Customer Behaviour

Customer behaviours are the buying behaviour of a customer or consumer, as they buy or purchase a product or service for their own consumption or use. The four P's contribute to how customers make decisions about products. Different market segments and areas will have different customer behaviour. This is why it is essential for organizations and individuals with an idea to do research and surveys on how customers will react to their product to minimize failure of new and changed products.

What makes up a customer:

Cultural Factors: Refer to the culture, subculture and social class in which a person lives

Social Factors: Refers to the role and status, family, and reference groups in which a person belongs

Personal Factors: Refers to age, occupation, economic situation, lifestyle, and values of a customer

Psychological Factors: Refers to the perception of a product, Learning of a product, motivation, values and beliefs that are a part of a customers thoughts.

Understanding the Marketplace

Customer needs, wants and demands exist in the marketplace. Understanding the marketplace is one of the first aspects needed when marketing a product, service or new idea.

Need: Are essential to human life, and includes basic physical, social and individual needs such as shelter, clothing, food, affecting and belonging.

Want: Is in many ways the same as a need; however, a want includes what is shaped by culture.

Demand: Is a want that is backed by the fact that customers have the purchase power to get what they want.

Providing market offerings followed by customer satisfaction it is essential to know what needs, wants and demands are present in the different market segments, especially in ones where products and services are offered.

Importance of a Logo

Logos must be simple, memorable, versatile and future oriented.

1. A simple logo is the best logo, something that focuses on the company values and uses company colours. Often the best logos are ones that do not take time to think about, you just know what they are and mean. And in being simple it translates to the next essential part of logos.. memorability.

2. In order for a logo to stick in a consumer or customers head it must be unique. Some techniques that are used include:

• Bold colours
• A unique letter
• Contrast of colours
• Is industry specific (eg. not a leaf when working in house building)

Making the logo memorable works into the next part.. versatility.

3. In todays world social media and advertising is a must. Any logo that is designed must be able to be used in more then one setting. For example, the logo that is placed on the website must also be able to be placed on company vehicles, which must be used on a advertisement, which is used on the mobile webpage, which is used to make the app. Keeping the logo universal is essential.

4. A logo must be able to be used into the future. Think ahead and the logo will be able to last time. For example, the logo chosen must encompass the goals of the company moving forward, if the company wants to move from landscaping to snow clearing in the winter chose a logo that will work for both. This is why a business plan is so essential, setting goals and knowing what the future may bring is used in every part of the business.

Don't Get To Far Ahead

One of the things that happens when someone comes up with a brilliant business idea, is they get excited and lose track of goals and planning. When you think of a great idea stay calm, chances are if it hasn't been done yet it won't in the next couple days. Do research, think it over, talk to professionals and make a plan. Even if this process is done in spare time it will pay off in the long run. Especially, if anything, the business plan is a must. This will set the business idea up for the greatest success moving into the future.

Use of Social Media

Using applications such as Facebook and Twitter can boost your knowledge of the world around you as well as where the world is moving into the future. For example following certain business people can let us know which way the market is moving, what the trends are, which industries are moving forward and much more. Surrounding yourself in knowledge and getting the mind in the right train of thought is key to coming up with good business ideas. Just reading our posts daily will help get your mind in that rhythm... I have a issue with that... Now how can it be fixed.

Conduct a Survey

Conducting a Survey of potential customers is a great way to see if your Business idea will meet your goals and is feasible. The first step in conducting a survey is to narrow down the group or groups of people that you want to survey. The second is to come up with the survey technique. And then finally all that is left is to administer the survey and collect the results. One thing to watch is for survey bias, check questions to make sure the do not point to a specific answer. Also, in person surveys can sometimes can pressure making the respondent tell you what you want to hear. As long as you take the survey from enough people it will make the outliers noticeable and help generate an accurate and reliable result.

Value Proposition

Having a value proposition is essential to knowing what is being made or serviced for customers as well as for customers to know what to expect from a product. A value proposition is the benefits or values that the organization, company or idea promises to deliver to customers in order to satisfy needs, wants and demands.

Four P's of Ideas

The Four P's of marketing and ideas make up what is called the marketing mix. The four P's are: Product, Price, Place and Promotion. These are used in coming up witha  good business plan for new ideas.

Product: Product consists of the different aspects and qualities of a product or service such as:
-Quality
-Design
-Brand
-Packaging
-Features

Price: Includes not only the physical price but the credit terms, discounts, allowances and incentives used to help sell the service or product. Discussed more with pricing strategies in the 26-50 Tab

Place: Refers to the different market segments, target markets and market qualities that make up the area in which a product or service will be marketed and ultimately sold.

Promotion: Refers to promoting and advertising a product to the target customers. It includes the different channels, bundling, advertisements, promotions and pricing to attract customers and ultimately sell a product.