Consumer behavior is expected to evolve rapidly accordingly to people’s demands, opportunities, cultural values, lifestyle, and market trends. Considering those constant consumer alterations, any marketing strategy should be highly flexible and predisposed to adapt, acquire and meet the needs of the new tendencies. It is evident that consumer behavior theory frames marketing strategies by supporting the detection and fulfilling consumers’ needs. Nonetheless, the connection is reciprocal since marketing campaigns modify and shape consumer behavior as well (Mothersbaugh et al., 2020). In this course, I explored consumer behavior in relation to marketing decision-making, purchasing choices, and customer satisfaction. In my future position, the knowledge achieved may be applied to define the target market audience and create the best possible marketing campaign based on the audience’s attitudes.
The most significant insight is that populations’ needs vary greatly depending on age, gender, views, values, social status, location, and financial state. Therefore it is essential to define a particular segment of the audience instead of attempting to attract everyone. Outlined target market audience allows examining potential consumers’ behaviors and demands, creating a suitable advertising campaign, and controlling behavioral variables or demand changes. It is vital to create a more specific customer segmentation that chooses preferences according to the social and financial peculiarities of the group in order to create a more valuable proposition to the customers. Thus, the knowledge I gained throughout this course may be applied to determine the target audience and explore its needs, such as price, convenience, experience, reliability, and transparency.
Developing an appropriate marketing strategy contributes to catching customers’ attention and attracts consumers to purchase goods or services. Introducing their book, Mothersbaugh et al. (2020) claim that “utilization of knowledge of consumer behavior in the development of marketing strategy is an art” (iii). The authors state that marketing decisions and strategies based on consumer behavior “are more likely to be successful than those based on hunches or intuition, and thus create a competitive advantage” (Mothersbaugh et al., 2020, p. 8). This course teaches to apply a more conscious customer-oriented approach and human judgment within product placement and promotion to create efficient marketing campaigns.
In my opinion, three best practices to follow in the field of consumer behavior include:
- Selecting target market, on which firm focuses marketing effort.
- Customer-centered approach: focusing on the consumer needs, exploring their perspective, promoting customer satisfaction, and creating marketing campaigns based on consumer behavior, attitudes, and demands.
- Social marketing: “the application of marketing strategies and tactics to alter or create behaviors that have a positive effect on the targeted individuals or society as a whole” (Mothersbaugh et al., 2020, p. 8). Thus, examining consumer behavior allows defining strategies that promote beneficial outcomes for selected audiences and society.
Reference
Mothersbaugh, D. L., Hawkins, D. I., & Kleiser, S. B. (2020). Consumer behavior: Building marketing strategy (14th ed.). McGraw-Hill.