Consumer Behaviour Change and Marketing Strategy

Introduction

This following assignment here will be going to focus on the changing trends of the consumer behaviour and preference of their buying taste. The effects of the recent market changes due to various major reasons such as the recent Covid -19 pandemic and discusses hoe that pandemic situation affected on the three major industries namely the food and restaurant industry, the fashion and clothing industry and lastly the tourism industry. Various types of theories, analysing tools, methods and models are used in this writing below to give a brief knowledge about the marketing strategies that the brands and companies applied in their business functioning due to the recent market changes and how much they were affective or what their success or failure in the business strategies applied by them. A short reflection is given at last about the whole assessment with some of the simple yet affective suggestions or recommendations which if attained by the brands might be helpful in some ways.

LO1: Evaluation and analysis of the consumer behavioural change and their impact on the marketing strategies of three major brands.

One of the main determinants of every business strategy making process and functions is the changes in the consumer behaviour and buying preferences with the passing time. Consumer behaviour is that factor depending upon which the overall business activities were performed since consumers are the god of business and without them no brand or a company can move forward. The changing patterns of the buying preferences and taste of the consumers depends on various outer and inner factors such as recent fashion trends, monetary matters, changes in buying pattern, difference in mood and a lot more. This has been the primary concern nowadays for the business organisations whether tourism or food industry or the fashion industry (ncbi.nlm.nih.gov, 2021). With this change the business companies also started preparing new strategies for keeping their business run whether physically or virtually. In order to make a deep understanding about the new strategic changes which came in all business organisations due to the recent situation, three main different themed business brands were taken from different industry types – Nike; a leading fashion clothing brand in all over the world, Expedia Group Inc.; this is also one of the top tourism brands from the list and lastly PepsiCo Inc.; named as the second largest food and beverage chain brand over the world.

PepsiCo Inc. while making their strategies based on the consumer buying behavioural changes focuses on few of the behavioural factors that help in estimating and identifying that with the passing time how the consumer behavioural changes could build up (emerald.com, 2021). These factors are cultural factors, social factors, psychological factors and personal factors.

Cultural factor - The countries where PepsiCo Inc. serves their products are totally different from each other in their culture, taste and choices. As an example in Malaysia, the people don’t like alcohol so PepsiCo have to prepare their drink according to that. There is a religious culture in Malaysia that everybody there thinks that alcohol is halal for them. So they don’t like intakes that contain alcohol.

Social factor – Family is a primary factor that influences the buying pattern of the consumers. The other social factors are like religious groups, trade unions, and professional associations (Lahtinen et al. 2019). PepsiCo sets their strategic target by pointing on the children and other family members because the drinks are taken by members of all ages in a family from kids to old age people. So the ingredients of the PepsiCo drinks are selected according to that.

Personal factor – The strategic decisions of PepsiCo also depends on the buyers’ personal choices and life style, occupation, age, personal and economic conceptualisation. The taste of choosing food, clothes, recreational activities and furniture are directly related with the age group in accordance with the personal choices (do Paco et al. 2019). PepsiCo even made their strategies of marketing specialising in these products that are affecting the occupations group.

Psychological factor – The consumer behavioural changes are affected due to some of the psychological changes like eating habits, religious beliefs, moral learning and attitudes. Wiederhold and Martinez (2018) stated that the attitude of people towards any brand or company is the main influencing factor that determines whether that will buy their products or not.

In case of Nike, their marketing team applies the clear concept of emotions primarily to determine and analyse their consumer behavioural changes. They target mainly for their sportswear products and includes the celebrities and various other known personalities to do their marketing and attract more and more customers. Thabit and Raewf (2018) advised that Nike’s motive is simple and clear that they give products to the consumers which are of high quality, latest technology based and fit for every age group buyers. Nike Inc. focuses more on their advertisements, endorsements and competing sports products.

Expedia Inc. is the most of all these three mentioned brand companies that got affected due to the huge changes in the tourism market and consumer behavioural traits due to various reasons and one of the reasons is the Covid – 19 pandemic (sciencedirect.com, 2020). This restricted the travelling of people hence affecting drastically on the tourism industry. The hotel booking deals, travel packages, restaurants reservations and many other things needs to be focused while preparing marketing strategies in tourism industry. Expedia recently put their emphasis of developing their online websites for all the bookings and reservations of the customers. They communicate with their customers through their websites only since there were no physical contacts in recent times and moreover irrespective of that nowadays everything from household items to food and clothing are presented virtually with the help on online shops of those respective brands (sciencedirect.com, 2018). And people like to shop online more rather than going out and wasting time by roaming in the physical stores.

LO2: Critical analysis of the influence of consumer behaviour on marketing strategies and tools.

Consumer behaviour is that decisive process, action or influences that consumers perform whenever they buy any products of any brand. This purchasing process involves identification and then analysing of the products and then deciding. In order to influences the purchasing habits of the consumers, it is important to analyse and identify the consumer behaviour. It is a very well-known fact that customers are the king of any business organisation and industry market so their desires are the command for the companies. The companies always target their consumer purchasing behaviour to set their marketing strategies and tools. Reisch and Zhao (2017) pointed out that the new age consumers have their specific eyes for the preferred products and customisations that are solely made for them. The brands and companies in past times have used the old aged marketing strategies and tools but those traditional marketing tools and strategies have failed to impress the modern day purchasing changing behaviours and hence cannot meet the requirements efficiently many a times. In order to be well qualified with the strategic grade, the new responsive marketing strategic style can be built so that the strategies taken can respond differently.

The responsive marketing strategic process is initiated with the emphasis on meeting the customer needs solely according to each of their demands and needs. There are few of the marketing strategic tools that influences the consumer behaviour in every industry like –

Nowadays the trend is going of the customised or personalised products so to grab more customers customising and personalising product marketing strategy will work magic. The consumers like the emerging trend of customisation because it gives them solely personal and definite products that are made just according to their needs or demands. The personalisation strategies are formally based on the geographic data, life leading styles and customer desires. All these in-depth information are required so that the marketing strategies can be formed accordingly. Rao-Nicholson and Khan (2017) suggested that the personally tailored products offered by the brands are best liked by the customers since they can relate with them at the same time it also enhances the circulation of the product content exploring new areas of the marketing strategies.

Another big and advance marketing strategy that definitely impacts that is the strategy of layered information on products. Customers are always in favour to know what they are consuming and get a chance to know about the deluge information. This marketing strategy involves a layering presentation of the additional details regarding the products for the interested consumers who are desiring to know about the items or services.

If it has been noticed than it can be understood that in recent times, the most quick and successful is the strategy of i.e. the marketers are seizing the consumers’ attentions by native-rooted advertisements. Such of these tools are and interesting in their content, information, graphics and other infused in advertisements. Park (2020) stated that blogs, clips, & audios, text indications and various other components for interacting and incorporating the mixed medias for the promotion and hence more customer.

Brand imaging and organising paid media for promoting the services or products is very much common and normal in these days and it happens due to the massive competition in the market (ncbi.nlm.nih.gov, 2021). All the brands whether huge or small have the fear in them about placing their products amongst the other brand products. So for these reasons sometimes brads use the paid media as their weapon to succeed in the marketing struggle.

Most effective marketing strategy for customer increase in the process of continuous hold of the market by new products or services. A continuous thing always gets the attention of everyone creating a well-established active and responsive market engagement of the consumers in the marketing process (ncbi.nlm.nih.gov, 2020). This basically allows the brads to drive the mass attention of the consumers of a large base towards the products offered to them. By adopting this strategy of marketing segment, the brand mainly leverages their product publicity which ultimately will influences the consumer behavioural changes and work accordingly (ncbi.nlm.nih.gov, 2020). This marketing strategy has been used before and has been proved a sure shot method or tool to influences the consumer preferences and behavioural changes.

All these above mentioned marketing strategies are good in their work but which strategy will be best for any brand that will be decided only by that marketing team of the company. These also work in case of the consumer behavioural impacts to excel in the market competition and nurture the best possible and successful methods or tools of marketing.

LO3: Effective Reflection & Recommendation

There are a lot of marketing strategic tolls and consumer behavioural trends that impact every business entity to function in the market competition with included tough and hard rival. One of the recent growing consumer behavioural changing trends are like online shopping habits, eco-friendly products and health consciousness among the buyers before choosing any service or product. The SWOT analysis tool is used here as a method to identify these consumer behavioural changing trends in a deeper way and understands what are the pros and cons of these trends.

These reflections have some recommendations about the changing trends of the consumer behavioural; traits along with the marketing strategies so that both of them can be implied in accordance with each other and helping each other to run the business operations successfully of the brad companies. Marketing strategies are those ones best which can meet the changing consumer buying preferences with giving appropriate profitability to the company.

Conclusion

The assessment above is main pointing out all the traits and behavioural changes and the strategies to divert or direct those mass consumer attentions to the respective brads. There three companies that are chosen are the top three different themed businesses which marketing expertise is highlighted above. The personalisation strategies are formally based on the geographic data, life leading styles and customer desires. All these in-depth information are required so that the marketing strategies can be formed accordingly. The taste of choosing food, clothes, recreational activities and furniture are directly related with the age group in accordance with the personal choices. PepsiCo even made their strategies of marketing specialising in these products that are affecting the occupations group. The consumer behavioural changes are affected due to some of the psychological changes like eating habits, religious beliefs, moral learning and attitudes. The attitude of people towards any brand or company is the main influencing factor that determines whether that will buy their products or not. Finally conclusion of this assignment says that there will come a time when the companies have faced immense hardship in consumer buying behavioural challenges but all of that can be resolved with proper marketing strategies.

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