Did you know that in most cases, customer loyalty is worth more than the price of a single purchase? That is because marketers are fervent to meet the needs of their customers at a high degree. How do marketers make that happen? Well, one thing to consider is that marketers continuously do research on consumer behavior. Yes, you want to sell a product, but adding value to your customers’ lives hits one out of the park.

First, every organization should understand the power behind their research on consumer behavior before launching any product. Knowing your audience is important to tailor your buyer persona. Before making any final decisions on how you would market your products or services, your understanding of your target market should be secure.
In that case, keeping consumer behavior as your main focus on marketing research is essential to understand customers’ buying decisions and how they look at products.
Additionally, conducting research on consumer behavior will provide better ideas on your marketing strategies to move ahead of your competitors. Keeping consumer behavior in mind when studying your marketing analytics reports is vital to meet the expectations of your customers.
Three main factors that influence consumer behavior are cultural, psychological, and personal factors. Incorporating these three points into your consumer behavior research will help you gain valuable information, and understand who your potential customers will be. Here’s how conducting research on consumer behavior helps you with your overall marketing strategy.
1. Helps Refine Marketing Strategy Analytics
When it comes to marketing decisions, analytics is an influential factor when determining if your strategies are helping to push your company forward. Doing research on the performance of your display ads, website content, and search ads can tell you a lot about what your customers are engaged in.
Also, the analytics of your website shows how consumer behavior affects search engine optimization. Research on consumer behavior is crucial to acknowledge if your consumers are responding positively to what you wish to market.
2. Expands Your Awareness on Globalization
The study of consumer behavior is vital if you decide to expand your product or services to non-domestic markets. In addition, conducting marketing research on those who have different cultural backgrounds is essential for your business. This shows if your product or services best serve the cultural norms and values of a particular country. Applying this type of research to your marketing strategy will make you stand out from your competitors.

3. Gives You a Better Outlook on Customer Preferences to Design Your Marketing Mix
Understanding your consumers’ preferences on a particular product provides a narrower scope to design your marketing mix (the four P’s).
When conducting research, a consumer may be interested in the design of the product yet may shy away from purchasing it due to the product’s high-end price. Or, selling a beach-like product in Southern California may reach more sales than selling the product in Eastern Texas. Acknowledging this type of behavior provides a better outlook on how to better your pricing strategy. Here are some questions to consider when correlating your marketing mix to consumer behavior.
- Does the price of your product match the income of your target market?
- Does the design of your product attract the audience whom you wish to target?
- Is the product marketed in locations where people would wish to buy the product?
- Is the product useful and/or is it in demand to solve a problem in the market?
When customers decide to buy your product, it is essential to grasp their thought processes when they make their final purchasing decisions. By doing so, you will know the types of strategies that will work to boost sales.
Where should you begin to collect research on consumer behavior?
Create an appropriate survey design that will best gather your consumer insight data. Are you gathering data based on your participants’ responses towards your product and/or service? Use a rating scale question from 1 to 100.
Are you gathering data based on your participants’ feelings or opinions on your product and/or service? Use a Likert scale question such as “strongly agree to strongly disagree”.
Be sure to include demographic questions (age, income, race/ethnicity, gender, occupation, location, etc). This will help you better understand the demographics of your participants, and it gives you sharper information on how it correlates with consumer behavior. Also, you can determine how a product’s usefulness correlates with the needs of a particular demographic.
Conduct an online survey through your website or conduct a face-to-face survey of a focus group.
If you decide to resort to an inexpensive and quicker route to gather more information on customer experience, you can conduct online surveys through your website. In most cases, conducting online surveys will only provide you with anonymous participants which hinders you from gathering specific demographic data. With that said, utilize online surveys for your current customers to uncover what they think about your products and/or services so far.
To gain a thorough analysis of your product/service research, conducting a focus group on your customers or tailored buyer personas is the best way to analyze and gather consumer insights. Focus group research allows you to gather more information from your participants because it takes more time to gather data from their in-depth interviews.

Conducting surveys of your current customers or groups that show interest in your product is vital to understand when wanting to meet the needs of your consumers. At the end of the day, your mission is to add value to your customers’ lives. This can only happen by taking time to learn more about your customers. Taking the extra mile to know more about your customers will reap good benefits to maintain your overall business health and gain loyal customers.
Thalia Rodriguez is a Communications major with a double minor in marketing and professional writing at Grand Canyon University. When she’s not practicing writing, she can be spending time with family and friends, going on hikes, or cooking delicious plant-based dishes. Check out her LinkedIn profile here to connect.