MARKETING & CONSUMER PSYCHOLOGY

What is this field?

Marketing and consumer psychology mark the overlap between business and behavioral science. Researchers in this field are interested in looking at the decision-making of consumers, how items, brands, or packaging is perceived and how this, in turn, affects whether a product is purchased or not. Basically, marketing and consumer psychologists are studying buying behaviors and the underlying forces that lead to purchases, using these insights to optimize business strategy and increase sales.

What do these researchers study and measure?

• Decision-making processes like problem recognition and information search
• Cognitive biases
• Attention and perception
• Motivations and emotions
• Culture and social class
• Customer loyalty
• Influence of typography and aesthetics

To study marketing and consumer psychology, researchers are interested in cognitive processes like attention and perception which ultimately give rise to more complex processes like decision-making. By understanding the inner mechanisms of human behavior and perception, marketing psychology can improve the design, content, and strategies that a business uses in its day-to-day operations and interactions with its existing and potential customers. Many areas overlap in this interdisciplinary field, including personality and social psychology and cognitive and neuropsychology.

How can these concepts be handled in Labvanced?

The various topics in marketing and consumer psychology can be implemented in Labvanced’s web-based experimental platform. There are many features that researchers in this field can use to explore the marketing and consumer psychology concepts, including:

• Questionnaires: Organized questionnaires can be created using everything that might be needed, such as Likert scales or checkboxes.
  • Example: Collect information about spending habits and buying preferences from your participants.
• Multimedia Studies: Present images, videos, and audio clips to see participants’ reactions and decisions across various marketing or consumer settings.
  • Example: Show images or videos of different products, exploring different color palettes or fonts to establish possible branding options or buyer preferences.
• Advanced Eye Tracking: Record subtle eye movements to better understand participant preferences with our sophisticated eye tracking software.
  • Example: Assess attention on a website and see what part of the website the participant spends the most time fixating on.
• Multilingual: Present the experiment in multiple languages to reach more populations.
  • Example: Assess how language across multiple cultures evokes certain emotions in a product campaign.

What are the advantages of online experimentation?

• Easy to present stimuli: Since marketing and consumer psychology are all about perceiving things, such as visual branding or product packaging, online experiments make stimuli presentation easy and simple to include, all which you can control with a few clicks.
• Convenient: Online experiments are convenient not only for researchers, which won’t need to learn to code to execute complex studies, but also for participants who can access and participate in studies whenever or wherever they want.
• Access many populations: Marketing and consumer psychology benefit from accessing many populations and a diverse demographic which is exactly who online studies can reach.

Analyzing User Behavior on Websites

We have had several users ask us if it’s possible to analyze websites with Labvanced and our webcam-based eye tracking. Since user experience is tightly tied with psychology and behavior, we developed a specific app address to this possibility: PageGazer! If you are interested in detecting what website users are paying attention to, check it out! It is a strong tool for product managers, UX/UI designers and researchers and marketers who want to optimize their website content for maximum impact.

Labvanced Library Studies

Check out these studies from the Library which relate to various aspects of marketing and consumer psychology:

1. Marketing Choices: In this study, participants are given two choices and must make a purchasing decision. After that, they must select a reason for their decision such as financial or willingness to try something new.
2. Consensus and Quantity: In this study, participants must read passages about the psychology of decision making and synthesize marketing information over time. This study is a nice example of many areas of psychology and many design features of Labvanced.
3. Virtueller Supermarkt: In this study, the participant navigates through a German supermarket with a shopping list of 5 items and a budget of 12 euros. The challenge is to purchase everything on the list, thus a complex variety of decisions must be made.

Researcher Spotlight

Labvanced Researcher Interview with Dr. Alexander Edeling

Finding Goldilocks Influencers: How Follower Count Drives Social Media Engagement

(Journal of Marketing, 2022)

In this interview, we have the opportunity to learn more about Dr. Edeling’s latest research which examines the relationship between social media engagement and influencers’ follower counts. Dr. Edeling shares with us details about this study, his experience using our webcam-based eye tracking, next steps, and advice to students and aspiring researchers!

Additional Use Cases

1. The role of social media and digital marketing on consumer behavior ^[1]
2. The effects of demographics and social media use on the using social media for financial decision-making ^[2]
3. The role of color in branding, packaging, and marketing ^[3]

References

1. Stephen, A. T. (2016). The role of digital and social media marketing in consumer behavior. Current opinión in Psychology, 10, 17-21.

2. Florendo, J., & Estelami, H. (2019). The role of cognitive style, gullibility, and demographics on the use of social media for financial decision making. Journal of Financial Services Marketing, 24(1), 1-10.

3. Mohebbi, B. (2014). The art of packaging: An investigation into the role of color in packaging, marketing, and branding. International Journal of Organizational Leadership, 3, 92-102.