The Psychology Behind Consumer Behavior

Are you interested in why and how people buy some products and not others? Have you ever wondered how media messages influence a shopper's buying choices? If so, then you might be interested in the growing field known as consumer psychology.

消费者心理学是一个万博maxbetx官网登陆专业领域that studies how our thoughts, beliefs, feelings, and perceptions influence how we buy and relate to goods and services. One formal definition of the field describes it as "the study of individuals, groups, or organizations and the processes they use to select, secure, use, and dispose of products, services, experiences, or ideas to satisfy needs and the impacts that these processes have on the consumer and society."

在这一职业的概述中，了解更多关于消费者心理学家的工作以及他们工作的地方。

The Science of Consumer Behavior

According to the Society for Consumer Psychology, Division 23 of the美国心理协会，消费者心理学“就是了万博maxbetx官网登陆解消费者的理论心理方法。”

该领域通常被认为是亚特色industrial-organizational psychologyand is also known as the psychology of consumer behavior or the psychology of marketing.

Consumer psychologists study a variety of topics including:

• 消费者如何选择企业，产品和服务
• 思想过程和emotions消费者决定背后
• How environmental variables such as friends, family, media, and culture influence buying decisions
• 什么激励人们在另一个产品中选择一个产品
• 个人因素和个人差异如何影响人们的购买选择
• 什么营销人员可以有效地联系到目标客户

What Consumer Psychologists Do

So what exactly does a typical consumer psychologist do? These professionals play a critical role not only in helping businesses understand what their customers want and need but also in helping sellers promote and market their products and services to buyers.

进行市场研究

Because businesses need to understand their consumers in order to develop products and marketing campaigns that appeal to their target audience, consumer psychologists often spend a great deal of time learning more about what makes shoppers tick. This often involves first figuring out the target audience for a particular product, including the gender, age, and socioeconomic status of the typical shopper.

接下来，消费者心理学家可能开始研究吸引这些类型的买家的产品和营销信息的类型。

开发营销信息

Other consumer psychologists might focus on social marketing, or how ideas and messages spread among groups. Researchers might be interested in getting out information about a product or an important public health message.

Research Consumer Attitudes and Behaviors

Consumer psychologists often conduct research to learn more about buyer behavior. Common research methods used by these professionals include experiments, phone surveys, focus groups, direct observations, and questionnaires.

在您的生活中至少参加过一次市场研究调查，机会很好。这些通常通过电话进行，但它们也可以在线或通过直接邮件完成。在一个民意调查,消费者often asked to describe their past shopping behavior, factors that influenced theirdecision-making, and their future buying plans.

Researchers also typically gather details about each respondent's sex, age, race, educational history, and current financial situation. This type of information can be very useful since it allows researchers to look for patterns and learn more about who buys certain products.

例如，使用调查可能允许研究人员发现，在50,000至10万美元之间的30％和45岁之间的女性最有可能购买特定产品或服务。通过了解这一点，他们可以开始设计针对这个目标受众的营销活动。

教育和培训要求

So what kind of training do you need if you want to be a consumer psychologist? Most entry-level jobs in consumer psychology require at least a学士学位的心理学学位万博maxbetx官网登陆。

对更先进的职位或在大学级教学中感兴趣的人将需要硕士或者doctorate degree在与消费心理学相关的地区。万博maxbetx官网登陆这些学位选择包括一般心理学，万博maxbetx官网登陆industrial-organizational psychology、市场营销和消费者研究。

如果您有兴趣成为消费心理学家：

• 专注于采取将建立对人类行为，营销，营销的理解的课程，social psychology，人格和文化
• 参加广告和营销的课程
• Take courses inexperimental methods，特别是实验设计和统计

职业选择

您最终选择的职业道路将取决于您的兴趣和教育背景。例如，如果您有兴趣进行理论研究和教学，请考虑获得博士学位，以便在大学教授课程并进行原创研究。如果您更愿意在市场研究，广告或销售等地区工作，学士学位可能就足够了。

在此类工作中，可能会要求消费者心理学家履行各种职责，包括开发营销活动，研究买方趋势，设计社交媒体广告或分析统计数据。

A Word From Verywell

了解什么让人们购买他们所做的事情，不仅仅是猜测的比赛。企业现在雇用消费者心理学家科学评估客户的决定和选择。下次查看广告或采取消费者调查时，考虑消费者心理学家可能在开发这些消息和问卷调查时发挥的作用。