Analyzing a shift in buying behavior

- As we explore the idea of creativity in our ideation, I think it's important for us to understand what creativity truly is. Creativity at its core is problem solving. And the problem we have a storage really aimed to solve as professional creatives is how do I create more consumers for the brands I represent? Traditionally, we have done this using rational purchase drivers. Rational purchase drivers are those truthful, informational motivations that we use to communicate the value of a product or service. The two primary rational purchase drivers are, product and price. Product represents the features and benefits of a product or service. If we're marketing a tablet, we may hold up the speed of the processor or the size of the screen. These are the differentiating features of the product. Price is a pretty obvious rational purchase driver as well. It represents the value of trade. What does the product cost and comparison to both its own feature set and those of its competitors? These are the rational purchase drivers initiating any buy behavior, but these have now become cost of entry into any market. You have to have a good product at a good price to compete. Part of the shift in our buying behavior is a shift away from rational purchase drivers as primary motivators towards emotional purchase drivers. These are the human benefits to the product or service purchase. There are three primary emotional purchase drivers, experience, trust and convenience. Experience is the relationship between the consumer and the brand. What does the brand stand for? What are its values and do those values align with mine? Trust is exactly that the trust of consumer has with a brand. Is that a brand that I've heard of? Do I feel like this brand will support me if something goes wrong. And not only the trust of the brand, but the trust of the retailer, do I trust the place I am buying this product? How many times have we found a product that we want at a price that's great, but we found it on a sketchy website that we didn't trust? What did we do? We left that site, sometimes choosing to pay more for that product or choose a lesser product to improve the trust factor. And convenience speaks to how easy it is to find the product, to service the product or to personalize or customize the product. These are the emotional motivators initiating the buy behavior within this shift. Historically, the primary goal of most communication art had been information. Consumers didn't know about a product until it was marketed. Then as consumers became more informed, information gave way to influence. Now we had to influence the consumers buy behavior to ensure that at the moment a product or service was presented, the consumer felt compelled to act. These are our sales and limited time offers came into prominence. This is also where advertising communication got a bum rap in the public eye because this urgency to buy has always had the undertones of manipulation. There was that underlying hard sell mentality that accompanied communication designed to market or advertise using urgency as a motivator. But even this has given way to something else because the consumer now has a power they've never had before, the power to share.