Have you ever been attracted to a product because of its packaging? Yes, is a natural answer. As humans, we’re more comfortable making informed and educated decisions. It is precisely how branding works and how it has the power to influence consumer behavior. In this article we take a look at How Branding Influences Your Consumers’ Buying Behaviour.
Ads will show the level of happiness and lifestyles consumers want to have. Some serve as symbols of what the brand represents. The final effect on consumer behavior will depend on how customers perceive or relate to a brand.
Table of Contents
Measuring Brand Perception
When you know how customers perceive your brand, you can understand whether or not you have a positive or negative image.
These insights will significantly help you make sound decisions about promoting your brand. It also lets you know what customers like or don’t like about your brand to correct these mistakes quickly and boost your e-commerce conversions.
Here are ways you can measure brand perception:
- Surveys: Can be done via online and face-to-face surveys and asking specific questions that let you understand how customers tend to perceive your brand.
- Brand tracking: It helps brand owners know better about the changes in brand perception. It quantifies the return on marketing campaigns and also has an impact on brand strategies. Brand tracking allows you to measure brand perception almost instantaneously by breaking it down into target audiences that are most important to you. You can then compare brand perception in various markets and competitors.
- Social listening: You can also monitor social media platforms for any brand mentions. Social listening gives you an idea of what other people are saying about your brand. Aside from that, it allows you to provide timely responses to queries, which is excellent for enhancing brand perception.
In this post, we’ll walk you through some points on how branding can influence the buying behavior of your customers:
1. Consumer Perception of the Product
As mentioned, the effect of creating a clear brand messaging in the minds of consumers personalizes the message and starts to adopt the brand.
Messaging is put out to a target audience, and if it’s consistent and memorable enough to grab your customers’ attention, this will plant a seed in their minds and develop your brand image.
It’s worth noting that the brand image isn’t the product itself, nor is it the exact marketing messaging advertiser’s design. Instead, it’s a personal perception of the product grown in consumers’ minds.
2. Strong Brand Reputation
Likewise, a strong brand reputation lays a solid foundation of trust between consumers and marketers. From this foundation, you can influence the purchasing decisions of consumers.
Attraction and curiosity to your brand are all that it takes for them to take action. Building brand awareness is crucial because its grans the consumer’s attention and maintains it. Aside from that, brand awareness has a multi-faceted approach, which has a fantastic effect on buying behavior and risk assessment.
Consumers are also more confident purchasing your products. After you’ve mastered the art of stimulating buying behaviors from your clients, this is where things start to progress.
3. Status and Prestige
Many small business owners review their logo designs before settling on the perfect one that fits their brand well because of status and prestige.
They know that a picture alone doesn’t hold the promise of communicating a thousand words that they hope to convey. While, of course, status and prestige transmit more than just a high price. They signify quality, as well.
4. It Creates Buyer Aspirations
Brands often have an aspirational element about them. The most established brands in the market tend to have this reflected in the prices of the products.
A study by Brain and Company shows that although 80% of companies think that they’re offering excellent services, only 8% of consumers agree. While they believe that they know what their brand stands for, that may only reflect what they want and not of their customers.
Superlative branding makes your product an object of desire in many ways. For instance, the desire to get the latest iPhone is there, even though that one can argue that plenty of phones have the same features at a much lower cost.
Consumers tend to attach a social token to products and services. That’s why brands can charge customers at a much higher premium.
5. Project an Image
Often, purchasing decisions come from psychological motivations. Let’s say that you’re a LeBron James fan. Then most likely, you’d want to shell out your $200 to buy his footwear line on Nike. Why? Because at some level, you feel that you’re stepping into his shoes whenever you wear them.
Meaning, that brands allow consumers to identify with their heroes. Consumers reward brands for that feeling of empowerment they get from purchasing the product.
6. Establish Familiarity
According to data, six out of ten consumers want to purchase products from brands familiar to them. It makes a lot of sense. When we network through connections, we buy property in areas where we feel safe. We buy stuff from brands and companies who have already shown us their value.
Think about coming across a brand package on an empty store shelf. It’s improbable that you’ll pick it up. Who knows why it has been tossed aside in the first place? Now, imagine a different scenario. The loaf had a Sara Lee logo on it. Although you might still inspect it before purchasing, you know that it comes from a multinational company that guarantees freshness and quality.
That logo will ensure that the bread you’re about to purchase is edible and safe. In other words, you have to consider branding as a seal of approval that consumers learn to trust over time.
7. Peer influence
In data by Nielsen, 92% of consumers trust recommendations coming from family and friends. Therefore, many consumers are more likely to trust a brand trusted and adopted by their own friends and family. They extend that trust to other products that the brand manufactures.
Also, a marketing approach that highlights the brand’s personality instead of its pricing and feature will speak more clearly to customers. The impact will be more significant for brand championing and sales.
8. Trust and Loyalty
Over time, people develop a sense of trust and loyalty to some brands. For example, if someone eats a particular cereal in their childhood, they can likely forge an emotional relationship with that brand.
That’s because the sense of nostalgia will keep them buying the brand even if there are better options available.
Again, this is a complex combination of trust and other emotional aspects tied to the brand. It is what we know as brand loyalty and why you need to forge strong relationships with people in the first place. Developing such loyalty is what every starting business should aspire to and work in building it in the long run.
9. Validates Self-Esteem
In the same way, this might also validate consumers’ self-esteem and forge a lacking one. That’s because every individual has a particular image of themselves. They’d like to choose items that conform to that self-concept when they buy something.
For example, a teen has developed a certain sense of style stemming from her personal preferences and external influences. Now, she may seek to buy a brand that she thinks has the same personality as her.
That’s why brands need first to understand their target segment and then work on creating a personality similar to that self-concept that’s often created by their target demographic.
10. A brand Alters a Buyer’s Intentions
A strong brand can affect customer behavior favorably. For example, two products have the same features and performance. One has its own brand while the other doesn’t. Now, which product will you likely choose?
Brands that often have a followership van build trust over time. That’s because you know them, who their founders are, and you can instantly recognize a brand and remember the products related to that brand that you might have used before.
We call this the Halo-effect. For example, Apple’s half-eaten logo adds to the brand’s overall aura. It creates an element of trust between the customer and the brand. This is often a luxury, non-branded product that people don’t enjoy.
Over to You
Consumers are the real brand owners and not the company. That’s why marketers should ensure that their branding messaging should coincide with the consumer’s self-image of themselves.
Ideally, it should reflect the level of happiness or the kind of lifestyle that consumers want to have.
There’s no doubt that branding plays a crucial role in consumer behavior. Brands’ final effect on consumer behavior will depend on how consumers perceive and relate to the brand.
Ideally, brands should focus on conveying the value of their brands and whether or not it will add value to their lives rather than focusing solely on the pricing.
There’s no doubt that brands can change customers’ perceptions from a negative to a positive light. It also works vice versa. That’s why brands need to be careful about creating their branding message.
Join The Logo Community
We hope this article about How Branding Influences Your Consumers’ Buying Behaviour has been helpful. If you would like more personal tips, advice, insights, and access to our community threads and other goodies, join me in our community. You can comment directly on posts and have a discussion.
*TIP – We use and recommend DesignCuts for all your fonts, mockups and design bundles.
Author bio
Rachel Hesser is a content writer and producer for businesses that specializes in web development and design. Her mission is to help non-tech business owners to embrace technology.