Unconscious Buying Behaviour

Buying decisions of consumers are often a product, not only of their rational thought process, but also of forces that are beyond the purview of the rational thought process.  Much has to do with how the brand or the product engages with your five senses and how your brain responds to those stimuli. According to a study conducted by Melanie Dempsey (Ryerson University) and Andrew A. Mitchell (University of Toronto) printed in the Science Daily states that branding messages can be exceptionally powerful tools to create positive brand associations even when it cannot be consciously recalled.  

From the article:

The authors set out to determine what would happen when consumers were conditioned to like or dislike brands and then exposed to conflicting product information. To create this effect, they used an evaluative conditioning task, where hundreds of images of several hypothetical brands, pictures, and words were randomly presented, individually and in pairs, on a computer screen. During the task, one target brand was paired with 20 negative images and words and the other target brand was paired with 20 positive images and words. "The participants were unable to recognize that a particular brand had been paired with either negative or positive images. Therefore, we were able to create an 'I like it, but I don't know why' effect," the authors write.

This study implies that if the brand is successfully able to make use of certain power words and images in their brand message and expose consumers to those messages for a brief period, they can trigger unconscious positive association with the brand. The key idea is for brands to understand that choices are greatly dependent on subjective preferences . A brand strategy that engages the maximum number of senses and elicits the subconscious perceptions  a consumer has towards a product or service will effectively hit the emotional pulse of the consumer and thereby effectively create those "Eureka"! moments in the minds of the consumer.  


INDIA Perspective

Some of the key attributes Indian consumer that have been dominant over the years are:

1. Cultural orientation
2. Value orientation 
3. Family orientation 

At the same time an Indian consumer is very dynamic with constantly changing consumer tastes and preferences due to the influence of numerous external factors like the western influence, multi-media explosion, individualism (need to differentiate oneself!), etc. In this new emerging India product life-cycle is shorter and impulsive purchases are on an increase. India is a country where relationships are of paramount importance and therefore it is very important to please the initial customers, since they will in turn influence numerous subsequent consumer brand choices. To successfully build a brand in a animated market such as India, in addition to catering to the above mentioned three attributes, one also needs to be able to adapt to the changing social norms.