In The Process Of Buying We Use 2 Stimulating Reasons
Do you ever think about why you buy some products? What is the reason you make a decision to buy and how do we make decisions like human beings? We need two main things to consider when we decide to purchase something.
The scientific explanation for decisions we make happens in our subconscious mind, not in our conscious mind. We make decisions triggered by our emotions. Why we are buying products? To satisfy our emotions, we make decisions regardless of them.
Psychology In The Process Of Decision Making
The ideal thing is you perfectly know and understand your audience. You know their breakpoints, needs, wishes and all factors that make a deep understanding of your customers to develop high-quality products and advertise them successfully.
To drive their behaviour you need to know their reasons and process of decision-making.
There are only two significant reasons why people buy:
1. To avoid pain
2. To increase pleasure
If you control that, you are in control of your life, if not life controls you. Learning how to use these two factors ethically in marketing will help you drive your audience to make the best decisions.
See your offer as a way to avoid pain and increase pleasure in their life.
Apply The 2 Reasons To Your Marketing
Every product or service solves some issue that many of your target audience face.
Asking your customers what needs or pain points they have will make your relationship with them more relevant and productive.
Does it happen that you decided to buy something and afterwards regret it? It is because your subconscious and conscious mind are not supporting one another on that decision.
In process of making decisions, we follow two steps:
1. We make decisions based on emotions (subconscious mind).
2. We rationalize decisions using logic and reason (conscious mind).
If you trigger the subconscious links in your customers’ minds, it can show them how your offer can help them both to avoid pain and receive pleasure.
The more closely you connect products with needs, the more that will resonate with the right audience. So you need to figure out how to make your offer to trigger those emotions and apply the reasons they use for buying.
How To Use The 2 Reasons In Your Marketing
Your offer needs to move your customer to take action.
1. Increase the pain of where they are now – It would help if you make them slightly uncomfortable, but ethically naturally. Just make them aware of themselves. When people feel comfortable they don’t take any action!
2. Decrease the pleasure of where they are now – Make them realize what they can improve in their lives.
3. Increase the pleasure of buying your offer – Remind them of all benefits and feelings associated with your product/service.
4. Decrease the pain of buying your offer – You can offer some discounts or special offers for a limited time. People love discounts.
You need to have in mind how your product help improves someone’s life. These two main factors, pain and pleasure are the foundation of many other reasons.
Customers are triggered mainly by seven other motives including both necessity and convenience which are security, identity and belonging, price, peer recommendations, obligation, fear, price, and happiness.
Each of these can fit into pleasure and discomfort (pain).
Needs Are Strong Motivators
Where do your products fit on the hierarchy of needs?
Do you offer basic human needs like food and shelter or your offerings are more connected to status or freedom?
Abraham Maslow describes human motivation with his theory and hierarchy of needs.
He states that people must first satisfy their fundamental needs to advance higher in the social, emotional, and self-actualization needs hierarchy.
This is the graphic of Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs:
Typically, necessities fit in the lower need levels. We required more than water, food, homes, and clothing.
So people can attach many products to a necessity.
Start with identifying the fundamental needs of your target audience. Next what you need to determine is how your product or service may meet those needs.
We Identify Wants Rather Than Needs
Another excellent starting point is to pick a common problem or break point that your target audience is experiencing.
Then match that with the benefits of products or services you offer.
Without a doubt, every product and service solves some issues your customers face. Nowadays modern consumption is based on wants rather than needs says, Professor Colin Campbell.
“No longer do we define ourselves by religion, occupation or ethnicity but by our tastes – and that means consumption to find out what they are. I shop therefore I am. Far from being a frivolous activity, shopping is how we reassure ourselves about our authenticity and very existence” – adds Professor Campbell.
He who enjoys shopping also concludes: “It is justifiable to claim not simply that we live in a consumer society, or are socialized into a consumer culture, but that ours is in a very fundamental sense, a consumer civilization.”
Other Essential Buying Reasons
1. People Value Convenience – One reason more, why customers buy things is to make their lives more comfortable and decrease their problems. They buy new goods to help them do a task more quickly, easily, or affordably. They also do so to make their lives less unpleasant.
2. Security And Protection – Many of the products we buy are intended to keep us safe. All forms of insurance (health, auto, homeowners, life) and others help us cope with the pain of future misfortune and protect us from uncertainty.
3. Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO) – Feeling the need to have the latest and greatest thing around, focusing on current trends. In this FOMO link you can find some interesting research on the certain topic.
4. Identity And Belonging – Individuals who see themselves as part of a specific group are motivated to purchase items that distinguish them as brand community members, and support individuality on an emotional and social level.
5. Getting A Good Deal (Price) – This can be an essential motivator. The main characteristic of the product might be the discount you got, the only reason you bought it. 6. Exclusive Discount – The strategy of using influencers and ambassadors goes well with getting a good deal. Discounts are ideal for anyone passionate about a brand.
Final Thoughts
A lot of things influence people’s motivation. Those things make life easier, happier, better, more secure etc. When you start building your product/service, think about what your offer can do for the people in general and what pleasure and breakpoints it fulfils.
Many products we buy make us happy, such as movies, fitness membership cards, eating out in a nice restaurant, water bottles, running shoes, gym bags, yoga mats, new car, furniture, new smartphone etc.
You can look to ambassadors and influencers to expand your reach and truly connect your offerings to the needs of your customers.
If you have something to add, ask or want to share your idea with me don’t hesitate to leave them below in a comment box. I will be very pleased to answer back.
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*References
Articles:
FOMO (Fear of missing out); frontiersin.org/subjects/fear-of-missing-out-fomo
These articles are part of the Research Topic, Problematic Internet Technology Use: Assessment, Risk Factors, Comorbidity, Adverse Consequences and Intervention
