How Customers Make A Decision To Buy Something (Snowblower Shopping)

1. Factors Influencing Buying Decisions
2. Pain vs Pleasure Aspect in Buying Decisions
3. Emotional Aspect of Buying Decisions
4. Evaluating Value in Buying Decisions
5. FAQ

Factors Influencing Buying Decisions

I'm getting blasted, oh, that's terrible. We're in like a full-on snow blowing off the trees situation here. All right, so today we're talking about how customers and clients make buying decisions and you may be wondering why I'm outside and why I'm freezing out here. Well, it all comes down to a recent purchase that I made and all of the factors that went into it. You see, only recently did I purchase a brand new snow blower item, pretty exciting. But the reality is that I've been shoveling snow for a whole lot of years. What was it that finally kind of tipped the scale and prompted me to go make this investment? Well, as you may have guessed, there's a number of factors involved and the same factors that play in my decision are the same things that are going to influence your customers and your clients for your business. So, it pays to talk about them, please to understand them, and it pays to know so you can implement them in your business.

Pain vs Pleasure Aspect in Buying Decisions

The first factor involved with what finally prompted me to go out there and buy a snow blower was pretty much deciding on the pain versus pleasure aspect. And this is the same thing that your customers and your clients go through when they're trying to make a buying decision. Basically, they're either doing it to avoid pain or to get pleasure. Now, in the case of a snowblower, this is very much pain avoidance because I don't know too many people that enjoy blowing snow. But the reality is if you've got snow, you got to get it off the driveway. So, you can do it the old-fashioned way with a good old shovel, which I've been doing for years, but really, it's kind of a pain and it's not a lot of fun, which is why I finally invested in getting that snow blower, which really was to avoid the pain rather than to gain pleasure of actually performing the task. And this is the same thing your customers and your clients go through when they're trying to decide on your product or service. Are they trying to benefit or get some sort of value from it in the form of pleasure? Or are they trying to avoid pain, in which case your business is going to help solve them with that.

Emotional Aspect of Buying Decisions

The next way that customers make buying decisions is understanding that most purchases are emotional decisions. In fact, pretty much all purchases are emotional decisions, even when it comes down to things like a snowblower. Snow's going to follow me here any second now. I'm just kind of waiting for it. This is really important to understand because if you understand that someone's coming in, they're going to make an emotional decision first, and then back it up logically, it'll very much influence the messaging and the style of marketing you decide to use. This is why telling stories and kind of trying to convey things with metaphor and simile and things like that are really effective in your marketing. So at any time you have the opportunity to tell a case story or give a testimonial or show someone with a similar benefit, you're going to do amazingly well compared to if you just give the cold hard facts or the kind of the statistics or any other just raw data about the product. Like when it comes to the snowblower, again, I didn't really care how much snow it could move or how many rpm the motor was or any of those things. All I really cared is, is it gonna help me get the snow off my driveway? Also, I really resonated with the messaging of this particular snowblower. It was a Greenworks, it's battery-powered, it's kind of hippie-ish and clean energy, which is what people are into here on the west coast, so it fit with the story that I told myself about the kind of person that I am.

Evaluating Value in Buying Decisions

The third and final way that I want to cover about how customers and clients make buying decisions is in weighing the value of the product or service that you're trying to sell. Now keep in mind we're talking about value here, and not just cost. Of course, there are those cost-sensitive customers out there who are strictly gonna make decisions based on cost, but I would like to recommend you don't go for them in your business, and you instead try to attract a value-based customer. Now, when you're going after the value-based customer, what they're gonna do is they're going to weigh the perceived costs of buying your product versus the perceived benefits they're going to get from it. And if the perceived value is higher than the perceived cost, they'll often make a transaction. If, on the other hand, you're not telling a good enough story about the benefits and the experience and all the good things that are gonna come with the product and a nice conveying story, well, they're not gonna really understand, and so they're not going to be as apt to buy. Your goal here in influencing the customer's buying decision is to make your product or service as much of a no-brainer as possible, which means that the value is perceived to be far greater than the cost involved.

FAQ

Q: What are the factors that influence buying decisions?

A: Factors that influence buying decisions include pain vs pleasure aspect, emotional aspect, and evaluating value.
Q: How does the pain vs pleasure aspect affect buying decisions?

A: The pain vs pleasure aspect in buying decisions involves customers deciding whether they are trying to avoid pain or gain pleasure from a product or service.
Q: What role does the emotional aspect play in buying decisions?

A: The emotional aspect of buying decisions suggests that most purchases are emotional decisions, and understanding this can influence marketing strategies.
Q: How do customers evaluate value in buying decisions?

A: Customers evaluate value by weighing the perceived benefits of a product or service against the perceived costs to determine if the value outweighs the cost.