6 Essential Factors Influencing Consumer Behaviour

There are many factors influencing consumer behaviour, but there are six that should remain in the front of your mind as you encourage people to act.

As I design landing pages or advise companies on their digital strategy, I am always considering the factors influencing consumer behaviour. These are the factors that shape consumer buying behaviour both in B2C and B2B, online and off.

Of course, there are many consumer behaviour models and hundreds of different factors that influence decision making. As a result, it is easy to get bogged down in complexity and to feel overwhelmed by the buying process.

We often end up with confusing models that are hard for other stakeholders to follow and get cast aside as deadlines loom, and the pressure is on.

To avoid this problem, I focus on six factors that influence the buying decision. Yes, this is an oversimplification. But it is one that is accurate enough to be useful and simple enough to be easily applicable.

Let’s look at each of the six factors I consider, starting with the user’s ultimate goal.

1. What Are Your User’s Goals?

Only when we understand a person’s underlying motivation can we create a compelling argument to act.

Why is it somebody is considering purchasing a product or service like yours? What are they trying to achieve?

At first glance, this may appear obvious. For example, somebody buys a fitness app to get fit. But, we need to dig deeper than that. Why does somebody want to get fit? Do they want to live longer, be more attractive or have more energy to play with their children?

In the B2B sector, things get even more complicated. On the one hand, there are the company goals. For example, people hire me to help them increase their businesses conversion rate online or to improve the experience of their users.

However, there are also the goals of the person hiring me. Perhaps they are hoping that if this project goes well, they might get that promotion. Or maybe they have a target they have to meet at the end of the year.

All of these goals are factors influencing their behaviour, and we have to take them into account. But, often, that goal is to relieve a pain point.

2. Do You Understand Your Audience’s Pain Points?

People are motivated by a desire to overcome the problems they face. For example, I use online accounting software to minimise the pain of running my businesses finances and to reduce the cost of accountant fees.

We need to know what that ‘pain’ is for our particular audience, so we can communicate how we solve that problem. For example, although I bought my accounting software because I hate dealing with finances and wanted something that made it as easy as possible, other people might buy it because they wanted a greater sense of control to overcome their fear of money.

It is also worth pointing out that the pain point people experience can often be in a competitor’s offering. For example, most companies already have a website. That means when they hire a web designer; they are choosing to leave an existing supplier and find a new one. Why are they doing that? In most cases, it is because there was some element of the previous experience that was painful.

In such cases, we need to reassure the customer that our offering will not repeat the pain point they experienced with their previous supplier. They need to know we are different.

That brings me onto objections.

3. What Is Stopping Your Audience From Acting?

Whenever a website asks us to take action, we will have concerns. Addressing these concerns is known as objection handling and is fundamental to the sales process.

Even the most trivial of actions will throw up reasons not to act. Take, for example, signing up for a newsletter. A whole load of concerns go through our minds:

• Will they email me too much?
• What if the content is irrelevant?
• Will they make it hard to unsubscribe?
• What will they do with my data?

We need to understand what these objections are if we are going to reassure people.

Why is it that some people choose not to buy from you? Have you asked them? Why do some people never contact you after visiting your website? Have you run an exit-intent survey to find out?

4. What Is Your Audience’s Mental Model?

We all see the world in slightly different ways depending on our experiences and background. How we perceive the world is called our mental model, and we need to understand this, to ensure that we communicate in a way that connects with our audiences model.

We need to understand our audience’s mental model on two levels.

First, we need to understand it on a general level. That will help us understand how to communicate with our audience. Should we adopt a serious, intellectual tone or keep things fun and informal?

That is why it is helpful to understand what sites they use, what newspapers they read, and what kind of education they had. These paint a picture of their outlook, which in turn informs our tone of voice and brand.

However, we cannot stop there. We also need to understand how users structure and organise information. Understanding that will help with the terminology we use and how we present information to users, especially on our websites.

So far, we have looked at internal factors that influence consumer behaviour. However, there are external factors too.

5. What External Factors Are Influencing the Buying Decision?

There are a plethora of external sources that influence our decisions as consumers; from review websites like Trust Pilot to family members or even social media influencers.

In B2B things are even more complicated, with many different stakeholders from the buyer and decision-maker to the end customer.

To be honest, the sheer number of external factors can prove overwhelming. That is why, in most cases, I tend to focus on the top three. Anything more than that and I find myself getting distracted trying to influence factors that are often beyond my control.

Talking of things beyond our control — we also need to consider external constraints.

6. What Constraints Restrict the User’s Decision Whether to Act?

Our audience rarely has complete autonomy in their decision making. Instead, a range of different factors constrains users. However, in B2C, the big two are budget and time to assess their options.

In B2B, it is once again more complicated and includes additional factors such as:

• Procurement rules.
• Legal requirements.
• Management imposed constraints.

Knowing these constraints allows us to do two things. First, by acknowledging them in our communications, we demonstrate to consumers that we understand the challenges we face and show our expertise.

Knowing the constraints also allows us to tailor our offering to accommodate them better.

For example, when I ran a web design agency, we used to regularly break larger projects down into several smaller projects to fall below a companies procurement threshold, avoiding a lengthy tendering process for our clients.

So now you know what you need to know about your audience and what factors are influencing their decisions. However, that is only half the battle.

Discovering and Utilising the Factors Influencing Consumer Behaviour

Hopefully, this article has helped you understand the factors influencing consumer behaviour. Your next challenge is to know what those factors are for your specific audience.

To do that you need to carry out some user research. Fortunately, I have the perfect article to get you started — User Research: 10 Techniques to Get Started or Improve.

The danger is that once you have done that research, the findings get forgotten amid the frenzy of a project. It is hard to keep the user front and centre of your mind when deadlines are pressing, and work gets hectic.

To avoid that problem, I would recommend visualising your research either as a customer journey map or empathy map. Used right, these assets will prevent you from forgetting the customer’s needs and stay focused on the factors that influence their decision making.