From landlines to smart phones; from horses to cars; from handheld fans to air conditioners, have you ever wondered who stimulated the creation of these innovations? The answer is consumer psychologists. This stream of psychology deals with the investigation of preferences, customs, habitual activities and aspirations of consumer groups and this research is then used to help formulate new products and their advertisement campaigns that can communicate the product’s features effectively and attractively.

The consumer attitudes studied are used to design products that attract certain consumer groups by highlighting an attribute of that product that may seem attractive to a particular consumer group, for example soap. 4000 years ago people started using soap for the sole purpose of cleaning their body but nowadays soap ads don’t tend to focus on that usage of soap. If you take a poll of how many people use soap simply for the motive of cleansing their skin/body, the majority would have other reasons. In this day and age soap is used for fragrance, skincare or some other aspect of soap advertised to them. Imagine if soap was used for only cleansing, how hard would its marketing be? Because then all soaps would do the same thing. It wouldn’t matter if you bought soap A or soap B. This is why products are differentiated and features are added to it. This is done by consumer psychologists. They understand the needs of consumers and help pick the right way to communicate the reasons to choose a particular brand over others.

From researching the market to studying consumer attitudes, a consumer psychologists’ job is a never ending look into the dynamic nature of consumer behaviour but without them the world wouldn’t be so systematically luxuriant.

Author:-
Saumya Vijay Vishnoi
Student – Daly College, Indore