The Role of Consumer Motivation in Building Brand Loyalty and Boosting Sales

 Consumer 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. To understand why consumers, behave as they do the first question must be asked a person acts at all. A simple answer will be all behaviour starts with motivation.

A motive (drive) is a stimulated need that an individual seeks to satisfy. It is important to note that need must be aroused or stimulated before it becomes a motive. People may have dormant needs. The source of arousal may be internal (for example getting hungry) or environmental (for example by seeing an advertisement for food).

So, motive is an inner state that mobilizes bodily energy and directs it in selective fashion towards goals usually located in external environment and an inner force which reflects goal directed arousal.

Roles of motive 

1. Defining basic strivings for example, safety, achievement or other desired state which the consumer wants to achieve.
2. Identifying goal objects products and services are the means by which they can satisfy their motives, motivational push influences consumers to identify products as goal objects for example promotion campaigns. 
3. Influencing choice criteria motives can also guide consumers in developing criteria for evaluating products. For example, car buying motives can be many like convenience transport, speed control, styling, mileage.
4. Deciding other influences motives affect the determinants of perception, learning, personality and how people process information.

Classification of motives 

Motives can be grouped into two broad categories

1. Aroused biogenic needs (needs for food and comfort) which arise from physiological staffs of tension and 
2. Aroused psychological needs (such as needs for affection and self-respect) which arise from psychological states of tension.

Five stages of the motivation process

1. Latent needs: Unrecognized or unconscious needs that exist but are not yet felt or noticed.
2. Drive: A state of tension or discomfort that arises when a need becomes recognized and pushes a person to act.
3. Want or desire: A specific way a person chooses to satisfy the drive, shaped by personal preferences and culture.
4. Goal: The target or outcome that is expected to satisfy the want and reduce the drive.
5. Behavior: The actions taken to achieve the goal and satisfy the original need.

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 behavioural 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.

Maslow hierarchy of needs

A.H. Maslow identified a hierarchy of five level of needs arranged in the order in which a person seeks to satisfy them. He contended that people remain at one level until all their needs at that level are satisfied. Then new needs emerge on the next higher level. For example, as long as a person is hungry or thirsty the physiological (biogenic) needs dominate. Once they have been satisfied the needs in the safety category becomes important and soon. Maslow identified two additional classes of cognitive needs.

1. The need to know and understand 
2. The need for aesthetic satisfaction (beauty)

He recognized that in real life there is more flexibility than his model seems to imply. People may most likely work toward need satisfaction on several levels at the same time and rarely are all needs on a given level ever fully satisfied.

Behavioural Models of Motivation

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Motivation as a means of satisfying human needs five types of needs:

1. Physiological: food, water, sleep, exercise, sex
2. Safety: security, shelter, normalcy in daily life
3. Love and belonging: affection and acceptance as part of a family or group
4. Esteem or status: self-respect and the respect of others; the need to feel competent, confident, important, and appreciated
5. Self-actualization: the need to realize one’s own potential, to achieve dreams and ambitions

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.

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