Main Factors Influencing Consumer Behavior

                                        
Understanding your customers is essential to go-to-market success. 
 
Have you ever wondered why your choice of a product or service might be different from the choice of your friends or family members? What causes are driving their choices and how are they different from yours?
 
In general, there are many different factors that influence consumer behavior. These factors impact whether or not your customer buys your products or services. Understanding what main factors influencing consumer behavior can help to understand their motives.
 
 
What are the factors influencing consumer behavior? 
 
Consisting of how consumers’ emotions, attitudes, and preferences affect buying behavior, consumer behavior is the study of consumers and how they behave while deciding to buy a product or service. 
 
Consumer behavior is influenced by a lot of internal and external factors such as psychological, environmental, marketing, personal, family, and cultural factors. 
 
 
1. Psychological factors
 
Human psychology is an integral factor that influences consumer behavior. Not easy to measure, but psychological factors are powerful enough to influence a buying decision. 
 
Psychological factors usually include motivation, perception, learning, attitudes, beliefs, etc. 
 
 
2. Social Factors
 
As social beings, our purchasing decisions are of course impacted to some extent by the people around us. 
 
We are constantly working on imitating others and nurturing a desire to be socially accepted. Hence our buying behavior is influenced by others around us. These factors are considered as social factors. Some of these factors include family, reference groups, roles and status, and more. 
 
 
3. Cultural factors
 
We all have a set of values and ideologies that belong to a group of people. These values and ideologies are shaped and highly influenced consciously or subconsciously by the culture of that particular community. Some of these factors come from the culture, subculture as well as social class.
 
 
4. Personal Factors
 
Alongside psychological, social, and cultural factors, we all have factors that are personal to us that impact our selections. These factors differ from person to person, resulting in varied perceptions and behavior. 
 
Factors that are personal to the consumers influence their buying behavior. These personal factors thereby produce different consumer behavior. 
 
Some of the personal factors are related to age, income, occupation, lifestyle, and more.
 
 
5. Economic Factors
 
The buying quirks and decisions of the consumer largely rely on the market or nation’s economic circumstances. 
 
A strong, healthy economy brings buying confidence while a weak economy reflects a strained market with a weakened buying power and unemployment. 
 
Economic factors have an important influence on the buying decision of consumers. Some of the important economic factors are personal income, family income, consumer credit, liquid assets, savings, and so on.