Behavioral research and its role in strategic marketing

Like any other pattern in life, including demography and geography, behaviors can also show how consumers make their purchase decisions.  In fact, the subject of consumer behavior and how it influences consumer buying is widely studied in the field of marketing. Hence the usage of behavioral research is rising in today’s tough business environment.

In the market research process, the first step is to define the research objectives. But it is closely followed by developing the research plan. While developing the research plan, we need to decide which type of market research we want to carry out. If yours is a retail sector, or a sector where customers are clearly visible, then behavioral market research is the best option in developing a research plan.

Behavioral research, like the name suggests observes the behaviour of customers to come out with insights on how to improve the product or the presentation of the product for the customers. Behavioral research is explained with a couple of examples below.

Examples of behavioral research

Online – There are many firms which exist to analyse customers when they visit a website. One of the most common ones, yet most effective ones, are google analytics and google webmaster. These two websites are the ones I use on marketing91 and they track the clicks of users as well as the way users move around my website. I can analyse the behaviour of users on my website and modify the presentation of the website accordingly.

Retail – Another excellent example of behavioural research is retail marketing. In a retail showroom, the customer might walk in with two decision mindsets. One is that he knows the product he wants to buy. And second is that he will browse around and take the decision. The one who is browsing, is our target customer when conducting behavioral research. This customer will tell us what people look for when browsing for a product. And such customers will give insights with regards to better catlog, more point of purchase material, better pricing, or whatever decision the firm has to take to make the customer buy their product.

Thus, behavioral market research requires a lot of primary market observation and analysis. Like any other typical market research scenario, the data received after behavioral research can be massive and the analysis needs to be specific and precise to obtain the correct results.

The increasing importance of behavioral research

This type of market research is increasing in importance because customers are more and more becoming technology savvy and they have information even prior to their visiting a retail store. Even when they are visiting a website, customers are very clear of the information they are looking for on the website.

Thus, influencing these customers starts much much earlier then they begin visiting. The existence of Above the line marketing ideas like Television ads, print ads and magazine ads is because these ads influence consumer behaviour. And hence behavioral research helps in finding out the best method to influence the customers and attract the customers towards your brands.