As for social status, some consumers may also look for the "social value" of products they buy in order to show "external indications" of their incomes and their level of purchasing power..
Lifestyle:
The lifestyle of an individual includes all of its activities, interests, values and opinions.
The lifestyle of a consumer will influence on his behavior and purchasing decisions. For example, a consumer with a healthy and balanced lifestyle will prefer to eat organic products and go to specific grocery stores, will do some jogging regularly (and therefore will buy shoes, clothes and specific products), etc..
Personality and self-concept:
Personality is the set of traits and specific characteristics of each individual. It is the product of the interaction of psychological and physiological characteristics of the individual and results in constant behaviors.
It materializes into some traits such as confidence, sociability, autonomy, charisma, ambition, openness to others, shyness, curiosity, adaptability, etc..
While the self-concept is the image that the individual has – or would like to have – of him and he conveys to his entourage. These two concepts greatly influence the individual in his choices and his way of being in everyday life. And therefore also his shopping behavior and purchasing habits as consumer.
In order to attract more customers, many brands are trying to develop an image and a personality that conveys the traits and values - real or desired – of consumers they are targeting.
For example, since its launch, Apple cultivates an image of innovation, creativity, boldness and singularity which is able to attract consumers who identify to these values and who feel valued – in their self-concept – by buying a product from Apple.
Because consumers do not just buy products based on their needs or for their intrinsic features but they are also looking for products that are consistent and reinforce the image they have of themselves or they would like to have.
The more a product or brand can convey a positive and favorable self-image to the consumer, the more it will be appreciated and regularly purchased.
IV. Psychological factors
Among the factors factors influencing consumer behavior, psychological factors can be divided into 4 categories: motivation, perception, learning as well as beliefs and attitudes.
Motivation:
Motivation is what will drive consumers to develop a purchasing behavior. It is the expression of a need is which became pressing enough to lead the consumer to want to satisfy it. It is usually working at a subconscious level and is often difficult to measure.
Motivation is directly related to the need and is expressed in the same type of classification as defined in the stages of the consumer buying decision process.
To increase sales and encourage consumers to purchase, brands should try to create, make conscious or reinforce a need in the consumer’s mind so that he develops a purchase motivation. He will be much more interested in considering and buy their products.
They must also, according to research, the type of product they sell and the consumers they target, pick out the motivation and the need to which their product respond in order to make them appear as the solution to the consumers’ need.
Perception:
Perception is the process through which an individual selects, organizes and interprets the information he receives in order to do something that makes sense. The perception of a situation at a given time may decide if and how the person will act.
Depending to his experiences, beliefs and personal characteristics, an individual will have a different perception from another.
Each person faces every day tens of thousands of sensory stimuli (visual, auditory, kinesthetic, olfactory and gustatory). It would be impossible for the brain to process all consciously. That is why it focuses only on some of them.
The perception mechanism of an individual is organized around three processes:
Selective Attention: The individual focuses only on a few details or stimulus to which he is subjected. The type of information or stimuli to which an individual is more sensitive depends on the person.
For brands and advertisers successfully capture and retain the attention of consumers is increasingly difficult. For example, many users no longer pay any attention, unconsciously, to banner ads on the Internet. This kind of process is called Banner Blindness.
The attention level also varies depending on the activity of the individual and the number of other stimuli in the environment. For example, an individual who is bored during a subway trip will be much more attentive to a new ad displayed in the tube. It is a new stimuli that breaks the trip routine for him.
Consumers will also be much more attentive to stimuli related to a need. For example, a consumer who wishes to buy a new car will pay more attention to car manufacturers’ ads. While neglecting those for computers.
Lastly, people are more likely to be attentive to stimuli that are new or out of the ordinary. For example, an innovative advertising or a marketing message (Unique Value Proposition) widely different from its competitors is more likely to be remembered by consumers.
Selective Distortion: In many situations, two people are not going to interpret an information or a stimulus in the same way. Each individual will have a different perception based on his experience, state of mind, beliefs and attitudes. Selective distortion leads people to interpret situations in order to make them consistent with their beliefs and values.
For brands, it means that the message they communicate will never be perceived exactly in the same way by consumers. And that everyone may have a different perception of it. That’s why it’s important to regularly ask consumers in order to know their actual brand perception.
Selective distortion often benefits to strong and popular brands. Studies have shown that the perception and brand image plays a key role in the way consumers perceived and judged the product.
Several experiments have shown that even if we give them the same product, consumers find that the product is or tastes better when they’ve been told that it’s from a brand they like than when they’ve been told it’s a generic brand. While it is exactly the same product!
Similarly, consumers will tend to appreciate even less a product if it comes from a brand for which they have a negative perception.
Selective Retention: People do not retain all the information and stimuli they have been exposed to. Selective retention means what the individual will store and retain from a given situation or a particular stimulus. As for selective distortion, individuals tend to memorize information that will fit with their existing beliefs and perceptions.
For example, consumers will remember especially the benefits of a brand or product they like and will "forget" the drawbacks or competing products’ advantages.
Selective retention is also what explains why brands and advertisers use so much repetition in their advertising campaigns and why they are so broadcasted. So that the selective retention can help the brand to become a "top of mind" brand in the consumer’s mind.
Learning:
Learning is through action. When we act, we learn. It implies a change in the behavior resulting from the experience. The learning changes the behavior of an individual as he acquires information and experience.
For example, if you are sick after drinking milk, you had a negative experience, you associate the milk with this state of discomfort and you "learn" that you should not drink milk. Therefore, you don’t buy milk anymore.
Rather, if you had a good experience with the product, you will have much more desire to buy it again next time.
The learning theories can be used in marketing by brands. As the theory of operant conditioning which states that you can build a good image and high demand for a product by associating it with a positive reinforcement (or rather a bad image with a negative reinforcement).
Beliefs and attitudes:
A belief is a conviction that an individual has on something. Through the experience he acquires, his learning and his external influences (family, friends, etc..), he will develop beliefs that will influence his buying behavior.
While an attitude can be defined as a feeling, an assessment of an object or idea and the predisposition to act in a certain way toward that object. Attitudes allow the individual to develop a coherent behavior against a class of similar objects or ideas.
Beliefs as well as attitudes are generally well-anchored in the individual’s mind and are difficult to change. For many people, their beliefs and attitudes are part of their personality and of who they are.
However, it is important to understand, identify and analyze the positive attitudes and beliefs but also the negative ones that consumers can have on a brand or product. To change the brand’s marketing message or adjust its positioning in order to get consumers to change their brand perception.