Why Are Marketing Expectations of the Consumer Important?

Researching your company's target market is essential to executing a successful marketing strategy.

One crucial element to any company's marketing plan is accurately defining the company's target market. Knowing consumer behavior, in addition to the competitive products and market challenges that might impact a consumer's purchase, is essential to constructing a successful marketing strategy. Consumer intelligence also gives insight into whether a consumer is knowledgeable about a product and its potential benefits.

Function

The primary purpose of marketing is to communicate a product's value using tools such as public relations, advertising and sales promotion. To understand and influence customers' perception of value, companies conduct consumer research or develop quality management programs to ensure customer satisfaction and encourage sales.

Benefits

According to University of Southern California Assistant Professor, Lars Perner, P.H.D., collecting research on consumer behavior gives marketers insight into how a product or service should be positioned in the market. In addition to revealing strategies for increasing product usage, consumer intelligence also shows how the product impacts the environment.

Expert Insight

In an October 2009 MarketingWeek article entitled, "Brands must meet customer expectations to win," Alison Sagar, Vice President of Global Network Marketing at American Express, stated that companies must focus on aligning customer expectations with their product and service offerings. She argues that creating appealing advertisements that promote your brand should come second to educating the customer about a product's value and why it would be beneficial to them.

Considerations

Marketing expectations of the customer have traditionally been researched using surveys, focus groups and case studies. However, other methods for collecting user data are available for more sophisticated target markets or customers who are unable to express their specific desire or need. These methods include consulting with early adopters (i.e., users who need technologies months or years ahead of the rest of the market) and conducting quality function deployment (QFD). QFD uses the requirements specified by users and customers to design a product.

Theories/Speculation

CEO and founder of Vox, Inc., William Cusick, writes in "Opinion: Why customer satisfaction surveys don't work" that most customers' purchase decisions are based on subconscious desires, rather than rational behavior. He argues that since 95% of a human's thought process is subconscious, companies should stop relying on standardized customer surveys to collect accurate feedback on their products and services. For example, companies should observe a customer's actions on their website to find out which pages are getting the most visits versus pages that are receiving little traffic.

References

• Entrepreneur: What Should a Company Expect from its Marketing Program?
• Marketing Week: Brands Must Meet Customer Expectations to Win
• USC Marshall: Consumer Behavior: the Psychology of Marketing
• Return on Behavior Magazine: Why Customer Satisfaction Surveys Don't Work
• Go4Funding: Market Research Tips for Startups