In this essay, I have chosen to discuss ‘Scene of Consumer Psychology’ written by Rachel Bowley. The second article is ‘Trademarks, consumer psychology and the sophisticated consumers’ from the Emory Law Journal. I have written about what consumer psychology is, the psychological perceptions and their significance regarding marketing communication. Later on, I have also discussed the inter relatedness between marketing communication and consumer psychology. Psychologists have been analyzing consumer behavior since many years. It is really important to understand the importance of how customers decide to purchase goods and how they choose which brand to buy.
Consumer psychology can be referred to as such an area of specialty which studies how the believes, opinions, feelings, thoughts and perceptions can influence consumer behavior when they are buying any goods or choosing any service. A consumer’s buying decisions will get affected due to a number of factors like recommendations, self-advertisements or common advertisements. A number of reasons are involves during the decision making process. It is a difficult task to identify the various influences that may push someone towards purchasing their product. They may be due to variation in mood or their psychological state.
The study of individual responses regarding the goods and services associated with the experiences and information is known as consumer psychology. Several responses are related to it such as affective, behavioral and cognitive. A wide array of goods and services linked information is appropriate, along with marketer stimuli which includes (advertisement, coupons, package label and display point of purchase) buyers magazines and communications from associates and friends. Three major factors influenced the responses to the information regarding goods and services. Those factors are 1) individual variable such as character variable, opinions and attitude, 2) situation variables, 3) situation contact by person. Goals of psychologists are to explain, forecast, affect or describe the customer response to goods and services associated information.
Organizations and businesses want to have some unique methods for understanding their customer’s needs and most appropriate method to approach them for providing them those needs. They aim to achieve maximum customer satisfaction. This is where the marketing communication and customer’s psychology are inter linked. Consumer psychology has an important role in the marketing related decisions of business organizations.
Rachel Bowley has differentiated the consumers as romantics and classicals. In her article, she has used the analogy of romantic and classical to explain about the most common type of customers. Romantic customers are those who are more likely to get driven by their inner emotions when they are buying something. For instance, there is a high possibility that such customers would buy something with the thoughts that it will help them feel good. Such people will feel happy after buying expensive shoes even if they don’t need them yet. Classicals are such customers who are more practical when they are buying something that is really needed. Before buying, they make sure that they have all the necessary required information about the product.
In the second article, the author has discussed about consumer psychology, trademarks and sophisticated consumers. It has also explained some of the important laws that are made by the courts regarding the trademarks and their relationships with the consumer behaviors. Trademarks are quite essential in marketing because they represent the product’s positioning and image in the market. It also represents the resources and efforts that are used in its development. These trademarks also have a significant impact upon the decision making of customers. The authors have repeatedly used the term ‘sophisticated’ to explicitly describe the intelligent customers just like Bowley had used the word ‘classical’ for describing them. On the contrary, the unsophisticated customers are those ignorant and credulous customers who do not analyze while purchasing something. They are mostly controlled by general impressions and appearances.
Both these articles have explained that how consumers can influence the brands or trademarks and how the business organizations can take advantage of such types of customers. Sometimes it happens that the most well-known brands are not in accordance with their reputation. It also occurs that the products are found in shops which are offering the best price and quality in the market. Still the customers prefer to choose for what they know and what they think they know. It almost happens with nearly everyone that the luxury car is not much reliable as the older and cheaper one. According to some customers, the burger from a small truck will usually taste much better than the ones which are advertised on huge billboards. This means that a well-designed marketing plan can help in convincing customers about the reliability and quality of product. All customers can relate to the picture of a huge burger in an advertisement and how different it actually is when we buy it. This means that in such cases, the marketing communication is not true as customers are not getting what they were previously shown.
According to the authors of both articles, there are two categories of customers in the market. It would be impactful and effective to use excessive and impulsive advertising for these customers. The second article about the trademarks has elaborated a few different situations where brands may use the similarities with other competing brands. Purchase of goods is highly influenced by the public opinion. An example of using trademarks as a significant influence when finalizing purchasing decision regarding a product will be about the Goya products. They are considered to be a part of the Puerto Rico traditions. These are high quality products but they are preferred due to the knowledge which has been passed on from mothers to their children. They have learned about it from their earlier generations.
A relationship exists among these two articles as both have described about categories of consumers and how they make their decisions regarding their intelligent purchases. It also discusses that how bad decisions can be made if a person is an unthinking consumer as he may not be aware of consumer care himself. Both articles have described the relationship between customers and salesmen as a two way relationship. It would only be possible to have harmony among both along with some effectiveness if both the parties will have the same views.
References
- Bowlby, R. (1992). Scenes from consumer psychology. Critical Quarterly,34(4), 51-64.
- Lee, T. R., Christensen, G. L., & DeRosia, E. D. (2007). Trademarks, Consumer Psychology, and the Sophisticated Consumer. Emory LJ, 57, 575.
