and whether they buy at all. If a corporation is observed to share one’s own values, it may very well attract one’s business (Chand, n.d.). Finally, if one perceives a product’s competition as harmful and the product itself beneficial, then one will avoid the other and move toward the first product.
