What makes people buy?

When you walk into almost any store, you're immediately overloaded with sights, sounds, smells, and various things to touch. This barrage on your senses are hand-picked for one goal: to make you spend more.

It shouldn't be surprising that the main sense that retail stores go after is your sense of sight. What is surprising are the subtle cues they leave around to get us to spend more. These are small symbolic cues that have a big impact on what we decide to buy, and how long we're willing to stay in a store.

Color has a big impact on our shopping choices. Each color often evokes or reprerensent a feeling. For example red is almost the color associated with sales which makes us buy more because we think it´s cheap.

Another interesting strategy I found was that the retailers want you to get lost in the store so you will see more of their products. Take Ikea, for example. The store is structured in a way that you're bound to get turned around and lost. This causes you to see more than you need to, and in turn you end up with a couple more items in your hand. We were discussing this problem in our team because we also thought that it´s easy to get lost in Sokos too.

The sounds you hear in a store also complement the overall image a store is trying to produce. A lot of retailers pipe in music specific to a store. Places in the mall targeted at teens tend to play high-volume pop music, whereas a high-end jeweler might play classical music.

One study from the European Journal of Scientific Research suggest that music at a loud volume gets people to move through the store quicker, whereas slower and quieter music makes them stay longer. Slow tempo pop music might make you spend more on impulse purchases and the effect of tempo and key might affect mood enough to alter shopping choices as well.

The perfect scent makes us willing to spend more money. Our senses bypass our conscious mind so if we smell something nice or something that evoke our memory is it more likely we spend more money. Scents in stores can indirectly affect our view of a product's quality, and when done right gives us a more favorable experience of shopping as a whole.

Have you ever thought about  that all those carefully designed stores aren't structured just to assult your eyeballs with shiny objects. They're also about forcing you to touch more things. Why? Because touching tends to lead to purchasing for most of us. Essentially, the more time an item spends in your hand, the more likely you are to purchase it. 

I have never thought about these things how a store in a way manipulate their customers. Actually I have to admit that it´s also true, at least for me. I think this is one way to  try to understand the customers and why they buy.

http://lifehacker.com/how-stores-manipulate-your-senses-so-you-spend-more-mon-475987594

TRIBES USED IN THE MARKETING FIELD

For this week, we decided to work about tribes to get to know more specifically our target and to try to help at best Sokos Winklund.

I found some books and articles about consumers’ behaviors and especially parts about tribes.

I. What is a tribe?

A tribe can be a primary group or an identification group in which the members share the same passion, interests, etc.

To understand a tribe, we study the shared experiences by the members and especially about the feelings lived together.

The integration in a tribe can be different for each member. It exists four main ways to integrate in it: 
- If a person is involved on institutional actions, it refers to a “adherent”,
- If a person joins to meetings, it refers to a “participant”,
- If a person is daily involved on rituals and activities, it refers to a “practising”.  

II. Marketing tribal

When we speak about tribes in marketing field, we talk about “marketing tribal”.

In a “tribal” perspective, the product does not bring only a functional value but also a bond value. For some researcher, the product makes it possible to link individuals together for who wants. Indeed, more a product or a service supports the creation, the development and the links maintenance between a tribe, more this product or service brings value to its members.

For a company, it is important to take on board these tribes to offer the products or services they want. Thus, two steps are very important: 
- Identify the existing tribes 
- Two approaches: the first one is to suggest products or services to integrate directly itself in rituals (for example, for a clothes shop, the store can sell clothes, accessories or objects linked to the practice of the tribe); the second one is get back the signs of the tribe in the communication field as advertising or sponsoring.

According to an article about marketing tribal, a company has to ask itself three questions to enter in the marketing tribal approach: 
- The approach is logical? 
- How the company can update continually its tribal marketing? (because tribes’ members are very mobile and tribes borders change quickly) 
- How the company can make durable its approach by getting closer to future tribes without getting away from the tribes already ‘acquired’.

 III. Market segmentation strategy

Jan already posts something about market segmentation and how a company can use different market segmentation to reach the tribes. I found another article about seven different types of market segmentation that a company can use to empower their own tribes.

1. Passions (common passions for a group): it is important to deliver a specific content to generate a bigger audience of others who are also passionate about a subject.

2. Generational dynamics: each generation has specific wants, needs and value systems that a company has to take on board to respond at better to its consumers.

3. Life events: the question here is: “are there large group within your customer base who have experienced specific life events that create synergy and passion around the subject?”

The key to selecting a life event is to discover something that becomes part of how people will define themselves as result of going through the experience.

4. Life stage: in each stage, they have unique perspectives and needs based on the life events that typically occur at each life stage.

5. Demographics: look at demographics such as gender, marital status, income and ethnicity to determine if they are unique needs that can provide value around.

6. Geography: for brands that use a local marketing strategy, use a similar strategy for social media channels.

7. Product choices: segment based on which products a customer has shown loyalty toward; product bought by a customer can tell something about the customer

IV. Consumer tribes and benefits of marketing to them

Consumer tribes: “groups of people emotionally connected by similar consumption values and usage, who use the social ‘linkage value’ of products and services to create a community and express identity.”

Benefits of marketing to tribes: 
- Social influences play a crucial role in an individual’s consumption decisions,
- In addition to sharing moral values and opinions, consumer tribes also share consumption preferences,
- This provides opportunity for marketers to access to a specific market segment and to create loyalty through establishing both an emotional connection as well as a rational reason for commitment.

 V. Seth Godin and his idea about consumer tribes and Internet

In a speech he did during a TED convention, Seth Godin, former direct marketing manager at Yahoo, explains his idea about Internet and the arrival of tribes. He supports the idea that Internet puts an end at mass marketing to give place to tribes. For him, tribes can lead and be factors of change and with Internet and mass media, tribes are everywhere and it is easy to find people like you.

Finally, he finished his speech saying that in each tribe, there is a leader who has to reign over the members of the tribe. Indeed, he has to challenge what it exists; create a culture, a secret language; and connect people one to another.

Sources:  
- http://fr.slideshare.net/mdruker/consumer-tribes-and-the-benefits-of-marketing-to-them-10975851
- http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/7-ways-to-develop-customer-tribes-for-your-business/
- http://www.ted.com/talks/seth_godin_on_the_tribes_we_lead?language=fr

-           

Here we are

I'm really looking forward to the group meeting on Thursday. We have been working so hard studying human behavior, trying to find out what makes us buy. At the same time I am starting to feel quite confused and also a bit stressed since it seems we keep falling back to square one all the time. But I guess that's a part of the process...
So this is what I'd like to share with you guys:

http://www.spacehijackers.org/html/ideas/archipsy/tricks.html

It's an alphabetical list on different things department stores do to make us buy, maybe you can catch an idea or two. At the end of the page there are some links to some useful articles about e.g. Architectural and Behavioural Psychology.

Enjoy.

Why Do People Buy? Top 10 Factors That Influence Purchase Decision

Reference: INBOUND MARKETING

http://blog.hubspot.com/ 

570
inShare

This post originally appeared on the Sales section of Inbound Hub. To read more content like this, subscribe to Sales.

There's a lot of talk around the changing sales and online marketing landscape. But this evolution is driven by one important factor: the customer.

The way people buy products and services online has dramatically changed over the years -- and these days, the customer has more power than ever. To understand more about what influences today's customer, the folks at BigCommerce analyzed a range of ecommerce sites to give us a broader understanding of what people value when shopping online.

While these findings may be specific to online ecommerce shops, we believe there's some valuables lessons here for all business types. Take a look, and keep reading below for some tweetable takeaways.

Why People Buy: 8 Important Takeaways

1) The top factor driving purchasing decision (56%) is product quality.

2) The most important store features driving purchasing decision (80%) is competitive pricing. 

3) 62% of shoppers research big-ticket items in-store before buying online.

4) 9 out of 10 say they watch videos about the tech products they may buy.

5) 54% of shoppers are smartphone owners, and 76% of smartphone owners use them while shopping. 

6) 81% say posts from their friends directly influenced their purchasing decision.

7) 30% are most likely to respond to brand offers when they have been reposted by a friend.

8) 44% of people are most likely to engage with branded content that contain

Useful books

This week I've been seraching for good books to get some fresh thoughts and ideas for the Wiklund case and for consumer behaviour overall. I found three good ones and I haven't read them far yet but after some pages and overviews I can share some ideas that they've given to mee.

Martin Lindstrom: Buyology - the truth and lies about why we buy

This book was one of the books presented to us on the first lectures. Basically it's a very interesting view to the whole marketing field focusing on the idea of neuromarketing. If we add the ability to scan the brain as a  marketing research tool to understand the actual brain simulations, how would everything change? Does sex actually sell and what impulses really make our brain go "I WANT THAT" ?
So far the book's been really surprising and made me reconsider the presumptions I have about what's effective marketing and what sells. The writer himself has worked his whole life with branding and marketing overall and has wide experience in consumer behaviour. The book is based on results of the largest neuromarketing study ever conducted so it's really something unprecedented and compeltely new, maybe the most revolutionizing new prospect there has been in marketing for quite a while. Read this, people!

Kit Yarrow: Decoding the new consumer mind - how and why we shop and buy

I found this gem from school's e-library and been reading it side by side with the previous one. I wanted to find something fresh and interesting and since this has been published this year it pretty much is as fresh as it gets. It focuses a lot on how the new information and technology based society is forming our habits as people and as consumers. How the whole brain funcion is trained and moulded into a competely different setting than what it was just 20 years ago, and most importantly, how can this be exploited in creating and marketing new products and services. The author presents for example five new psychological shifts in customers - how our technology use has changed our psychology:

1. Innovation optimism

2. Consumer empowerment

3. Faster ways of thinking

4. Symbol power

5. New ways of connecting

If our brain function and psychology is changing as dramatically as presented here, the marketing and the whole b2c-trade should change in phase with it.

Michael Solomon et al. : Consumer behaviour - A European perspective

This is my course book on one of the courses I'm having right now. Whereas the other two books are really innovative and focusing on new findings and ways of thinking, this is a really traditional one containing all the traditional main theories and facts behind consumer behaviour. After studying this book and the lecture course I'm sure I'll be a lot wiser about how we behave as customers and how the information can be used in marketing. A quick scan through the contents showed that this one has all the basics and hopefully we can use this during the Wiklund assignement for important background information.

I'll be writing more about these books and the ideas they've given me as I go on in the reading process!

7 Types of Market Segmentation

A market can be segmented...

1. By Products or Services Offered
   (e.g. focus on selling fashion)
2. By Industry
   (e.g. fashion manufacturer)
3. By Demogrphics
   (e.g. age, income, gender)
4. Geographically
   (e.g.global, national, regional, local)
5. By Profession
   (e.g. healthcare worker: doctors, nurses, hospital administrators)
   
6. By Lifestyle
   (different needs caused by lifestyle; e.g. single parents, married with children)
7. By Interests

For more information click here.

Different customer groups - Results of the LeanInno Camp

To find out more about the different customer groups for Sokos we defined several groups and its customer needs. In the following picture you can see the results of the teamwork:

 

1. Children (0-12):
   Childrens' needs are playing, eating and toys. Therefore modern stores have to find solutions how to make parents feel comfortable to enter a store with their children and to avoid a lack of buying experience caused by paying attention to their children.
2. Teenagers (13-17):
   Between 13 and 17 is the group of teenager.In comparison to "Children" "Teenager" are more and more interested in cosmetics, fashion, mobile devices and social media. In front of their friends they try to boast about their newest things.
3. Young Adults/Students (18-25):
   
   Besides fashion, cosmetics and mobile devices "Young Adults/Students" become more interested in computer (e.g. for studies), cheap groceries and home decoration (e.g. for their own flat/room). The "Young Adults" try to find low-price products to safe money.
4. Adults (26-40):
   The group of "Adults" pays more attention to quality in nearly all products (e.g. fashion, grocery, electronics, home decoration, toys for their children). Reasons for this behaviour are an increasing purchasing power and the yearning to luxury products. Moreover, the group demands more service (e.g. advise in fashion, parking places, services for their children, a quiet shopping experience for relxation of stressful working days).
5. Middle Age (41-65):
   One significant characteristic of the group of "Middle Age" is that it is the richest group. Similar to the group of "Adults" they have a higher awareness for luxury and higher quality products. In contrast to the "Adults" they mostly don't buy things for their own children, but for their grand children. Therefore it is obvious that they will spend more money for e.g. toys, fashion then the parents themselves.
6. Seniors (65+):
   The last but also very important group is the group of "Seniors". Elderly people more and more care about services like very competent fashion advices, transport possibilities, home delivery services, healthcare products. The advantage of the group of "Seniors" is that they have a lot of time they can spend for shopping. Therefore it is the challenge to make the stores as much attractive as possible to keep them in the stores.

The camp: Poster of primitive needs

During the camp 6.-8.10 we did several big mind maps about different topics to clear the ideas and build our knowledge. One of the posters was this one about primitive needs of women and men and the needs they try to fulfill while shopping.

We did this poster with Mathias and had long and deep coversations about the topics. Why we wanted to concentrate on the primitive needs is simply because those are the driving force behind all our other needs. If a company could understand and exploit these well would the satisfaction and commitment of the customer be wide and deep. The trick with the primitive needs is that we might not recognize these in everyday life but subconsciously we often go for the option that manages to fulfill one or more of these.

Discussing this subject we found many similarities between the needs and behaviour of men and women but then again a lot of big differences that play an imporant part in the overall view. First we can concentrate on women.

From a commercial point of view the most important ones are probably the need to be wanted and desired and to feel beautiful. These are widely exploited already as you can tell by the moneyflow of these days in the beauty industry. Women also look for reward or comfort from shopping; simplified one could say that in both bliss and sorrow women turn to shopping. Women also have a strong need to share the whole experience or atleast the result of the shopping trip with someone. 

Both men and women want to make a bargain (the word that we didn't spell correctly on the poster..) but the concept of the word is different. For women a bargain can happen in two situations; when you've wanted something for a long time and finally find it or get it (the price doesn't matter) OR when you make a great catch and find the last piece of something or manage to find something with an amazing price (price is the most important factor). Then again for men a bargain is all about making a good deal. Men feel like they've succeeded if they manage to haggle over the price a bit or they get a special offer just for them. They feel pride because they've made a better deal than the guy entering the store after them will probably get. Or atleast this is what the store wants them to think. 

Thinking men and their needs from a commercial point of view makes one need more relevant than others. The strongest need behind everything is being the "alpha male", being the most wanted, desired, succeeded and overall better than other compeeting males around. We thougth this is not as well put into practice yet as the needs of women are and it could be taken advantage of a lot more.

Results after observations at Sokos Winklund

During the camp, we decided to go to Sokos in Turku to observe the customers and their purchase habits.

Firstly, the department store gives a bad image cause by the organization of the store. Indeed, there is no indications, no demarcations between the different sections and we can find, at different floors, many times the same brand (this is the case for Esprit).

Moreover, which surprised me is that there is no service. There are many salesmen in the department store but no one come toward the customers to welcome them or to ask if they need some help. Thus, it is the customer who goes to ask something directly to the salesman.

Between 17:00 and 19:00, there aren’t a lot of customers. Most of them stay at the first floor with all the cosmetics and the beauty products.

Here, the more regular customers are the 18 – 25 year olds women. Most of the time, there are in group and their purpose is not to buy but to try all the products they like. On average, a group can stay between 10 and 20 minutes in the different sections to try different cosmetic brands.

At this floor, we can also find some senior women who buy some expensive perfumes.

Men are also present on this floor. However, contrary to the women, they know what they want to buy and are very quick; they don’t spend much time in Sokos. I noticed that most of the men bought one or two products.

In the woman department, we can find some alone women, in the middle age, who are here to try a lot of clothes and buy some. We can also find some “mother-daughter” group, from the middle class, who are looking for “cheap” clothes.

In the second floor we can find men department. The customers here are some alone men in the young adult group or in the senior group. The middle age group is also present but frequently, the man comes with his wife.

In the third floor, there are just some customers. Here, we can find the kid department and the home decoration department.

In the kid department, the customers are mothers without their child or mothers, in the middle age group, with their child in infancy. Here, the majority of the mothers buy something for their child.

In the home decoration department, the typical customer is the 40 year old woman. She buys some little things for her home and one in three women buy something in this section.

To conclude, we can find different kind of customers in this department store. The problem of Sokos is a real issue because even after the work hours, the department store is empty. Moreover, the customers don’t buy in bulk: the majority of them buy just one or two things. 

After the camp (6.10 - 8.10)

The camp was very interesting but very intense. It was a nice experience to see how we can work all together as a team. I think we worked very well all together: everybody can participate and say what he thinks. We had some bad moments but also very good one and for me, it was nice to be a real team. 

During those two days in the camp, we did a lot of things in our team. One of them was to define all kind of questions about ‘customer needs’. By doing that, we tried to start with the question “Why?” and go deeply in this global topic which is the needs of a customer. The aim of those questions is to know better Sokos’ customers and how they act in the department store. 

After a brainstorming, a lot of questions appear:

• What they buy?
• What kind of service they want? (no service or service)
• Do they spend a lot of time there?
• Why do “people” go to Sokos? 
• What is their favourite colour? 
• What is the route in Sokos?
• What is the budget? 
• Are they alone or in groups?
• Are they after offers? 
• What do people do after work?
• What they do after shopping?
  

Many other questions can be asked and it’s just the beginning of our researches. For now, those are the first questions we thought but the questions will increased after each research.