Psychological Influences on the Buying Decision Process

There are many psychological influences on the customer during their decision when buying a product. According to Marketing Express, psychological influences determines people's general behavior and influence their behavior as consumers. The main psychological influences on consumer behavior are perception, motives, learning, attitudes, personality, self concept and lifestyles. When a customer is perceiving, this is the process of selecting, organizing, and interpreting information inputs to produce a meaning. These information inputs are received through the five senses. Perception has a three step process to it. The first is selective exposure, where the consumer is selecting inputs to be exposed to their awareness and ignoring others. The second is selective distortion. With this, a customer changes and twists information when it is inconsistent with their own opinion. The last is selective retention. A person would be doing this if they were only remembering information inputs that supports their decision. Motives are the second type of psychological influences. Motives are internal energy force that brings a persons behavior to satisfy needs. Patron motives are important for any marketer. Since these motives influence where a person purchases products on a regular basis, means a new firm must come up with new ideas to get them to shop at their company. Learning is also a psychological influence. Any firm would want the consumer to learn only the best things about the firm. If a consumer learns new information they are happy with, it can attract more customers to the company. Attitudes are also psychological influences. Since customers have different preferences, their attitude could be beneficial to your company or not. A way to measure consumer attitudes is through the attitude scale. Ones personality and self concept are also psychological influences in the buying decision process. Once again, based on the different preferences of the customer may or may not attract them to your company. Lifestyle is the last psychological influence. Lifestyle is an individuals pattern of living expressed through their interests and opinions. For an example of this, if you are coming out with a new very high end retail store. You may want to locate yourself in a place where there is a high standard of living, like New York city. Do you think psychological influences are an important aspect if you are working in the marketing industry?