How we buy things

Behavioural Economics. It’s a relatively new field of study, but its premise is that customers make decisions about what to buy with rather more emotion and rather less logic, than perhaps had been originally considered.

People get more emotional about some categories of product and service than others. Think clothing and cars for instance. In other categories, surely it is all about function and price; for example flights or white goods..

It turns out however that customers behave unpredictably, even when it seemingly defies logic. Indeed, the standard marketing approach of attempting to present a logical case for purchase, can often be overlooked and a seemingly unrelated factor become the deciding one in the customer journey.

Understanding customers, how they behave and how they make decisions is all the more important in the environment of relative uncertainty we find ourselves in today.

Global marketing trends towards mass-customisation and personalised advertising will continue to offer customers incredible choice and tailored offers, however choice can be a relative preference.

Think of your own visits to the supermarket or indeed your night-time scrolling of video streaming websites. Too much choice can induce a degree of inertia that ultimately drives discontent and disengagement.

On the supermarket front, the German discount chains have led the charge of simplifying categories and reducing choice. Other chains have followed suit.

In the e-commerce space, the bespoke T-shirt business ‘Son of a Tailor’ offer a fairly tight range of options and it seems to be working well.  

The temptation for marketers with a succinct range of products or services that starts to take off is to expand the items on offer. A better understanding of the customer, their reasons for buying the brand and the thought process they employ, will go a long way towards ensuring that expanding the service or widening the range will add real value on both ends of the transaction.