Maslow's Hierarchy of Human Needs - Consumer Behaviour

Why CRM? We are talking here. We talked about CRM, Importance of Consumer Behavior , Consumer Behavior---Introduction as a part of leadorganizer and lead management with reference to Why CRM. In our previous post, we talk about Types of Consumers, Buyer Vs User and factor influencing consumer behavior and psychological factors effecting consumer behavior.

Today we are going to talk about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

All human need can be classified into five hierarchical categories and this hierarchy is universally applicable. These five categories are as under.

1) Physiological Needs.
2) Safety & Security Needs.
3) Social Needs.
4) Ego Needs.
5) Self actualization Needs.
The theory of hierarchy of need was propounded by Abraham Maslow. According to Maslow’s hierarchy all needs can be ranked in order of importance from the low biological need to the higher level psychological needs. Each level of unfulfilled need motivates the individual’s behaviour and as each successive level of need is fulfilled people keep moving on to the next higher level of need.
The different levels of need have been depicted as being water tight compartments. But in reality there is always overlap amongst the different levels of need. Since no need is ever totally satisfied. There is always scope for further fulfillment.

We continue our talk in next post.

ref: crm & sfa software

Consumer Behavior---Introduction

Leadorganizer and Lead Management are heart of any customer relationship, agency management system and marketing strategies. Leadorganizer means how to manage your leads. Businesses must have leadorganizer or lead management software to manage their leads. What is a lead? A Lead is a prospect for any business. It is very important for marketing executive/management to understand prospect requirements and consumer behavior. First let us understand consumer behavior.

‘What’ products and services do we buy, ‘why’ do we buy, ‘how often’ do we buy, from ‘where do we buy, ‘how do we buy, etc. are the issues which are dealt with in the discipline of consumer behavior. Consumer behavior can be defined as those acts of individuals (consumers) directly involved in obtaining, using, and disposing of economic goods and services, including the decision processes that precede and determine these acts. Just by human nature, consumers can be spontaneous, unpredictable, and selfish.

One thing that we have in common is that we are all consumers. In fact everybody in this world is a consumer. Everyday of our life we are buying and consuming an incredible variety of goods and services. However, we all have different tastes, likes and dislikes and adopt different behavior patterns while making purchase decisions. One may preferred to use colgate toothpaste, Dove soap, Head & Shoulder shampoo while your spouse may prefer another type for same requirement. Similarly, you may have a certain set of preferences in food, clothing, books, magazines, recreational activities, forms of savings and the stores from where you prefer to shop, which may be different not only from those of your spouse but also your friends, neighbors and colleagues. Each consumer is unique and this uniqueness is reflected in the consumption behavior and pattern and process of purchase. The study of consumer behavior provides us with reasons why consumers differ from one another in buying and using products and services. Customers and their behaviors comprise of many attributes and differentials. These differences are not just associated with demographics, groups or any one particular item. There is a complex development of behaviors that exist in the consumer markets.

In the world we live today, businesses and top Marketing executives must understand what differentiates their companies or their products from others and must understand the needs of the consumers in their markets. If they able to understand their product and consumer’s need, than it’s very easy for them to develop a strategic plan and create a market niche and develop their customer base with very good customer relations. Customer Relationship Management can help them to take competitive advantage in the market. Customer Relations depend on understanding the customer and their reactions to the environment which will at last prolong the life of customer relationship between company and their customers.


Understanding the customer need can be a starting point for majority businesses. There are possibilities of gap occurs between customers expectation and what businesses think customers expect. It result into overlook or not understanding customer's perceptions and real requirement.

ref: agency management software

CRM

What is CRM?

There are three aspects of CRM(Customer Relationship Management) which can each be implemented in isolation from each other:

• Operational - automation or support of customer processes that include a company’s sales or service representative



• Collaborative - direct communication with customers that does not include a company’s sales or service representative



• Analytical - analysis of customer data for a broad range of purposes

Operational
Operational CRM provides support to "front office" business processes, including sales, marketing and service. Each interaction with a customer is generally added to a customer's contact history, and staff can retrieve information on customers from the database as necessary.
One of the main benefits of this contact history is that customers can interact with different people or different contact channels in a company over time without having to repeat the history of their interaction each time.Many call centers use some kind of CRM software to support their call center agents.

Collaborative
Collaborative CRM covers the direct interaction with customers, for a variety of different purposes, including feedback and issue-reporting. Interaction can be through a variety of channels, such as web pages, email, automated phone or SMS.The objectives of collaborative CRM can be broad, including cost reduction and service improvements.

Analytical
Analytical CRM analyzes customer data for a variety of purposes:

• Design and execution of targeted marketing campaigns to optimise marketing effectiveness


• Design and execution of specific customer campaigns, including customer acquisition, cross-selling, up-selling, retention


• Analysis of customer behavior to aid product and service decision making (e.g. pricing, new product development etc.)


• Management decisions, e.g. financial forecasting and customer profitability analysis
  Prediction of the probability of customer defection.

Analytical CRM generally makes heavy use of predictive analytics.

Key functionalities of Any CRM:--

A typical CRM system is subdivided into three basic sub modules:

1. Marketing
2. Sales
3. Service

More on Functionalities of CRM come next time.

WHY CRM ?

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is the way in which businesses acquire, document, and assess their potential customers, and maintain relationships with their clientele. CRM systems aid businesses in scheduling and maintaining their clients in order to build a long lasting and trusting business relationship more efficiently than ever before. Without such a system, any businesses would constantly be rewriting the same information on different documents.

With a CRM system, fields are automatically populated by the information that is repetitive (Name, D.O.B., etc.) such that agents save vast amounts of time and energy on these forms, time and energy that is then reassigned to attaining new cases.

Reference:

1)http://en.wikipedia.org

2)http://www.leadorganizer.net