why we buy book review

why we buy book review

The Power of Persuasion: Why We Buy Book Review

1. Introduction

The advent of technology and the increasing globalization have brought about a revolution in the consumer markets around the world. There is cutthroat competition in every aspect of a consumer’s purchase. Markets have become extremely consumer-oriented, and the consumer has the choice of choosing from a wide plethora of candy to extremely complex cars and financial services. Every country has a consumer protection act which gives consumers various rights and remedies, but the markets have still found means to exploit their consumers. One significant means of market exploitation is through the means of advertising and various other selling techniques. These too have taken a contemporary avatar. There are sales promotions, telemarketing, multi-level marketing, and the recent buzzword “consumer relationship management”. This book is a detailed scrutiny on the various selling techniques and how they affect consumer behavior and induce consumption. It provides various useful insights to both future and current marketers on ethical ground to practice marketing and also has insights on how various consumer groups can protect themselves from market exploitation.

2. The Psychology of Consumer Behavior

The environment in which we live has always been influenced by consumerism and the development of real markets. All things that we do in our daily life consist of consumption. Markets have been defined as a group of people who need a certain product and have the purchasing power to buy it. The process of marketing will start by identifying the needs and wants of the customers. It consists of the products that they have to purchase, the reason they have to purchase it, and the location where the purchasing will be made. The consumer, therefore, is the main factor of the marketing process. Without them, there is no aim in manufacturing a product. It is good to know that marketing is all about satisfying consumer needs. Its purpose is to raise the standard of living and contribute to a higher quality of life. But there are certain people, however, who have got the knowledge of consumer behavior and its marketing process the wrong way. They know it has the potential to make a consumer buy a product that they don’t really need or a product that is not productive. But when we turn to another side, marketing is trying to persuade consumers that they need a certain product to satisfy a certain need. And purchasing a product that does not give any harm and/or satisfies a certain need is considered to be productive. The knowledge of consumer behavior is not only done by marketers. It is done by everyone. When we turn to our daily activity where people are often involved in bargaining. The seller will always aim to sell a product at the highest price while the buyer at the lowest price. He will set the highest price in order to get more profit to increase his standard of living and his own quality of life. But when the buyer knows the price that is being set beyond the cost, he is actually being a control variable of the seller’s action. He will try to persuade the seller to reduce the price and the conclusion is that the buyer is trying to see whether the product that he wants to buy satisfies its original price. At the end of the process, the seller and the buyer did the same action. It is to satisfy their needs with the obtained product and a productive purchasing.

3. The Influence of Marketing Strategies

The marketing strategy will be the best method to influence consumers. A marketing strategy is a process that can allow an organization to concentrate its resources on the best opportunities with the goals of increasing sales and achieving a sustainable competitive advantage. A good marketing strategy needs to be drawn from an understanding of consumer behavior. It is the critical link between knowledge and understanding of consumers and the decision of whether and how to act within a market. A good marketing strategy can lead to the right place where consumers have been targeted, and consumers can be influenced to buy a product. These strategies can be seen in the 4P elements: Price, Product, Place, and Promotion. Here are some examples of how a marketing strategy can influence consumer decisions. Let’s assume a consumer wants to buy a smartphone. With a good marketing strategy, a smartphone manufacturer can offer a high-level product with the right price and place it in the right place for consumers to buy it. This definitely can influence the consumer to buy a smartphone because the product itself is placed in the right place with the right price. High price for a high-quality product is not an issue if the place to buy is suitable for the consumer. In an indirect way, price can also influence consumers by using sales promotion strategies such as giving discounts or free gifts because consumers can get a high-level product at a lower price. This promotion strategy can also influence consumers to make buying decisions.

People buy products or services for different reasons. As consumers, whatever needs or wants we perceive will always make us make purchase decisions. The results of our buying process are either buying products or services or deciding not to buy anything. This buying decision will be influenced by a number of factors, and its decoding process will happen in a split second. Hence, as marketers, we should better understand the reason why consumers choose particular products or services to ensure our target market decides to buy our products or services that we are offering. We can make use of the behavior knowledge of these consumers as our advantage to create an effective marketing strategy. Understanding the reason behind their buying decision is the starting point to decode the process of consumer decision making. And understanding how to influence consumer purchasing decisions should also be the main concern.

4. The Role of Reviews and Recommendations

A highly investigated source of product information that is claimed to strongly influence consumer expectations is word of mouth communication about the product. This includes opinions, advice, and reviews from friends, acquaintances, and other consumers that have had experience with the product. Word of mouth product information has been found to greatly influence consumers’ product attitudes and intentions to purchase. This is due to the generally perceived credibility of the information source as well as the personal and relevant nature of the information obtained. Unfortunately, there are not a lot of recent studies in an online context where the majority of word of mouth communication about consumer products resides today.

Research on decision making in consumer behavior has revealed that consumer satisfaction depends on the accuracy of their pre-purchase expectations. In other words, if a consumer buys a product and it performs lower (or higher) than what he or she had expected, they will be dissatisfied or satisfied with the purchase. This is a very important finding because it shows how vital it is to understand the factors that influence consumer expectations and how those same factors will affect the consumer’s interpretation of the product’s performance. One key factor that has been found to influence consumer expectations is product information. The amount of information available about a product and the specific content of that information can strongly influence consumer expectations.

5. Conclusion

The second part of the book focuses on goal setting and how to use the knowledge of consumer behavior to market new and existing products. This part of the book is aimed at people working in marketing jobs. The author raises a very important point that many purchases are made on impulse. He suggests that if a product is displayed promising a free gift during the purchase theme, it will attract a lot of buyers. Although this may get some sales, it will not be profitable for the company as the free gift may be worth the same as the product and consumers will only buy the product for the free gift.

The first part of the book discusses two models of consumer behavior. The first model is an unconscious model where the author explains that most buying behaviors are done unconsciously. People tend to react more and act less in a buying situation. The second model is a goal-setting model. This model explains how consumers take a very long time to make a simple purchasing decision. This is caused because they are uncertain about what to buy and therefore do not make an impulsive decision.

Persuasion itself is a very powerful phenomenon. The Power of Persuasion: Why We Buy helps us understand how consumers get persuaded and what makes them make the decision to purchase. This book is designed to teach you about consumer behavior in buying products and some goal-setting strategies for shoppers. The book is divided into two parts.