23 Feb

Consumer Behavior: How devToM impressively helps companies adapt to post-pandemic changes

Companies could save time and money by learning as much as possible about their customer's habits and preferences. This way, companies tailor their marketing strategies to reach the appropriate target individuals most likely to become loyal customers.

Consumer behavior consists of emotional, cognitive, and behavioral responses to products and services. This studies consumers' actions surrounding product selection, use, and disposal.

With consumer behavior, businesses penetrate consumers' minds to glean helpful information. Information about how, why, and what they purchase, as well as their pain points and thoughts. Then, companies use it to appeal to more targeted customers and formulate strategies based on their needs, preferences, and desires.

Consumer behavior could not remain unaffected, specifically regarding the pandemic, as the pandemic has caused significant changes in many sectors. Nowadays, consumers purchase products differently than they used to while having distinct needs and desires. 

Why was the pandemic crucial for changes in consumer behavior?

In the post-pandemic era, the consequences of the lockdown are visible in people's behaviors. So, companies broadly notice changes in how customers communicate and purchase products. 

However, the significance of consumer behavior is not only assisting companies in understanding consumers' needs, changes and preferences. Therefore, a complete consumer behavior analysis includes plenty of additional details:

• It should include consumers' beliefs and feelings about other similar products, rivals, etc., apart from their company. 
• It should include all the factors influencing consumers to choose a particular product, such as free shipping, a lower price, or higher quality. 
• It should include customers' opinions, sentiments and why they do not purchase the company's product. 
• And last but not least, it should include how the consumer's surroundings (friends, family, etc.) affect their behavior and how influential this is on their buying choices.

When businesses research consumer behavior, they should consider all of these factors.

What are the three factors that have an impact on consumer behavior?

A consumer's actions can be affected by three main factors. Each factor affects the likelihood that the company's ideal customer will purchase their product. These factors can be cultural, personal, and psychological.

1. Cultural factors

Exceptional cultural factors distinguish communities. Aspects of culture include people's beliefs, norms, behaviors, needs, and practices. The distinctive feature of this group is that it shares a similar worldview and purchases items with the same mentality. This happens due to its strong identification with the culture of the group it originally belonged to. This can significantly impact their bottom line and define their identity in popular culture. Consequently, cultural factors significantly affect the market success of a product.

Numerous individuals link cultural and social factors. For instance, people's behavior, decisions, and purchasing options are influenced by their surroundings, such as family and friends. Typically, these individuals are members of the same community, so their affection is primarily cultural.

2. Personal factors 

Personal factors also play a unique role in consumer behavior. By personal factors, we refer to a particular person's preferences or feelings. This can also be about a person's age group or gender preferences. In addition to age and gender, a person's way of life, personality, and socioeconomic status may influence the abovementioned behaviors. For instance, personal factors affect educational attainment, background and job. As a result, the purchasing habits of numerous categorizations can vary greatly. Therefore, businesses should determine which economic class, gender, age, etc., consumers belong to, select their characteristics and comprehend consumer behavior.

The financial factors are often considered separate entities. Thus they match with personal factors, both being essential. Financial factors are unique to each individual and have a multiplicative effect on the population's social status. People's economic situation, national (community), and social class significantly affect their purchasing habits and decisions. When a country's economy thrives, consumers have more buying power as more money is available on the market. When the economy is doing well, consumers have more discretionary income and are more likely to make large purchases.

3. Psychological factors

Psychological factors strongly influence consumer behavior. Therefore, companies should understand which internal needs compel people to purchase with less thought. Through their purchases, they feel important. In addition, specific colors or verbal concepts make them feel unique and close to others. One of the most critical aspects of consumers is their ability to create a striking image of a product and develop an emotional connection with it. And this is what companies should rely on when they try to make a common sentiment when customers purchase or use their products.

What kind of changes in consumer behavior are noticed?

The pandemic and its implications profoundly impacted all the above factors and how people feel and think about purchasing. Most consumers favor purchasing online and delving deeply into the online world. After the pandemic, many people are still used to doing most of their shopping online out of a desire to feel more secure.

Moreover, another change in consumer behavior after the pandemic and due to the rising inflation is the customers' need to allocate a more significant portion of their disposable income toward necessities rather than luxuries. 

The above tendency occurs for another reason too. People have become more introverted and "home nesting" after the pandemic, preferring to spend their money on activities that keep them inside rather than venturing out. Some believe this will eventually shift. Thus, others think that it will remain a constant. Ultimately, this can be adjusted by those who work from home and those who do not.

That is just a sampling of how consumer behavior has altered since the pandemic. Every day, more and more changes enter the market, and companies should be ready to take advantage of them to attract more customers.

How can companies learn about consumer behavior changes?

Companies can master consumer behavior changes with devToM. devToM is an AI-powered platform for Product Development that facilitates the transformation and administration of product ideas. This software-as-a-service (SaaS) application enables product intelligence by integrating AI, unstructured data, and established industry standards.

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devToM can help companies with deep research into their target audience and broadly their market. In addition, with devToM, companies can swiftly learn about changes in their consumer behaviors. 

Specifically, devToM aids businesses in spotting emerging market trends and allocating resources rapidly, ahead of the competition and in pursuit of expanding their clientele. Consumers are drawn to what's popular and trending in social media. There are numerous instances where they make purchases based on what they perceive as trendy. With this advantage, businesses can get a leg up on the competition.

Aside from trends, businesses can stay abreast of industry news and learn about unanticipated events to be prepared and gain an advantage over competitors. In this manner, companies can innovate and act more proactively than their rivals, as well as export a thorough market analysis report. In addition, the extensive knowledge of trends, upcoming events, and market swifties assists businesses in identifying new markets and partners to expand their horizons and target market options. devToM is the greatest ally in each of these processes.

To achieve the objectives above, businesses should strategically position their products on the market. To combat this, companies should develop realistic customer personas to determine the ideal brand positioning.

devToM assists businesses in identifying their ideal customer persona to comprehend their target audience and observe consumer behavior. Over and above that, devToM enables firms to determine the optimal brand positioning for their products using customer personas.

With devToM, companies not only learn about future outcomes but are also ready for consumer behavior shifts, gaining numerous benefits. For instance, companies could be aware of the pandemic's unanticipated repercussions and the market fluctuations it caused, allowing them to be prepared for the upcoming changes.

devToM and AI technology are well-versed in all the above, as they understand consumer behavior well.