Motivation
Motivation is an inner drive that reflects goal-directed arousal. In a consumer behavior context, the results are a desire for a product, service, or experience. It is the drive to satisfy needs and wants, both physiological and psychological, through the purchase and use of products and services.
Five stages of the motivation process:
- Latent needs
- Drive
- Want or desire
- Goal
- Behavior
Motivation - Freud, Maslow and Herzberg
Three of the best-known theories of human motivation are
- Sigmund Freud’s Theory
- Abraham Maslow’s Theory
- Frederick Herzberg Theories
Which help in understanding the consumer analysis and marketing strategy. A motive is a need that sufficiently pressing to drive the person to act.
Freud’s Theory
Freud’s motivational theory suggests that unconscious psychological forces, such as hidden desires and motive, shapes an individual’s behaviour like their purchasing patterns. He suggested that the psychological forces shaping people’s behaviour are largely unconscious and that a person cannot fully understand his or her own motivation.
When a person examines specific brands, he or she will react not only to their stated capabilities but also to other less conscious cues. Shapes, size, weight, material, colours and brand name can all trigger certain associations and emotions.
Maslow’s Theory
Maslow’s suggested the need of the person are arranged in hierarchy from the most pressing to the least pressing they are physiological needs, safety needs, social needs, esteem needs, and self-actualization needs.
People will try to satisfy their most importance needs first. When a person succeeds in satisfying an important need, he or she will then try to satisfy the next most important need. For example, a starving man (need 1) will not take an interest in the latest happening in the art world (need 5), nor in how he is viewed by others (need 3 or 4), nor even in whether he is breathing clean air (need 2) but when he has enough food and water then he will move to the next most important need.
Significance – Maslow’s theory helps marketers understand how various products fit into plans, goals, and lives of consumers.
Behavioral Models of Motivation
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Motivation as a means of satisfying human needs five types of needs:
- Physiological: food, water, sleep, exercise, sex
- Safety: security, shelter, normalcy in daily life
- Love and belonging: affection and acceptance as part of a family or group
- Esteem or status: self-respect and the respect of others; the need to feel competent, confident, important, and appreciated
- Self-actualization: the need to realize one’s own potential, to achieve dreams and ambitions.
Herzberg’s Theory
Frederick Herzberg development a two-factor theory that distinguishes dissatisfiers factors that cause dissatisfaction and satisfiers factors that cause satisfaction.
To motivate a purchase the absence pf dissatisfiers is not enough satisfiers must be present. For example, product that does not come with warranty dissatisfier. Yet presence of product warranty would not act as a satisfier or motivator of a purchase. Ease of use or product quality would be a satisfier.
Herzberg’s theory has two suggestions
- The seller should identify the major satisfiers or motivators of purchase in the market and then supply them. These satisfiers will make the major difference as to which brand the customer buys.
- Sellers should do their best to avoid dissatisfiers for example, no warranty, a poor service policy although these things will not sell a product, they might easily un-sell it.
Motivational Levels
Depending on how important a purchase is to an individual, his motivational levels may vary from low to high. Influences include familiarity with the purchase, status factors and overall expense and value. Where fulfilment rewards are low, as with groceries, motivation levels are also relatively low and involve little decision-making behavior. Conversely, with a complex, risky and emotionally-charged process such as buying a new house, the drive to achieve the "right" result is high.
Motivational Behavior
The behavioral aspect of consumer motivation concerns the actions someone takes before purchasing and consuming goods or services. A person might do a lot of research--evaluating alternatives, testing and sampling before making a selection. She might decide to buy something based on which goods or services most closely meet and satisfy motivational wants and needs. Marketers aim to gain the most impact and eventual sales by linking their products and services to clearly defined consumer needs and by understanding what motivates people to buy.
Accessing Motivation
Companies and marketers use a number of different tools to help them understand consumer motivation in relation to their products and services. This may help them orient their markets according to different buyer motivation. Marketers use pre-purchase and post-purchase focus groups, one-to-one interviews and online or postal surveys to develop their understanding of consumers' motivational drivers.
