What is customer behavior? 4 steps to research customer behavior

To be able to implement successful marketing and customer care strategies and plans, businesses need to understand and accurately analyze customer behavior . In this article, let's join 1C Vietnam to learn the concept, importance and detailed consumer behavior research process.

1. What is the concept of customer behavior?

Customer behavior is a broad concept that includes the thoughts, feelings, evaluations, and actions of consumers in the process of perceiving, choosing, buying, and using a business's products and services.

2. The importance of researching customer consumption behavior

Researching customer consumer behavior is a process of collecting and analyzing information about how customers shop, use, and evaluate products and services. This helps businesses understand their customers clearly, from which they can make appropriate business decisions to achieve business goals.

2.1 Identify the right potential customers

Customer behavior analysis helps businesses understand customers' needs, desires, behaviors and characteristics. This helps businesses identify the right potential customers and focus resources on marketing more accurately and effectively.

2.2 Personalize customer experience

Researching customer behavior helps businesses understand their needs and preferences. On that basis, the company can provide suitable products and services to help personalize the customer experience.

2.3 Create trust and increase loyalty

Businesses can clearly understand customers' desires and expectations through analyzing customer behavior. This is the foundation for businesses to better meet buyers' needs, build trust and increase customer loyalty.

2.4 Create a marketing plan with more precise goals

Effective consumer behavior research will help businesses create marketing plans with more specific and accurate goals. Because, based on big data such as traffic, sales, time customers choose and decide to buy,... businesses can provide statistics on trends, sales, and customers. potential, reach, and customer interaction. At the same time, businesses can also predict future consumption trends.

2.5 Optimize marketing campaigns

Marketing campaigns are activities aimed at motivating customers to buy a business's products and services. To optimize this activity, businesses need to effectively measure and analyze customer consumption behavior. This is the basis for businesses to understand why customers buy or do not buy products, thereby improving campaigns and achieving marketing goals.

3. Factors affecting current customer behavior

Customer behavior is influenced by many different factors including cultural, social, psychological or personal factors. The detailed content of each impact factor has been presented in detail below:

3.1 Cultural factors

Culture is a system of values, beliefs, customs, etc. shared by a group of people in a community. Cultural factors can deeply influence customer buying behavior through the following aspects:

• Attitude towards products and services: Culture affects how customers evaluate and choose products and services. For example, in a culture that values ​​frugality, customers will tend to choose products and services that are affordable.
• Buying behavior: Culture can also impact how customers buy products. For example, in a culture that values ​​family, customers will often shop with people they are close to.
• Attitude towards the brand: Due to the influence of culture, customer's attitude towards the brand is also influenced by certain factors. For example, in a culture that values ​​reputation, customers will tend to choose trustworthy, long-standing brands.

3.2 Social factors

Society is a collection of individuals who interact with each other. Society affects customer behavior through the following specific factors:

• Social role and status: The way customers shop and use products and services will be directly affected by this factor. For example, a person with high social status will tend to choose high-end products and services.
• Reference groups: These are people who influence an individual's thinking and behavior. Reference groups can include family, friends, colleagues, etc. and they have the ability to influence customers' buying behavior through providing information, value orientation and creating pressure. society.
• Era: Era is also a factor that influences the way consumers shop and use products and services. For example, in the digital age, customers tend to shop more online.

3.3 Psychological factors

Psychology is a system of human cognitive, emotional, and behavioral processes. Psychology affects consumer behavior through:

• Needs and wants: Need is a state of lack of something that people feel is necessary. A want is a need that is specified and has the potential to be satisfied. Needs and desires are the driving forces behind customers' shopping behavior.
• Personality: Are relatively stable psychological characteristics of an individual, affecting the way the individual thinks, feels and acts. Personality affects customer behavior through forming preferences, attitudes and purchasing decisions.
• Cognition: Is the human process of receiving, processing and understanding information. Perception affects buyer behavior through forming perceptions about products, services, brands,...
• Persuasion: Is the process of influencing the thoughts, feelings and behavior of others. This can be done through factors such as information, arguments, emotions,...

3.4 Personal factors

Customer behavior is influenced by personal factors through the following specific aspects:

• Gender: This is a factor that can affect the way you shop and use products and services. For example, men are often interested in products such as cars, electronics,... and women are often interested in products such as fashion, cosmetics,...
• Age: Consumers of each age will have different views/assessments about the product. For example, children often like toys, entertainment products,... while adults often like essential products, convenience products,...
• Income: Income affects customers' spending ability.
• Education level: The customer's ability to receive information and understand will depend on their level of education.
• Occupation: Individuals working in different occupations have different habits and needs when choosing products.

4. Customer behavior research process

4.1 Identify target customer segments

Customer segmentation is the process of dividing customers into groups based on common characteristics, such as needs, wants, behavior, or geography. Implementing this process well will help businesses focus their resources on meeting the needs of the customer group that is most likely to bring profit.

4.2 Analyze factors affecting customer behavior

After determining the target customer segment, businesses need to analyze the factors that influence customer behavior in that segment. These factors may include cultural, social, psychological, and personal factors. Analyzing factors that influence customer behavior will help businesses better understand how customers make purchasing decisions.

4.3 Research the customer journey

The customer journey is the process that consumers go through from recognizing a need to purchasing and using a business's product or service. Studying the customer journey will assist companies in understanding their experiences. From there, businesses can prepare plans to improve customer experience and increase satisfaction, increasing the likelihood of conversion.

4.4 Analyze consumer behavior

This is the process of collecting and analyzing data about customer buying behavior. This data can be collected from a variety of sources, such as sales data, survey data, and data from social media platforms.

Consumer behavior analysis helps businesses better understand how products or services are purchased and used. From there, businesses can make appropriate business decisions to meet consumer needs.

5. Methods of researching consumer behavior

In the process of researching customer behavior, businesses can use qualitative or quantitative methods as follows:

5.1 Qualitative methods

Qualitative methods focus on collecting descriptive data and understanding customers' attitudes, thoughts, and emotions. Some popular qualitative consumer behavior research methods include:

• In-depth interviews: This is the most popular method in qualitative customer behavior analysis. In in-depth interviews, researchers will talk with customers directly or indirectly to better understand their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.
• Group discussion: In a group discussion, a group of people will discuss a specific topic together. Panel talks are an effective way to collect data about consumers' general opinions about a product, service or brand.
• Text-based qualitative research: This method uses text analysis techniques to better understand consumers' ideas, thoughts, and feelings. These techniques can be used to analyze social media posts, product reviews, or customer feedback.

5.2 Quantitative method

Quantitative research focuses on collecting data to measure specific aspects of customer behavior . This method is often used to determine the scale of a problem, evaluate the effectiveness of a strategy, or predict future trends.

Some popular quantitative consumer buying behavior analysis methods include:

• Surveys: This is the most popular method in quantitative customer behavior research. In the survey, consumers will be asked to answer a set of questions to provide information about their thoughts, feelings and behaviors.
• Quantitative research based on sales data: This method uses sales data to measure specific aspects of consumer behavior, such as sales, market share, and satisfaction. heart.
• Quantitative research based on data from social media platforms: This method uses data from social media platforms to measure specific aspects of consumer behavior, e.g. such as the level of interaction with the brand, the level of virality,...

In short, customer behavior is quite complex and always changing, so businesses need to regularly update the latest trends to be able to understand and meet consumer needs. For more useful information to support business operations and development, don't forget to follow other articles on 1C Vietnam's website.