Impact Of Marketing On Consumer Behaviour

Introduction

Marketing is the activities of a company associated with buying and selling a product or service. It includes advertising, selling and delivering products to people. Many people believe that marketing is just about advertising or sales. However, marketing is everything a company does to acquire customers and retain a relationship with them. Even the small tasks like writing appreciation letters, bringing a client for lunch, returning calls quickly and meeting with a past client for coffee can be thought of as marketing. The ultimate goal of marketing is to match a company's products and services to the people who need and want them, thereby ensuring profitability. (Anon., n.d.) The term consumer behaviour refers to the behaviour

The study of consumer behaviour is the study of how individuals make decisions to spend their available resources (time, money and effort) on consumption related items. It includes the study of what they buy, why they buy it, when they buy it, where they buy it, how often they buy it and how often they use it. Although consumer behaviour mainly focuses on how and why consumers make decisions to buy goods and services, consumer behaviour research goes far beyond this and considers the uses consumers make of the goods they buy and their subsequent evaluations. (Leon G. Schiffman, 1994)

Main Body

Although sales of products from the Internet account for only a small percentage of total retail sales, millions of consumers shop and buy on the Internet. They’re drawn by the chance to browse among millions of options and maybe pick up a bargain or two in the process. In the world of electronic commerce where store doors never close, consumer buying is expected to grow to $6.5 billion in a few years, according to Forrester Research. (J. Paul Peter, 2002) With so many restaurants, cafes, bars and shops having free Wi-Fi, and phone networks giving unlimited data as part of top up packages, connecting

Marketing online is just as popular as buying online. So many of us use social media, it is so easy to reach thousands of people within minutes for very little cost. Setting up Facebook, Instagram and Twitter pages are all free and are easy ways to advertise you company and reach customers, along with advertising sales, promotions and new products that have arrived in store or online. Posts online are instant and they can be edited and removed whenever you wish to do so. You can even place ads on Facebook to advertise your company, and due to it having so many active users, you know your advert will be seen. Running competitions online is also a great way to get your company advertised. Putting posts on Facebook such as ‘Like and Share to win’ means people who already know who you are, are sharing your page to all of their friends, opening up a whole new customer base. The fact that the company are also running a competition means it catches people’s attention instantly, which is what you want when advertising. What is even better than companies advertising their own company, is consumers advertising it. They do this by writing reviews about a service they may have received or the experiences they have had. If a post is put on social media complimenting or slaying a service, product or firm, it is nearly guaranteed it will get a reaction, more so if it is an unhappy post about a company. Posts