Customer Behavior and Marketing Principles Report

Introduction

Article Overview

Understanding consumer behaviour is an essential factor that helps in developing an effective marketing strategy for a product or a service. This section focuses on how marketing strategies shape consumer behaviour. In the article Like PB&J: Customer Service as a Marketing Strategy, accessible from the business.com magazine, Shuey (2017) asserts that marketing and consumer service should exist harmoniously since they influence consumers’ buying behaviours. Using the cases of Amazon and Zappos, this author maintains that satisfying clients via better services can change their perceptions of an organisation’s products and services to the extent of making voluntary purchasing decisions. The article is credible because it appears in one of the most recognised B2B magazines that have been used as production promotion avenues. Its credibility is also founded on its use of practical case scenarios in supporting its arguments.

Topic Overview

This section examines the topic of consumer behaviour. Specifically, it evaluates the way marketing strategies influence clients buying patterns with a particular focus on the subtopic of social media as a preferred channel for communicating various marketing strategies. Attempts to sustain customers involve putting in place appropriate marketing strategies. As a result, companies analyse consumers’ reasons and motivation to acquire particular commodities and services, as opposed to others (Lin & Hsu 2015). Marketing strategies can help customers to develop specific emotions and reasoning that compel or woe them to purchase items. Such marketing mechanisms are usually communicated through appropriate channels. According to Shuey (2017), social media entails one of the channels that organisations such as Amazon and Zappos have deployed effectively in delivering services, which have positively influenced customers’ behaviour regarding making well informed purchasing decisions.

The available literature on consumer behaviour documents various attempts to define the concept. For example, Lin and Hsu (2015) present it as the process of studying the manner in which customers arrive at particular buying decisions, including factors that influence their choices. Some of these factors include consumers’ purchasing potential, financial conditions, personal preferences, marketing strategies, and group influences (Lin & Hsu 2015). Hazen, Mollenkopf, and Wang (2017, p. 452) define it as “the process involved when individuals or groups select, purchase, use, or dispose of products, services, ideas, or experiences to satisfy needs and desires.” Different perceptions of consumer behaviour suggest the prevailing difficulty in establishing a unanimous definition.

Analysis

The existing literature on consumer behaviour suggests the need for organisations to develop unique brand positioning strategies followed by conducting follow-ups as a way of building strong customer services (Hazen, Mollenkopf & Wang 2017). While 80 per cent of organisations claim that they offer unique and great customer service, only 8 per cent of their clients endorsed the claim (Shuey 2017). A major drawback of this evidence is linked to the lack of studies whose data analysis helped to arrive at this conclusion. Therefore, the reader cannot analyse the validity of these claims depending on the research methodology deployed, especially the sample size, in relation to the prevailing population demographics. Nonetheless, other research findings and case studies can be deployed as mechanisms for assessing the validity of claims made in the article.

Consistent with Shuey’s (2017) arguments, with the rapid growth in the number in which people are engaged in social media, Ertz (2016) asserts that many people seek to acquire information about a service or a product based on their friends or followers’ experiences. According to Ertz (2016), organisations that make online sales should consider examining posts made by customers to determine whether their service delivery methods satisfy the underlying preconceived needs (Hazen, Mollenkopf & Wang 2017). From these theoretical arguments, social media platforms have been helpful in the effort to create awareness of the existence of an organisation.

In today’s marketing environments, communicating with customers takes a bilateral approach to dialogue (Ertz 2016). According to Taobao Marketplace Index (2013), white-collar consumers account for more than 40 per cent while students take less than 15% slightly. In the context of age demographics, 33 per cent of all buyers are in the age gap of between 0-25 years, while 35% of them lie within the age bracket of 25-30. Those in the age gap of 30 to 35 account for 14 per cent (Taobao Marketplace Index 2013). Hence, 79 per cent of Taobao’s customers are in the age group of between 0 and 35. Such an age group has unlimited access to social media. Upon following them, an organisation can understand their purchasing patterns in the marketplace, hence developing marketing strategies that emphasise such behaviours. In line with Shuey’s (2017) arguments regarding the role of social media in building strong customer services, organisations can focus on particular product attributes around which they can shape their clients’ purchasing behaviours.

Conclusion

Understanding customers’ behaviours help in formulating effective marketing strategies that focus on product attributes, which consumers look for in the marketplace. Hence, it becomes possible to establish attractive services through social media in response to the way such promotion mechanisms satisfy customers’ needs and desires. Although the article under review failed to provide data supporting this premise, a review of the available literature on consumer behaviour and the case of Taobao demonstrate the extent to which social media can be applied as not only an effective brand communications channel but also a tool for influencing clients’ buying patterns.

Reference List

Ertz, M 2016, ‘Proposition of an integrative theory of socially responsible consumption behaviour’, Electronic Green Journal, vol. 1, no. 39, pp.1-18.

Hazen, B, Mollenkopf, D, Wang, Y 2017, ‘Remanufacturing for the circular economy: an examination of consumer switching behaviour’, Business Strategy & the Environment, vol. 26, no. 4, pp. 451-464.

Lin, H & Hsu, M 2015, ‘Using social cognitive theory to investigate green consumer behaviour’, Business Strategy and the Environment, vol. 24, no. 5, pp. 326-343.

Shuey, G 2017, Like PB&J: customer service as a marketing strategy, Web.

Taobao Marketplace Index 2013, Taobao marketplace user market segmentation, Web.