What drives buying behavior?

By Thomas R. Schori, Ph.D., and Michael L. Garee, Principals,  Millennium Marketing Research, 808 E. Ironwood, Normal, IL 61761-5239. Tel. 309-532-8466 -

Sergeant Joe Friday of TV "Dragnet" fame, was fond of saying, "Just the facts, ma’am, just the facts." That may have worked well in criminal investigations conduct by the fictional character Friday, but when it comes to today’s business executives, it sometimes seems the last thing they want are the "facts"¾ about almost any business situation!

Consider, for example, a very important business issue: what drives customer and prospective customer buying behavior. It would seem elementary that business executives would know the answer to that basic question, but the fact of the matter is, they either do one of two things:

• Ignore the facts of what drives buyer behavior; or,
• Simply don’t know the facts.

We admit that this sounds a bit harsh, but from what we’ve so frequently observed in our many years in corporate environments, it certainly seems to be the case. But we’ll let you, the reader, be the judge.

Would business executives simply ignore the facts of what drives consumer buying behavior? In a word, "yes"! Putting the best light on it, most executives probably unintentionally ignore or distort the facts. Unfortunately, though, it has been our experience that some do so intentionally.

Unintentionally ignoring or distorting the facts. A couple of well-known perceptual processes are the culprits here: selective exposure and selective distortion. Let’s briefly examine each of these phenomena:

• Selective exposure. This involves selectively exposing oneself to that which one already believes (and, the converse, not exposing oneself to that which runs counter to one's beliefs). And usually this occurs not intentionally but rather unconsciously. For example, suppose the individual in his heart-of-hearts believes that price alone drives consumer behavior in his product category. As a result, he selectively avoids exposing himself to facts which may run counter to that belief. Thus, he unconsciously neither sees nor hears facts that run counter to his strongly held belief.

• Selective distortion. This process involves unconsciously distorting facts that run counter to one's beliefs. Here’s the typical selective distortion scenario we’ve observed. First, we conduct a quantitative survey among, say, 600 customers and prospective customers to determine just what it is that drives their buying behavior. We follow the quantitative research up with focus groups among customers and prospective customers both to verify what, in the quantitative research, we found that drives buying behavior and to determine, from their perspective, just how one might best deliver that which drives their behavior. Then, we sit down with executives and say, "Here is what 600 customers and prospective customers say drives their buying decision. . . ." Oftentimes, these executives will respond by saying something like this: "Well, what they really meant to say was. . . ."

Most of the time, strange as it may seem, business executives simply don’t know what drives buying behavior. They think they do, but they’re generally wrong. During our long careers in the corporate world, we often observed this amazing phenomenon, but we didn't realize just how pervasive it was until we started our own business. Since doing so, we’ve had the opportunity to observe a great variety of business operations. What we’ve found is that the vast majority of business executives simply don’t know what really drives buying behavior. Let us illustrate that fact with something which repeats itself with great regularity.

Recently, we were about to conduct a research effort for a client that required us to ask customers and prospective customers, among other things, about the relative importance of 20 product attributes, in their purchase decision. From past experience, we knew that it wouldn’t be hard for the client’s executives to identify the 20 attributes which were probably the most important to customers and prospective customers in making a buying decision. And, of course, we were right. We told those executive, however, that they probably didn’t know the relative importance consumers attributed to the various attributes.

Generally when consumers are asked to rate attribute importance, they are asked to do so on, say, a 9-point scale. Done that way, most attributes are rated as either "8" or "9." Consequently, they do not differentiate among the attributes in any meaningful way. What a surprise, then, that company executives ordinarily don't know what drives buying behavior! We, however, ask about relative importance in a quite different way.

Each of 750 customers and prospective customers we surveyed were asked to indicate the relative importance of the 20 attributes, by distributing 20 points among them. And, guess what? They were able to able to greatly discriminate the relative importance of the attributes.

What we found was striking, at least to most. For us, we found what we’ve come to expect. Based upon what those 750 individuals said, the most important attribute was to them about 120 times as important as the least important attribute. But what was even more striking was what we found out after we’d completed the effort. What the company executive had believed to be the most important attribute was the one which customers and prospective customers had voted dead last. Furthermore, those executives were so confident in their convictions that they had already launched a $25 million effort to change beliefs about their product on that which actually didn't matter at all to either customers or prospective customers!

But on a positive note, we’re truly thankful that most businesses don’t fully understand what drives their customers’ buying decisions. That’s what we do. We developed a procedure (which uses consumer inputs) to identify exactly (not almost, not approximately, but exactly) that upon which a business must focus, in word and deed, to greatly grow share. Furthermore, we can identify exactly how much share such a focus will produce.