Consumer Behavior Types

Buyer behavior types can often be split into four distinct categories:

• Dissonance-Reducing Buying: With this purchasing behavior, consumers are highly involved in the purchasing process but find it difficult to differentiate between brands, which can make the buying process stressful.

• Complex Buying: This purchasing behavior refers to consumers who value the purchasing decision and take their time exploring their choices due to their understanding that particular brands offer distinct benefits and disadvantages.

• Variety-Seeking Buying: This behavior is attributed to consumers who often switch up their brand loyalty simply to try something different. They understand brands offer different value, but they don’t think too hard about the purchase itself.

• Habitual Buying: This behavior involves low involvement consumers who don’t really acknowledge a huge difference between brands. So, since they are used to buying a particular product or from a certain brand, they tend to continue to do so out of pure habit.

Understanding your consumer base’s buying behavior is a critical element in adapting your business’s marketing strategy to attract new consumers, encourage customer retention, and even predict future buyer behavior.

How is Consumer Data Collected?

Consumer data is collected through direct and indirect feedback and tracking methodologies. Often, it is best for a business to take a more holistic approach to data collection; using multiple feedback and tracking avenues offers a robust overview of consumer behavior.

Direct consumer data collection involves gathering information right from consenting consumers. You can acquire this information by asking consumers to complete surveys, by collecting app or loyalty card activity, reviewing social media engagement, or through receipt capture. Indirect consumer data collection comes from analytical tools like Google Analytics, which tracks website conversions and user browsing activity. Other forms of indirect data collection include scan data, CRM systems, or cookies.

At Circana, one of our primary data collection methods is receipt capture. With this data, we can extract an abundance of insights, such as purchasing frequency, new and declining buyers, brand loyalty, and digital vs. brick-and-mortar channel behavior. We also utilize scan data, which is captured from point of sale systems’ (POS) records of scanned barcodes. This data clearly represents what items are sold and offers insights such as product performance, sales volume, and market share.

Deciding what data is important for your company to collect and review tends to differ depending on the marketing goal of your business. A company in the midst of a rebrand, for example, may depend on both direct and indirect attitudinal data collected from surveys or social media engagement, as it reflects the desires of a consumer, which is a foundational data point that is useful for discovering how your business should grow and move forward. In all, it is important to identify the reason for your data collection efforts so you can spend time properly implementing a collection strategy that allocates the right information through the most succinct channels.

How Do You Perform Customer Behavior Analysis?

Customer behavior analysis requires a combination of analytical tools, techniques, and a clear objective for the execution of your analytical results. After customer behavior data is collected, you should perform consumer segmentation to gain a deeper grasp of the collective attitudes of certain consumer groups. Consumers can be divided into segments based on mutual attributes, like:

●      Demographics: Age, income, and gender identity characteristics.

●      Geography: Where they are located.

●      Behavior: How they shop or their shopping frequency.

●      Psychographics: What they value in a purchase/how purchases align with their lifestyle.

●      Technographics: Tech usage and preferences.

●      Value: Inherent profitability.

From here, you can further examine the actions and behaviors of these segments by using statistical techniques to identify patterns within and across these segmented groups. Utilizing data segmentation through analytical methods like cluster (shared characteristic groups) or cohort (shared event groups) analysis lets you examine groups of consumers who are similar across multiple dimensions.

Within the scope of Circana’s work, one of our primary data collection sources, survey data, can be classified as attitudinal data, which refers to a customer’s opinions, motivations, and beliefs. Whether you’re looking to explore why a customer decided not to renew a membership or are interested in the reason why they prefer your product or service over your competitors, attitudinal data analysis introduces you to the root of their decision-making process. Exploring the attitudes of cohorts or clusters offers a unique opportunity to refine your business’s emotional and physical connection with your target audience in a very specific, data-driven way.

How Can Consumer Behavior Data Be Used?

There is a near-endless variety of ways consumer behavior data can be useful for a brand or business. Ultimately, consumer data collection and analysis is one of the best ways to peer into the future of consumers’ interactions with your business. You can not only easily identify which marketing tactics, products, and services resonate with loyal or profitable customer segments, but also guide their behaviors accordingly. Examining loyalty card behavior, for example, can assist businesses in creating membership-only experiences that truly encourage retention, repeat purchases, or the investment in new items your company has to offer.

Reviewing shopper insights is also an effective method for reducing spending. Consider the behavior of cohorts that sign up for a gym membership via organic Google search vs. paid social media ads. If organic search tends to yield consumers with a greater retention rate than social media ads, it can help you refine your budget so you are directing funds toward the most effective campaign strategies.

At Circana, we make it easy for companies to review, analyze, and utilize data with our Unify+ tool, a visualization platform that both simplifies and customizes data analytics to appeal to your most immediate needs. With Unify+, you can spend less time poring through data for valuable insights and more time applying these insights to your business practices for exceptional growth. To learn more about our Unify+ resource and to explore our Complete Consumer solution, reach out to our team today to speak with an expert.

---

Frequently Asked Questions About Consumer Behavior Data

What is Considered Consumer Data?

Consumer data can be defined as any personal, first-party information that contains insights about a customer’s identity, demographics, psychographics, behavior, attitudes, or transactions. This data includes items like purchase history, survey feedback, contact information, shopping cart activity, and loyalty program activity.

How Do Companies Protect Consumer Data?

Companies use a collection of protective measures to ensure that any consumer data is properly protected. As a company, having a clear and accessible privacy policy is essential for safe and ethical business practices. In terms of specific data protection measures, you can expect the average business to adhere to a sensitive encryption process, secure and transparent data disposal, limited data access within a company, and well-vetted third-party vendors. Companies should make it easy for consumers to reach out with any data privacy concerns.

What is the Customer Behavior Process?

The customer behavior process is the journey a consumer takes to identify and resolve their needs through a purchase. You can understand the customer behavior process by breaking it down into five parts:

●      Problem Recognition: Identifying a need or desire.

●      Information Search: Exploring available options.

●      Alternatives Evaluation: Comparing available options.

●      Purchase Decision: Choosing what product or service to buy.

●      Post-Purchase Evaluation: Reflecting on the purchase decision.

The customer behavior journey will differ based on the type of consumer behavior exhibited. Therefore, the customer journey analysis application must consider both the behavior process and behavior types to fully establish trust, confidence, and engagement with your business and brand.