Psychological Factors Influencing Consumer Purchasing Decisions

Firstly, as Nuradina (2015) highlighted, human psychology is key to determining consumer behavior. While these factors are tough to quantify, they are influential enough to impact consumer buying decisions. Along these lines, Durmaz (2014) contends that consumer behavior is shaped by psychological factors such as perception, motivation, learning, beliefs, and attitudes. For instance, when an individual is motivated enough, they are much more likely to be influenced in terms of their behavior as well as decisions. Nuradina (2015) contends that motivation is crucial in influencing consumer behavior, considering that each customer is unique, especially in what motivates them. In reference to Maslow’s theory on the hierarchy of needs, customers rank their purchases based on the urgency of needs, from psychological needs to self-actualization. Similarly, Drive theory argues that motivation arises from psychological needs which lead to goal-directed behavior. To this effect, as a psychological factor, motivation prompts consumers to take action. For instance, consumers motivated to secure their future are much more likely to invest in secure financial products.

As the other psychological factor, consumer perception is a key factor influencing consumer behavior. Usually, before making any purchase, consumers collect information regarding the specific product and interpret the information before deciding to complete the purchase (Nuradina, 2015). From a selective attention perspective, consumers are likely to pay attention to certain stimuli while ignoring others, strongly influencing their relevance or understanding of a product. Similarly, several factors can impact perception, including past encounters, prospects, or even culture. For instance, a customer who has had a positive encounter with a certain brand is likely to have a more approving perception of that brand and eventually make another purchase from the brand.

The other psychological factor influencing consumer buying decisions is learning, which relates to how customers obtain novel information, skills, and attitudes regarding a brand (Nuradina, 2015). Most importantly, learning can be experienced differently through individual experiences, observations, or opinions. Based on classical conditioning theory, behaviours are learned by connecting a neutral stimulus with a positive one. In other words, consumers generate responses favourable to a certain product despite their not being a direct association between the product and anticipated responses. For example, a customer might purchase a certain soap because of the anticipated outcomes or functionality other than the perceived one in the market. Lastly, attitudes and beliefs are the other psychological factors influencing consumer buying decisions, given that they relate to consumers' beliefs and attitudes toward certain products/services (Nuradina, 2015). Thus, based on the attitudes that consumers hold toward a certain product or service, the consumer will behave based on those attitudes towards those products and services.

Conclusively, the above-mentioned psychological factors are just a few of the different psychological factors influencing consumer buying behavior/decisions. thus, understanding these psychological factors is essential for businesses as it helps them design a more effective marketing strategy that will ultimately influence consumer buying decisions more effectively.