Understanding Consumer Psychology

Jason Burnham, President of Telepathy, Inc., published an article today titled: The Keys to Mastering Consumer Perception and Behavior - http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/29106.asp
By diving in to the three fundamental thoughts that human beings can conceive: certainty, probability and possibility; he outlines how these cognitive functions determine what decisions we will make and what ultimately motivates or inspires the decisions we take action on.

According to Burnham: "Marketers fail to obtain the insight into how or why someone made a particular decision or behaved in a certain way. This is where the real answers to what drives consumer behavior lies." This is very apt perception on his part. Much of the current marketing tactics are based on retro-active, knee-jerk strategies inspired by previous outcomes from similar campaigns...but we don't reach back to determine the most important question; Why?

To determine Why, we first have to determine Who. And the who is broken up into three types of thinkers: Past, Present and Future. The beauty of this breakdown is in its pure simplicity. Though extremely thought-provoking, it is also so obvious. Past Thinkers want verification and store information they gather to apply to future decisions. Present Thinkers observe the world and use what they find to solve problems they current face. Lastly, Future Thinkers take what they see and apply to something they may potentially come across in the future.

Taking a quick step back, we can see how bucketing potential consumers into these three categories can serve as a fantastic starting point when developing your marketing strategies from the ground level. Because most marketers focus on the who, what, where and when - they miss the why - and thus limit their success to the very short-term. In short, a narrow focus will always garner narrow results.

In order to truly scale, we as marketers will need to retool the engine driving our efforts. By foreseeing what drives consumer purchasing habits, we can model a campaign that compliments, targets and activates buying around it. This is no simple task, however, as it requires us to reset and rethink - to contemplate a psychologically driven, tactical, and strategic approach. For myself, I am eager to give this a go. Beginning small, in an effort to test this system and learn from it. More to come.