The Importance of Psychological Forces for Buyer Behaviour

Running Head: MANAGEMENT 0
BUYER BEHAVIOUR
ANALYSIS

MANAGEMENT 1
The Importance of Psychological Forces for Buyer Behaviour
Every organization try to gain more number of customers in a respective market segment and
within short duration of time. It is essential for them to understand that consumers’ behaviour
is now becoming complex and changing continuously and therefore, the company needs to
understand the importance of various psychological forces in relation with the respective
behaviour (Thrassou and Vrontis, 2009). Some of the good examples are Apple, Microsoft,
McDonalds and Coco-cola as all these plans their strategy as per the results derived from
researches in consumer behaviour. Hence, it is very important to be able to predict the change
in consumer trends and thus emphasize on the significance of consumers for the purpose of
marketing.
Some of the key psychological forces include consumer motivation, consumer perception,
consumer learning and attitude formation. Consumer motivation can be explained by Maslow
theory of hierarchy including basic needs, social needs, esteem needs and self-actualization
needs (Subrahmanyan and Tomas Gomez-Arias, 2008). As a person fulfil one needs, a higher
level needs more important. The next is consumer perception that is towards the brand or a
particular product influencing buying decision. It is considered as a process by which
individual chooses, organize and interpret the data to pull a significant conclusion. In
consumer learning, the skills are developed through practice while the intention and
knowledge are attained with the experience. In addition, there could be both cognitive and
conditional learning. The last psychological factor is the consumer attitude and beliefs refer
towards the products, and on which their product decisions reset. This makes marketers
understand the attitude and beliefs of the individuals and cater it according to with the
relevant marketing promotion and campaigns (Banerjee, 2008).

MANAGEMENT 2
To understand the importance of psychological forces for buyer behaviour more explicitly, it
is been related to Dove hair care product line that defends normal hair from the everyday
wear and tear of life and nurtures to leave it softer and 5x smoother. Dove hair care products
come as per the different needs of the customers like rough hair, dry hair, damaged hair, dull
hair, flat and frizzy hair and coloured hair.
In extent with consumer motivation, the major targeted market for the Dove hair care
products are women and most of the women are motivated to use these products because of
hedonic requirements (Apaolaza-Ibanez et al, 2011). In comparison from Maslow Hierarchy
of Needs, Dove emphases on the self-esteem needs and promotes developing positive self-
esteem where everywoman likes feeling confident in her individual beauty. Dove motivates
women to buy its products and support the changed idea of what right and actual beauty is.
Customers with low and high self-esteem are highly determined to have positive feelings
about themselves and are probable to develop a robust emotional attachment to Dove through
their advertisements, through and self-enhancement (low self-esteem) and self-verification
(high self-esteem) process. Hence, these consumers’ needs become a motive that directs the
consumer behaviour to seek satisfaction. With a better understanding of motives, Dove can
better equip to plan for next level needs of the customers with changing of an attribute in the
shape, size or weight and thus trigger certain relations and feelings. In addition, making their
hair good and silky can be said as motivation factor for women to purchase dove shampoo.
Hence, self-esteem and recognition also influence the individual buying decision (TuSkej,
Golob, and Podnar, 2013).
Considering consumer perception, Dove is continuously been launching several campaigns
for customers with changing of people perceptions towards the brand. For instance, Dove
Shampoo particularly has one marketing campaign emphasis completely on women with
curly hair. The title of the campaign was “Love Your Curls” (Mathews and Lee, 2018). Girls