Scribd Logo
Upload

Welcome to Scribd!

  • 132 views

    Key Factors Influencing Online Consumer Behaviour

    Uploaded by

    Arpit Jain
    The document discusses a model of online consumer behavior called the FFF model. It describes 3 key stages: 1) Factors that influence consumer behavior like demographics, marketing, attitudes and motivations. 2) Filtering elements like security, privacy and trust that consumers use to evaluate options. 3) Filtered buying behavior based on revised expectations and motives. The model emphasizes understanding consumer motives, overcoming fears about security/privacy, building trust through good customer service and positioning as an expert in one's niche.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Key Factors Influencing Online Consumer Behaviour

    Uploaded by

    Arpit Jain
    132 views5 pages
    The document discusses a model of online consumer behavior called the FFF model. It describes 3 key stages: 1) Factors that influence consumer behavior like demographics, marketing, attitudes and motivations. 2) Filtering elements like security, privacy and trust that consumers use to evaluate options. 3) Filtered buying behavior based on revised expectations and motives. The model emphasizes understanding consumer motives, overcoming fears about security/privacy, building trust through good customer service and positioning as an expert in one's niche.

    Original Description:

    NEW ONE

    Copyright

    © © All Rights Reserved

    Available Formats

    DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Did you find this document useful?

    Is this content inappropriate?

    The document discusses a model of online consumer behavior called the FFF model. It describes 3 key stages: 1) Factors that influence consumer behavior like demographics, marketing, attitudes and motivations. 2) Filtering elements like security, privacy and trust that consumers use to evaluate options. 3) Filtered buying behavior based on revised expectations and motives. The model emphasizes understanding consumer motives, overcoming fears about security/privacy, building trust through good customer service and positioning as an expert in one's niche.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    132 views5 pages

    Key Factors Influencing Online Consumer Behaviour

    Uploaded by

    Arpit Jain
    The document discusses a model of online consumer behavior called the FFF model. It describes 3 key stages: 1) Factors that influence consumer behavior like demographics, marketing, attitudes and motivations. 2) Filtering elements like security, privacy and trust that consumers use to evaluate options. 3) Filtered buying behavior based on revised expectations and motives. The model emphasizes understanding consumer motives, overcoming fears about security/privacy, building trust through good customer service and positioning as an expert in one's niche.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    You are on page 1of 5

    Key Factors Influencing Online Consumer

    Behaviour Backed By Research


    POSTED ON MAY 30, 2014 BY PAWEL GRABOWSKI IN CONVERSION RATE, MERCHANDISING / DESIGN WITH 1 COMMENT

    You can build what you think is the best store in the world. But if you fail to align it with standard
    online customer behavior, you wont make many sales.
    There is an unbelievable amount of information you need to know to sell online.

    You must learn everything about your products and niche you want to operate in. You need at least
    some basic understanding of the technology behind the store too. Then theres marketing: you must
    know how to promote the store. Chances are that you will be doing that on your own for a good
    while.

    But a crucial aspect of ecommerce gets often lost among all this information your customers online
    behaviour. Part of the reason is that it seems obvious someone lands on your site, finds products
    he or she wants and providing the price is right, shipping is within reason and the product is available
    of course, buys.

    Unfortunately its not that easy. There is much more to the user buying process than the 4 stages
    framework commonly discussed:

    Need recognition
    Search for solution
    Evaluation of alternatives
    Purchase
    There are underlying processes that happen during each of those stages. If you are thinking of
    starting up your store, its crucial that you learn about them.

    The FFF Model of Online Consumer Behavior


    In 2012, two management professors Ujwala Dange and Vinay Kimar from Priyadarshini Engineering
    College and S. B. Patil Institute of Management respectively proposed a model for online customer
    behaviour. It is not the first time a model like this has been developed but I found theirs to be most
    relevant to customers of today.

    The FFF model takes into consideration internal and external factors affecting consumer buying
    behaviour. It then proceeds to discuss various filtering elements customers will apply to make a
    selection of a store to purchase from and revised filtered buying behaviour based on their final
    selection.
    Graphically the model representing customer journey to purchase looks like this:
    1. Factors
    Starting from left, the first element Kimar and Dange identified are factors that motivate customers to
    buy products or services online. They divided them into two categories: external and internal.

    The external factors are the ones beyond the control of the customers. They can divide into five
    sectors: Demographics, socio-economics, technology and public policy; culture; sub- culture;
    reference groups; and marketing.
    Internal factors are personal traits or behaviours and include attitudes, learning, perception,
    motivation, self image, and semiotics.
    Based on such factors customer develops what Jagdish Sheth, a professor of marketing at Emory
    University defined as two distinct types of buying motives: functional and non-functional.
    The functional motives relate to consumer needs and could include things like time, convenience
    of shopping online, price, the environment of shopping place (i.e. couch buying), selection of
    products etc.
    The non-functional motives relate more to the culture or social values like the brand of the store or
    product for instance.
    2. Filtering Elements
    Kimar and Dange recognized security, privacy and trust as three hurdles to online purchases.
    Customers use these three factors to filter their buying choices and decide on the final selection of
    stores they are willing to buy from. In other words, if your store doesnt pass your customers security,
    privacy and trustworthiness criteria, they wont buy from you. Even if you are cheaper.

    Compared to traditional brick and mortar shops, online shopping carries more risk during the
    purchase process. Customers recognise online as a high level risk purchase and have become
    aware of what might happen with their data online. They use that knowledge now to filter their
    purchase options by 3 factors:

    Security
    Its an unfortunate characteristics of the internet that information there could be easily lost or stolen.
    Your payment details or personal information could easily be retrieved from a database it is stored in
    by the shop for instance, as we have seen recently with few major security breaches.
    Customers are growing more aware of the dangers of stolen data from the web. And they filter their
    purchasing alternatives against security criteria.

    Privacy
    Another type of risk online is having personal information handed over to or stolen by 3rd party
    companies to send unsolicited emails and spam to customers. Even though the results of privacy
    breaches may not be as severe as losing your financial data, it can still cause a great deal of
    frustration and diminish trust in stores.
    A lack of trust in a stores privacy policies is a serious obstacle for many customers. Similarly, many
    customers look for reassurance that their data will be protected and not handed over to any 3rd
    parties for further use in marketing.

    Trust and Trustworthiness


    Online trust is essential in building any relationship with customers. There seems to be however a
    diminishing trust in online merchants. This is especially true when it comes to smaller, niche stores.
    Customers focus on Amazon and other giants, shops with big brands behind them and dont apply
    the same level of trust to a smaller shop. So if you run a store selling bike storage for instance, you
    should work hard to build a high level trust among your customers to be picked up for the order.

    3. Filtered Buying Behaviour


    The last element of the model covers what authors call the filtered buying behaviours, a set of
    expectations and motives revised by the filters we discussed above.

    How to Use this Model to Develop a Better Store


    Knowing and understanding the FFF model is not enough; you should act on it when designing your
    store. Here are the key takeaways you should remember:

    Understand that your customers have different motives that affect their buying
    decision. These might include personal circumstances but also social ones
    too. PlayBlue (NSFW) understands this and packs their shipments in specific packaging,
    recognizing that items they sell might be perceived differently by various customer groups (and
    that their customers might not want others to know what they buy).
    Overcome customers filtering elements:
    Next you should ensure that you overcome your customers fears over security and privacy by

    Applying SSL and other security policies to ensure security of data


    Using recognised payment processing providers.
    Applying for business accreditation (such as BBB) or industry specific memberships
    to gain more trust.
    Displaying your phone number, email and if possible, address to so that customers
    know there is a real company behind the store.
    Developing a solid about us page introducing your store and convincing customers
    that you are a real business.
    Show your personality and present the real person behind the online store. you can do
    this through social media where you could engage in conversations with customers instead of just
    posting updates about your store.
    Develop a solid content marketing plan to position yourself as an expert in your
    niche.Providing information your customers might be looking for will increase their trust levels in
    you.
    Lastly, get known for insanely great customer service you provide. This will
    undoubtedly improve the trustworthiness of your store
    MARKETERS Consumer involvement has implications for a marketer. Consumer
    involvement affects how consumers gather, comprehend and transmit information,
    make purchase decisions and make post-purchase evaluation. Thus a marketer
    needs to understand the process and design his marketing mix in a manner that can
    activate the involvement process to his favor. The study of consumer involvement
    can be useful for a marketer in the following ways: 1. The study of consumer
    involvement helps a marketer assess how the majority of your target market relates
    to the purchase of the particular product/service category, in terms of high/low
    involvement. Joint Initiative IITs and IISc Funded by MHRD - 11 - NPIEL Consumer
    Behavior Vinod Gupta School of Management If the majority of the target segment
    views it as a high involvement, the decision making becomes rational, although
    there may be an emotional and egoistic element too. For example, while buying an
    automobile, a rational mind would look to mileage, engine etc.; an emotional mind
    would think of color, aesthetics, style; and an egoistic mind would relate it to pride
    and prestige. On the other hand, if the majority of the segment treats it as of low
    involvement, the decision making becomes emotional.

    2. The marketer could gain insights into high involvement and low involvement
    purchase situations, and accordingly bring about changes in his marketing strategy.
    For high-involvement purchases, the consumer searches for information extensively;
    thus a marketer the marketer needs to provide information about the product
    category as well as the brand. Marketing communication should focus on product
    features, attributes, benefits etc. Information on brand differences also needs to be
    emphasized upon. Longer format media need to be used like (i) print in newspapers,
    magazines, journals and brochures; (ii) videos. As far as low-involvement purchases
    are concerned, these are generally routine in nature; the marketer needs to use
    emotional appeals. Attempts should be made to create and maintain brand loyalty.
    Point-of-purchase stimuli, store display and attractive merchandise can also help
    boost sales. Advertising should focus on audio visual media through emotional
    appeals.

    3. If a marketer is confronted with both high involvement and low involvement


    segments, he can deal with both the segments separately by bringing about
    changes in the marketing mix. However he needs to take such a decision after
    understanding the size and potential of each of such segments; if only a small
    segment operates on a lowinvolvement or on high involvement, may not be feasible
    to cater to both.

    You might also like