#customer behaviour analysis

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Using Analytics to Drive Business Decisions

Did you know Google Analytics is a goldmine for businesses? It lets you track how users behave, fine-tune your marketing, and make choices based on data1. In today’s fast-changing digital world, using analytics is key to staying ahead in Australia. This article will show you how to use data to change your business for the better. We’ll cover how to get to know your audience and make your…

Using Analytics to Drive Business Decisions

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Watch Out! Trends for 2013 : Parts 1 to 10

1. CAMPAIGNS FADE OUT, REAL-TIME MARKETING IS IN

The notion of campaigns have been around since the golden age of advertising. Campaigns are a defined as a series of activities, tactics and channels that often revolve around a common theme. And yes, campaigns have been good to us. But there’s the problem; their structure is often times rigid and can’t keep up with  changing customer behaviors and rapidly changing technology. Campaigns are generally short-lived and not triggered based upon real-time actions or data, which can put the marketer at a disadvantage.

2. INBOUND MARKETING GROWS ENTERPRISE-WIDE

In 2013, marketing will no longer sustain as its own department. Every interaction with your sales, HR, customer, development, finance, and executive teams take online is a way to promote your brand, products, or services. As a result, almost every employee will turn into an inbound marketer.

3. KNOW THY CUSTOMER

Smarter marketing means understanding our customers beyond demographic information. In the future, we’ll be looking outside our CRM system to collect a unified view of customer behavior. According to David Raab, contributing analyst at gleanster, web behavior data as well as data from other sources, such as accounting or order processing systems, will become easier to integrate in 2013. Over the next year, it will become an increasingly important initiative for CMOs to invest in technology that compiles customer data in a way that is more easily measurable and actionable. As a result, customer analysis will become the hot new feature for marketing automation providers.

4. MARKETING BECOMES MORE ACCOUNTABLE FOR REVENUE GENERATION

Marketing will play a more critical role in contributing to revenue generation. Marketing activities will not only be measured on traffic and lead generation, but will further optimize processes that directly impact sales growth. And to do that, key performance indicators (KPIs) under the marketing department will change.

5. SOCIAL MEDIA GETS INTEGRATED

Have a Facebook account? Check. twitter? Check? Linkedin and Pinterest? Check and check. Ok, now what? Up until now, social media has remained very siloed. Activity that happens on social stays there. In the year ahead, integrating social media behaviour and data into the rest of the marketing mix (and database) will become crucial in order to reach customers with relevant messages in real-time.

6. BE MOBILE OR FALL BEHIND

In 2012, more people bought a smartphone than a PC. Clearly, mobile is where marketers need to be. According to an IBM study released in June 2012, almost 9 in 10 global marketers either have a mobile site or a mobile application or plan to employ one in the future. However, only 1 in 5 currently run mobile marketing tactics as part of integrated campaigns, with the remainder running their mobile programs discretely and on an ad hoc basis. In 2013, marketers will finally list mobile as a major line item on their marketing strategy. Not only will there be continued investment in mobile optimized websites and email, but we’ll see mobile take a more important role when integrating with marketing campaigns. by the end of the year, mobile will become a more strategic and must-have channel for many businesses.

7. SOCIAL & CONTENT IMPACT SEO EVEN MORE

Over the years, good search engine optimization (SEO) was all about knowing the tricks of the trade. The SEO of tomorrow will be less about having the right H1 tag or the right keywords on the page and more about creating really good, original content that is socially consumed and shared. overall, Seo will go further and further away from on-page SEO, and focus on the various components of offpage SEO that come together for a holistic and powerful SEO strategy.

8. COMPANIES LOOK TO HIRE MORE INBOUND MARKETING TALENT

Sure, marketers are great at creative, but the marketers that company’s hire in 2013 will carry skills in content creation, lead generation, optimization and data analysis. With the growing importance of content and data, companies will hire more inbound Marketers in 2013.According to trends measured by SimplyHired,  “Inbound Marketing” jobs increased 52% and  “Content Marketing” jobs increased 26% since October 2011.

9. BIG DATA GETS BIGGER -- AND DIGESTIBLE

So far, big data as been for engineers, not marketers. in 2013 we’ll see a rise of startups that are dedicated to making big data more accessible to folks on the front end, such as sales, business development, and marketing professionals. One of these, origami  logic, aims to give marketers access to big data in a way that is digestible and usable by them specifically. 

10. MARKETERS EMBRACE ‘SMART’ CONTENT

The first time Amazon introduced me to the perfect book for me via their recommendation engine, I was completely awed. The idea that a website could not only recognize a return visitor, but also discern their interests and alter their site experience accordingly, felt like nothing short of magic. Since then, data-driven personalization, or  dynamic content, has become more common, though not entirely pervasive in the marketing space. In 2013, we’ll start to hear more about adaptive, ‘smart’ content. As context becomes increasingly important in any inbound marketing strategy, dynamic content enables marketers to serve highly personalize messages to the right audience at the right time.

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Behavior Segmentation

Behavior segmentation is a marketing method by which consumers are categorized based on buying habits. The purpose of this practice is to identify groups for targeted marketing such as promotions, special packages, and other incentive programs. It is one of five different phases of marketing segmentation, the others being demographic, psychographic, natural segment, and customization. Behavior segmentation is one of the early steps in the marketing process, where researchers determine the existing consumer base and which products it desires before moving into the production cyle.

Several patterns of consumer activity are examined in the process of performing behavior segmentation. A researcher may study sales figures to determine what a certain group buys and when, where, and how often they make purchases. The goal is to gather data solely based on the consumer’s actual relationship with the product.

As it is based on observation of activity, behavior segmentation can be one of the most straightforward methods of marketing analysis. Its purpose is to develop an understanding of a customer segment based on how it acts and reacts to a variety of factors involving the product to be sold. This is opposed to methods where consumer behavior is a starting point for determining beliefs, motives, and other factors that inspire a purchase.

Though the data collected from behavior segmentation can be useful on its own, it is more commonly used as the third phase of the five different types of marketing segmentation. A ranking scale arranges them between reactive and predictive behavior. The early phases are the most reactive and the phase further along the scale become more predictive. All together, the phases can give researchers both a big-picture and detailed view of a certain type of customer based on different kinds of observation and information gathering. Behavior segmentation tends to be the category that is the least likely to be affected by opinion or hearsay as it is based on actual data.

The five types of marketing segmentation have their own focuses: observation of groups forms the core of the demographic phase. The psychographic phase consists of data collected from consumers via surveys and interviews. Behavioral segmentation falls in the middle of the reactive to predictive scale. Then there is the natural segment phase, which relies on the customer to give input as to what is desirable in a particular product and how it applies to them. The final phase is customization, where a product is made to specific customer specifications.

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Consumer Behavior Theories

Consumer behavior theories are used by businesses in order to optimize their selling and marketing strategies. These theories tend to concentrate on how consumers spend money, what causes them to spend more money, and how the spending of consumer money should impact the planning and strategies practiced by businesses. Different types of consumer behavior theories may focus on the choices consumers make based on their budgets, how consumers make decisions to reach the highest level of satisfaction, how consumers consider the utilities and features of different products, or what and how much consumers know about particular products.

One of the most commonly used consumer behavior theories states that consumers behave rationally. In other words, consumers tend to want to get the most from their products while spending the least amount of money. Likewise, this theory asserts that consumers are unlikely to spend all of their money at once, leaving them with no savings. On the other end of the spectrum, consumers often do not save all of their money, an act which could force them to live without purchasing even basic needs, such as food, shelter, and clothing.

Another important theory posits that consumers have tastes and preferences that dictate which products they show interest in. Marketing experts often perform consumer studies that they break down into different demographics, such as occupation, age, and location, since these factors contribute to consumer preferences. Income is another important factor in this theory since income is what places a limit on on a consumer's budget.

Prices of products are often considered in one of the most commonly used consumer behavior theories. In general, businesses believe that by pricing their products at the lowest possible sums, they can encourage consumers to purchase more of their products. This is because rational consumers tend to buy products that provide them with the greatest degree of satisfaction while costing the lowest sum of money.

The features or utilities of different products tend to change the prices of the products. For this reason, consumers attempt to match features that they can use with added price. This theory can be applied, for instance, to automobile sales. A consumer may determine how much extra he or she would pay for a car that has bonus features, such as extra entertainment or media devices. A professional in the marketing department might try to determine how much extra the company can charge for bonus features without losing sales.

The impact of knowledge on consumer behavior is the focus of another of the consumer behavior theories. Consumers are more likely to choose products that they understand or which they are familiar with. The nature of the information is also important, since a company or product's bad reputation can influence an individual to purchase a competitor's product instead.

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Consumer Behavior Models

Consumer behavior models are essential tools that marketers can use to help understand why consumers do or do not buy a product. The different types of models are the black box model, the personal variable model, and the comprehensive model, and each model has a specific focus. The black box model concentrates on external stimuli, the personal variable model focuses on internal stimuli within the consumer, and the comprehensive model studies a combination of external and internal stimuli.

Consumer behavior models vary in terms of the complexity of the behavior that is being studied. The primary purpose of studying consumer behavior is for marketers to better understand and therefore better target consumers in their marketing strategies. It is a very complicated science, and marketers can observe and make some correlations between advertising and consumer response, but the main question of what makes a person buy or not buy a product is too individual and can't be explained with one or even several behavior models.

The black box model, also called the stimulus-response model, is one of the most simple types of consumer behavior models. The black box can be thought of as the region of the consumer's brain that is responsible for purchasing decisions. Environmental stimuli, such as economics, technology, and culture, combine with marketing stimuli, like the product, price, and promotion, inside the black box, where decisions are made. This model ignores variables within the consumer and focuses on marketing and environmental variables that produce the desired response.

The personal variable model is another one of the major types of consumer behavior models. Unlike the black box model, where external stimuli is the main focus, the personal variable model studies what internal factors affect consumer behavior and purchasing decisions. This model specifically ignores external stimuli, such as marketing techniques, and concentrates on internal psychological variables. These variables include lifestyle, motivations, and personality. It also looks at individual decision-making processes, such as problem recognition, alternative evaluation, as well as post-purchase behavior.

The final major types of consumer behavior models are the comprehensive models. As the name might suggest, this type of model takes into account both environmental and internal stimuli when studying purchasing behavior. This type of model is one of the most complex studies because of how many variables are in play. It is beneficial because it is the only model that can be used to study how different external stimuli react in different types of personalities and demographics. It is, however, difficult to determine the accuracy of the conclusions drawn from these studies because of the amount of variables.

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The authors show how to use marketing dashboards to view market dynamics from multiple perspectives, maximize accuracy, and “triangulate” to optimal solutions. You’ll discover high-value metrics for virtually every facet of marketing: promotional strategy, advertising, and distribution; customer perceptions; market share; competitors’ power; margins and pricing; products and portfolios; customer profitability; sales forces and channels; and more. For every metric, the authors present real-world pros, cons, and tradeoffs--and help you understand what the numbers really mean.

This edition introduces essential new metrics ranging from Net Promoter to social media and brand equity measurement. Last, but not least, it shows how to build comprehensive models to support planning--and optimize every marketing decision you make:

·         Understand the full spectrum of marketing metrics: pros, cons, nuances, and application

·         Quantify the profitability of products, customers, channels, and marketing initiatives

·         Measure everything from “bounce rates” to the growth of your web communities

·         Understand your true return on marketing investment--and enhance it

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Taking you step-by-step through the basics of what you need to know to come up with a great strategy, it shows:

That getting the right answers depends on asking the right questions

Why priorities matter

How to map out your internal and external situation

How to deal with uncertainty

How to make tough choices

By cutting out the theory, and focusing on the things you need to know and do to come up with a killer strategy, this book helps to map out the strategising process.

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Pricing analytics uses historical sales data with mathematical optimization to set and update prices offered through various channels in order to maximize profit. With this outstanding contribution to this subject, you will learn just how to identify and exploit pricing opportunities in different business contexts. Each chapter looks at pricing from an economist's viewpoint beginning with the basic concept of pricing analytics and what type of data are needed to use this powerful science; the common assumptions regarding the customer population's willingness- to-pay are discussed along with the price-response functions that result from these assumptions; examples from several industries and organizations; dynamic pricing, with a special emphasis on the most common application--markdown pricing; the new field of customized pricing analytics, where a firm responds to a request-for-bids or request-for-proposals with a customized price response; and the relevant aspects of behavioral science to pricing. Additional examples include the asymmetry of joy/pain that customers feel in response to price decreases/increases.