COMIA, JAZPER JON A.

July 18, 2020

MKT535M
Keeping Your Customers Engaged: Research Insights
We could all agree that customers are the lifeblood of any business, which is why it is
important to engage with them. A failure to understand and place yourself in the shoes of your
customers can prevent you from acquiring new ones. In today’s time, every business must be
able to answer this question: What matters most to customers? Only by having a
comprehensive understanding of your customers, their goals, needs and wants, can you begin
catering to them and achieving your business goals. In the webinar, titled “Keeping Your
Customers Engaged: Research Insights”, Professor Rima Touré-Tillery presents her findings
from psychology and consumer research to explain what motivates customers to engage with
brands—and how this might apply to the ongoing pandemic.
To understand the theories from consumer psychology that attracts consumers to
engage in brands, she started the discussion with the definition of motivation, which is the
driving force of the consumers to take action towards their goal. While she defined a “goal”, as
the desired end-state. Consumer’s motivation is the basic degree of the psychological drive
behind a specific purchase. If the consumer’s motivation is high, that means that the level of his
or her need is fairly strong. Given a high degree of motivation, the individual will actively seek
action to satisfy that need. It is said that there are three (3) factors that influence the consumer’s
motivation or what is called The 3 E’s of Consumer Motivation – Effect (extrinsic motivation),
Enjoyment (intrinsic motivation), and Ego (self-concept maintenance). Understanding these
motivations helps to trigger the consumer's unconscious desires and create products that would
satisfy the market. Effect implies that motivation increases with the belief that their actions will
produce desired effects such as reward, money, food, fame, friends as outcomes of their goal.
There are many factors that can give the consumers a sense to reach their goals that are
effective. Marketing professionals convince the consumers that using their products, services,
and brands will help them reach their goals. There is also the power of believing in yourself or
Self-efficacy. By creating a brand that influences the people's belief about their capabilities to
deal with various situations, consumers tend to use that product believing that they can also do
it or it can help them achieve their goals. Another factor that makes the product to be more
effective is through specialization. Specialized product or service avoids the “dilution effect”.
Brand dilution is when brands are made less effective and less valuable through use on
products that don’t fit the brand. By having a specialized product, you are giving a reason for
consumers to invest in your brand. Not unlike if you have different products that are not related
to each other, you are creating confusion about where does your brand really stand out. Another
way to communicate effectively to the consumers is through metaphors. Marketers use
metaphors extensively in their persuasive communications to consumers. They use it to gain
consumer attention, suggest imagery, suggest a similarity between a product and a concept,
explain a complex or technical product, or influence consumer beliefs and attitudes [ CITATION
Hen20 \l 1033 ]. The second E that motivates the consumer is Enjoyment. This is what makes
the consumers more motivated to engage with a brand that they believe to have pleasure, or
satisfaction from the process of pursuing their goal. Marketers try to show that their products are
fun and enjoyable or make activities more fun. Lastly, Ego describes that consumers are
motivated to do something if they feel good about themselves. To reach an audience’s ego,
marketers create a message that helps the consumer positively define themselves or would
make them look good. Some brands build connections to social causes or movements that
matter to consumers. This results in consumers to feel good about themselves for associating
with that brand [ CITATION Rim20 \l 1033 ].

Having one or more of the 3 Es has the potential to increase consumer’s motivation to
act toward a goal and engage in a brand that supports these goals. Given that different
consumers have different goals, a business needs to have a market segmentation. The
importance of market segmentation is that it allows a business to precisely reach a consumer
with specific needs and wants. In the long run, this benefits the company because it can use its
resources more effectively and make better strategic marketing decisions [ CITATION Gar20 \l
1033 ]. For the brand to capitalize on consumer motivation, marketers need to make the
consumers notice them. Consumers learn about the brands through exposure to marketing
information. Perception establishes the meaning of a product or brand when a consumer makes
initial contact. At this stage, all of the senses are engaged in receiving brand marketing
communication messages [ CITATION Rim20 \l 1033 ].

Due to the limitation of brain mental resources, the attention of consumers is selective
and tends to notice only a small proportion of the information. Since we can’t tune in to every
message and image that we see, we tend to focus our attention on information that we perceive
to meet our goals. For example, the consumers are more attentive to the visual information
instead of the auditory information or The McGurk effect. Another example is The Stroop Effect
which implies that the word, the simple meaning, is more important to the average person than
the color, or its broader context [ CITATION Wal20 \l 1033 ]. Therefore, marketers want to use
words that powerfully and simply get their message across to capture the reader's attention.
Interpretation is the third part of the perception process, where a consumer assigns a
meaning to the sensory stimulus from a product or brand marketing. Each person interprets
information in a manner consistent with his or her own unique biases, goals, and needs. In the
presentation, the speaker discussed different cognitive biases and how they influence the
thinking and the judgments people make. Some of the heuristics and biases include the
Availability Heuristic -- person relies on the easily recalled information when making a decision.
Also as a consequence, the person ignores less easily recalled information even if it is
statistically more important. The Anchoring Effect describes that people base decisions on the
first piece of information they receive. For marketers, anchoring is important to know --
especially when running a sale. To set the anchor, the initial price of the product should be
clearly stated and then display the sale price right next to it [ CITATION Kat18 \l 1033 ]. The
Framing Effect describes people tend to make a decision on options based on whether the
options are presented with positive or negative connotations [CITATION Mar14 \l 1033 ]. The
Scarcity Heuristic implies that product or service becomes more attractive when it is limited in
availability or perceived by consumers as being limited. Here, consumer behavior is likelier to
purchase the product if informed that it’s the very last one or that a special promotion will expire
soon. The next bias is the In-group Bias -- occurs when customers favor people who belong to a
certain group that others are not a part of. The marketers encourage the consumer to choose a
group that makes them loyal and more engaged in that group [ CITATION Ali17 \l 1033 ]. Lastly,
Representative Heuristic – the idea of this bias is when the similarity of objects or events
confuses people’s thinking regarding the probability of an outcome. People frequently make the
mistake of believing that two similar things or events are more closely correlated than they are.
By taking advantage of heuristics and biases can make the brand more persuasive [ CITATION
Ali17 \l 1033 ]. Heuristics can be used by mirroring the situation they are associated with, thus
helping to persuade consumers to take your choice of action.

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