Understanding Customers
Introduction
Consumers are one of the major stakeholders for any business, regardless of the industry. Consumers help a certain business is growing as well as intensify the business practices of a certain organisation. Thus, consumer behaviour is very vital and must be identified and analysed, as utilisation of consumer behaviour can help the company in increasing the business and profit range, which ultimately can help the company in gaining a competitive advantage in the respective market (Ismagilova et al., 2020). Analysis of the collective behaviour of consumers can help with the company processes of assessing the preferences or trends of the market too. The essay is supposed to discuss comprehensively consumer behaviour in contemporary times. The discussion will include the importance of the individual decision-making process, and the importance of their perception, as well as the standpoints aligned with the society.
Main Body
Business firms across the world are attentive to their business range and always try to formulate a strategy to increase the consumer numbers for the business, as it has a direct link with the revenue return and profit generation of the respective company. The process of consumption of a product or service by the people is linked with their personal preferences and behaviour, thus these aspects must be influenced by a certain company to increase the sales or revenue figure of the company (Frank and Stanszus, 2019). There are kinds of consumers who have the capability of increasing the business range of the respective company; explore, rebel, chooser, communicator, identity seeker, citizen, and activist. These types of consumers can also be divided based on the key behavioural traits; such as unique, traditional, calculating and responsible. These dividends are still relevant in contemporary groups of consumers. The change has been made in the context of influence, now several other factors can influence the behaviour or buying preferences of these consumers. These are; Neuro-marketing, technology incorporation, social media, insightful thinking aligned with individual behaviour, and any intriguing natured innovation. This can be assessed with the consumer culture theory. This requires firms to address the contemporary business settings, and situations and align them with the analysis of individual buying or consumption utilising different perceptions, mostly cultural or social perspectives (Steenkamp, 2019).
Effort and intent towards customer behaviour are essential in the modern customer culture theory, as it helps in considering the beliefs, shortcomings and behavioural traits of the collective consumers. In modern times economy also has a direct influence over consumer choices. Traditionally there are two kinds of economies reflective & automatic, which have directly associated with behavioural insights. Other than economies contemporary collective consumer behaviour can be influenced by the use of technology too. In recent times TUI group is working on developing technology incorporated innovation, which will help in resolving the relevant challenges and influence a copious amount of potential consumers. This is supposed to lead the company in gaining growth (carrers.tuigroup.com, 2022).
In modern times technology plays the harbinger role regarding consumer behaviour. It has direct involvement in the individual decision-making process about any good or service consumption. Decision making refers to the practice a human brain goes through to reach a conclusion or evaluation (Qazzafi, 2019). Any individual reaches a decision, by collecting relevant information. The intention is to reach some resolutions regarding a product or service consumption process. The analysis of consumer behaviour is important, as the information gathered by the company must be aligned with the present interest of the collective population. There are two key kinds of involvement in the decision-making process, from the respective company, it could be either high or low (Jain, 2019). Regardless of the types of involvement, the influencing process has certain steps. These steps go like this; relevant intention, searching, recognition of the challenge or issue, identifying the alternatives, evaluation and at last addressing the choices. The involvement of the company can be influenced by several tactical choices, mostly dependent on novel communication approaches. These approaches help in delivering the accurate amount and kind of information to the potential consumer, so the company can deliberately intrigue the customers. To build a trusted nexus, companies often use familiar faces and personas to intrigue the consumers with the product or service.
For beach, in the UK the company focuses on informing the consumers about the attractive and intriguing qualities of the product to influence them. The marketing team of the company also focuses on communicating with the customers in an efficient and ebullient manner. There are some additional and potential features, which can attract more consumers, like mini-golf, swimming pool, and sports facilities. Also, these features are only available for around 30GBP. Thus, it is a very efficient practice of pricing to attract a large number of consumers (onthebeach.co.uk, 2022).
The perceptual process can be a pivotal tool for analysing consumer psychology. This can be influenced by modern-day business trends and the collective shift towards a common preference. According to Hoegg and Alba (2018), it is important to stay agile and be adequately resourceful to deliver the service or product in alignment with the modern trend or the shift in the public preferences. This also accounts for the thematic or contextual designs of the service or products. It justifies the respective company's efforts towards incorporating aesthetic appeal to traditional or basic products and making profits out of it. The perceptual map can also be very important regarding this. It can be developed with the help of collective information regarding living standards, style, and attitudes required to be assessed to deliver the map. The map will help in considering the feelings, emotions, sentiments and beliefs of the population within the service or products, which can also be influential for the marketing team in developing the product positioning map for the respective marketing team (HO et al., 2021). Tour and travels firms like Virgin holidays have the establishment to carry on progressive business, but in 2020, the COVID-19 outbreak had caused a huge declination in their profit and was estimated at around 59,000 only (statista.com, 2021). Now the business can be improved with attitude theory regarding consumer marketing. It focuses on unfavourableness and favourableness about a product or service (Lin et al., 2018). Virgin holidays can focus on the respective population's favourableness and then deliver by it.
Consumer in society refers to a specific segment from the respective market, which has an intention to prioritise the process regarding owning the goods. The focus remains on the practice of buying the product first from the relevant corporation (Dholakia and Firat, 2019). The perceptual map helps in feeding relevant information for the buying and owning process, like information regarding consumer attitude or beliefs assessment. This also has segments like the Reference group, which is accountable for influencing the consumers and impacting the decision-making process, though the influence and impact can be both positive and negative. Post COVID-19 TUI group focuses on delivering accurate measures of safety and improving the quality of goods and services in times of crisis. This was intended to impress the reference group and then get the potential scope of increasing the sales of the company. The end to end service by the TUI group has helped with the salubrious and attractive state of the services (tuigroup.com, 2022). This can be transferred to unintentional promotion, via methods like Word of Mouth or more relevant e-WOM. In this way, the consumer in society can be influenced by the product or service and as an impact; it can drive the companies in conducting communication and serving the potential consumers.
Moreover, the collective culture of consumption can be monitored and managed with the help of analysing and forging the respective organisational culture. Hofstede's cultural theory can be utilised in this case, to consider the dependency of the organisational culture on the respective population's collective character traits (Gallego-Álvarez and Pucheta-Martínez, 2021). In the contemporary business for the global businesses aspects like Individualism, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity, and indulgence can be useful while delivering the service or manufacturing the product. These aspects have a direct link with the social context, thus the index score for these aspects for a particular community can help in influencing consumers on social grounds.
According to Mehta et al. (2020), COVID-19 and the economic volatility has become the biggest driver of change in the collective consumer behaviour in the context of market space or Industries. In the case of tourism, COVID-19 influenced the technological advancement and somewhat influenced its incorporation of it into the tourism sector, which has presented a potential solution for the traditional yet modern issues or challenges like; customising guides to navigate small trips and tours with the help of digital tools and applications (White, 2021). In terms of future trends, virtual experience and automation can significantly shift consumer behaviour and decision making. Addressing that, Premiere Inn has incorporated AI with their What3words process to influence consumers with their improved navigation system (premierinn.com, 2022). In general dataset analysis and relevant big data, utilisation can be a tool for managing the business services by the consumer trends (forbes.com, 2021).
Conclusion
The essay mostly focused on the tropes relevant to consumer behaviour. It has covered the aspects like the intent regarding consumer behaviour which had not changed over the years. It also discussed the contemporary influence which has a direct impact on the decision making the individual. It has discussed culture theory like Hofstede along with consumer culture theory. This also showed the utilisation of perceptual maps and consumers in society for gaining enhanced revenue. In the end, it has stated the impact of the involvement and the good brand presence has on the population and how it is channelled in WOM and e-WOM. All these discussions are used for showing the future technology-based trends affecting contemporary consumer behaviour.
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