The route to success for every business goes through satisfied and happy customers. You need to supersede their expectations with your products and services to ensure more engagement and retention. It requires detailed knowledge of your customers' likes, dislikes, shopping patterns, preferences, and overall behavior. The multitude of channels for interactions and buying makes it a daunting task for businesses to understand their customers, especially in the retail industry.
Thanks to advanced data collection technologies, a huge amount of information is available about the customers. Data analytics tools refine this information and provide deep insight into customer behavior that was never possible earlier with conventional methods. It is possible to make more sophisticated marketing strategies and promote sales.
Glorious Insight is among the leading Data Analytics and BI solution providers. We are associated with the world's best technology providers like IBM, Microsoft, etc to create customized and efficient solutions. With powerful tracking at each point of sale (POS) system and analytics solution tells you the entire story about the desires, fears, needs, habits, and demographics of your customer base. Using our predictive analytics systems you can derive the most beneficial promotional strategies and implement them to ensure maximum ROI.
What does impulse buying mean?
One of the most important aspects of consumer behavior that can lead to higher sales is impulse buying. It is a situation where a customer buys an item at the moment. Influenced by several factors the customer is psychologically convinced to make the purchase. It is an area where the retailers can focus to increase their cross-sell and up-sell.
Impulse buying is an interesting concept where shoppers add some item(s) to their cart which was never on their list. They often spend a significant amount of money on the products which they never intended to buy. Retail businesses can use many buyer manipulation tactics to encourage shoppers to pick the items that they would not otherwise buy.
Placing enticing offers such as 'two for one' or 'flat 10% off' are simple yet effective ways of drawing customers into impulse buying. All you need to do is to put these offers boldly and directly in the vision of the buyers. Other psychological factors such as peer pressure, need to feel better, etc are also potential triggers that lead to unintended yet expensive buys.
Customer data analytics and predictive analytics play a vital role in determining the customers' preferences and deriving effective strategies to promote impulse buying. Glorious Insight provides analytics solutions that help you understand your customers and their buying patterns at various channels and POS. This helps in making data-driven decisions and quick actions to utilize customers’ emotional responses and converting them into sales.
The psychological aspect of impulse buying
Most of the customers involved in impulse buying make the decision of their purchase in a very short span, maybe just a few minutes. Retailers have to understand that these purchases do not appear out of thin air and are triggered by the systematic influence of several psychological factors. For decades, psychologists and scientists have been researching the behavior that leads to impulse buying.
Studies made of dysfunctional impulsiveness, that is, going for a short-term reward instead of waiting for a long-term one, has uncovered possible reasons for impulsive buying. The studies state that
- Humans succumb to impulsive behavior without realizing and spending time to understand the consequences of their behavior.
- People find lower reasons and excuses to justify their impulsive actions despite knowing the consequences.
- Satisfaction the desire blurs the understanding of consequences.
These psychological factors force the buyers to spend even on the things that they might be saying no to for a long time. In fact, this prolonged resistance forces them to go for it and justify it with the 'just once' excuse. Even if you can weigh the pros and cons, the desire and excitement sometimes overrule your judgment.
For instance, while buying a car, the salesman tells you about a powerful stereo system with little extra expense. Despite knowing that the amount is little only in comparison to the car's price and you do not need it right now, you buy it out of excitement for the new car.
Such emotional manipulations cast a solid impact on the buyers and play a huge role in promoting impulse buying.
Taking impulse buying online
Physical stores have a lot of ways of luring customers into impulse buying. Many stores even use sounds and fragrances to relax the customers and encourage them to shop more. You can also design your store's layout that compels the customers to follow a planned route. You can place the candies and magazines close to the counters and place a bold discount and offer signs at the end of the aisle right in the line of sight of the customers.
Statistics show that more than 85% of present-day customers start their product search online. Taking impulse buying online is however more difficult and complicated. You have limited display options and also must have a deep understanding of the dynamics of the platform that you are using to grab the customers’ attention. You get only a few seconds before the customers scroll down and never return. You need to pin them and make them notice your offers.
You need to influence the customers not only on the retail website but on other channels such as social media. For a successful strategy to hook the customers in as little as a couple of seconds, you need to understand their likes, dislikes, and needs thoroughly. The customer data analytics system from Glorious Insight gives you detailed information and lets you pick the right time and right product for the customers. You can make more personalized offers that further increase the chances of impulse buying.
Importance of customers’ experience
Nearly 80% of customers consider experience as important as the products a company provides. This clearly describes the importance of the customer experience. When you have captured your customers on various media, the next thing they do is lending on your product website or e-com store to know more about the products, service, and you.
The first impression they get with their visit online derives their decision of shopping. You need to design your landing page so that it creates instant appeal and credibility for your brand. The design of the landing page has a direct impact on sales which is why it must ensure safety and build trust.
With multiple shopping channels available nearly 75% of customers expect consistent experience over all of them. Online stores have huge benefits in terms of the amount and depth of data they can collect about the customers relative to the physical stores. This massive data gives you unfathomable details into consumer behavior and buying patterns. This information can be used to provide a highly personalized experience and showcasing things that they seek.
By constant monitoring of sales and shopping trends in particular demography, you can identify frequently bought together items. Placing them in the vicinity also boost cross-sell and up-sell. Customers are likely to impulse buy the products which they do not intend to because they are usually bought together and are available in a single frame. Providing related items together is a way to optimize customer experience that encourages sales.
Ways to influence impulse buyers
Glorious Insight has a rich experience of working with retail leaders in different sectors. With our experience, we have developed a deep insight into the kind of analytics and reports that help you make quick and profitable decisions to boost sales. We deliver sales analytics through a CSO dashboard that provides all the vital information in a compact form enabling effective and fact-based decision making in real-time.
Nearly 50% of customers in today's' time expect better customer services than the previous year. This necessitates constant improvement in the service to achieve customer satisfaction. Understanding your customers' attitude and behavior helps you find ways to influence your customers to get into more impulse buying. A few that works most often are:
- Developing a sense of loss
Placing the discount offer for a short period of time can make the customers feel a sense of loss if they miss the offer.
- Exploiting the money-saving attitude
Customers often believe that they are saving big by buying with discounts and multi-buy offers. Such offers can manipulate them to purchase even if they are not actually willing.
- Playing the customers’ habits
Discounts and multi-buy offer also encourage customers for bulk buying, especially those who like to stock up beforehand.
- Upsell and cross-sell of related items
Making customers believe that the two products are closely related and are always bought together can boost sales significantly. The placement of products also makes a difference in influencing customers' decisions.
