Manipulation Tactics and Consumer Behavior: Creating a Desire to Purchase Paper Example

Introduction

Any market set-up is characterized by a continuous dynamism, a situation that put many potential business people back and in contemplating conditions on the best way to penetrate the markets and make sizeable sales. The purpose of this study will be to structurally explain how to capture the psychology of consumers and use it to gain an advantage by dominating over the buyers and therefore designing products and services that they do not only desire but also want to purchase. The study explores the different ways that the suppliers can or have used social media to create a desire for the buyers to purchase what they are offering in the market. It is commonly believed that most businesses fail because of their inability to convince their customers of the uniqueness of their products. Convincing consumers to purchase a seller's products is a mind game which is facilitated and controlled by the seller. With the increase of social media marketing strategies, the mind game on the consumers is slowly being revolutionized.

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Problem Formulation

Maslow, a respected business theorist on his analysis, noted that consumer's follow certain trends of needs value determinations before getting to the point of settling on a specific item to purchase (Rayan, 2012). He says that they follow three presumptive but critical steps, which are utilitarian that dictates to them that they should seek essential items that will offer them security, shelter, and something to eat first before thinking of anything else, so if a person focus on availing any of this service is better positioned to copy the buyers as they are in the center of their needs. The second problem is social amenities and finally, psychological needs satisfaction that is acquired by a few who want to elevate their images and position in the community. To make a sale on any of these, social media advertisements are leveled towards explaining the products offered from the buyer's point of need and requirements. A potential buyer is taken through the picture of what is already in his or her mind as the product he or she desires to purchase. This keeps the buyer floated with all the details they need to know about their desired products, and thus it raises their appetite and needs to have the item in their possession even higher.

Study Purpose

The purpose of the study is to find out how sellers utilize their creativity in making up advertisements that manipulate the consumer behavior by making them desire to purchase their products. As mentioned earlier, the study will specifically focus on the impact of social media advertisements and how they create a desire to make a purchase. The sellers make use of the psychological methods in social media advertisements by playing with the mind of the buyers to convince them that the products being offered are essential for their livelihoods.

As social media advertising has become a standard tool for any business entity to push their product, it has remained that introduction of persuading adverts to be made. Although they raise the question of ethics on the role that they play, their involvements always give an edge against the competing products. Customers, despite being primarily believed that they are supposed to be informed of the existence and availability of a particular product and left out to make their own decision. Many customers are busy all the time and thus lack time to read about the content of every product to decide on the best ones. On this, it has become essential that if they can get a marketer that point out key issues that make their product unique and use some strong languages is always taken well by the consumers.

Research Questions

• What psychological effects do the social media advertisements pose to the viewers and potential buyers?
• Is the use of psychological tricking ethical when used in advertisements?
• How do social media influence the purchase intentions of consumers?
• What are the changes social media has brought to consumers in the different stages of their decision-making process?

Research Hypothesis

Psychology has been used in various areas which deal with the conviction of people into believing or when being persuaded into agreeing to something. The hypothesis of this topic will include the use of the following.

HI: Psychology has been used previously in different areas, and the applicability of the use of psychology in advertising is very high however data to prove this study is minimal.

The significance of the Study

The study of I-O psychology has not been well put out, and the research will mainly be focused on the gap that other studies failed to fill when researching the use of psychology. The research will focus on how psychology is used to trigger the senses of the people that it is used on to making them be convinced into buying the products being advertised.

Literature Review

Consumer Decision Making Process

Consumers are the actors involved in any market stage. Generally, the term refers to an individual who consumes or purchase goods and services. The decision-making process for all the consumers follows various steps as identified by Silverman (2011), who came up with the 5-Stage Decision-Making Model. Silverman's model is based on an earlier study titled "Ultimate Consumer's Behavior" carried out by Sternthal and Craig (1982). From the model, consumer behavior is broken into five stages namely problem recognition, search for information, and evaluation of alternatives, final decisions, and post-purchase decisions.

Problem Recognition

Also known as need recognition is the first stage of the decision process. A consumer realizes the existence of a difference in their current state and desired state from two types of stimuli namely internal such as hunger and external stimuli such as advertisement (Smith, & Zook, 2012). This trigger does not only initiate a purchase decision process but also causes all other consumer-related activities in the next stages such information search. Individual traits influence this stage other than any other in the decision process. Because personal characteristics are many and vary a lot from one individual to another, this stage is the most complicated and is not considered in this study.

Search for Information

After a consumer recognizes a need, he or she then undertakes information search to determine whether there is enough knowledge about the available options to satisfy the identified need. The search starts internally, and when internal knowledge is not sufficient to make the decision, an external search may be necessary to supplement what the consumer already knows (Grant et al. 2007). External search is usually essential for complex and infrequent buying. Typically, it involves personal sources such as friends and family, commercial sources including salespeople and advertisements, and public media such as television, magazines, and social media. With the rise of e-commerce, user reviews on websites such as TripAdvisor and Amazon.com have become reliable sources of product assessments for consumers (Bhattacherjee, 2011).

Evaluation of Alternatives

Before a purchase decision is finally arrived at, the consumer has to use the information collected to evaluate and assess the alternative choices. The information search and evaluation of alternatives may be presented separately in the decision model but are intricately intertwined. It is common for consumers to move back and forth between the two before finally making their decision (Silverman, 2011). In this stage, a consumer selects different choices considered as alternatives and evaluative criteria. The performance of the considered alternatives is determined through the selected criteria before decision rules are applied to narrow down the alternatives to a final decision. Consumer attitudes, beliefs, and intentions are formed at this stage affecting the subsequent stages of the purchase decision model.

Purchase Decision

As mentioned earlier, during the evaluation process, consumer forms preferences among the different choices available for him or her. However, according to Xinghua (2010), unanticipated situational factors and attitude of other consumers are two factors that can potentially interfere with the purchase decision. Negative attitude of other people especially those who have used a product or service can cause readjustments of the consumer's purchase decision. Unforeseen circumstances include product availability, product features such as color and size, and stock-outs. If none of the two factors is in play, the consumer makes a final decision regarding which product to purchase. The decision to buy includes deciding what product to buy, from which brand, where to buy, and how to pay for the product.

Post Purchase Decision

The decision model does not end when the consumer has made up their mind and purchased the desired product. Instead, after the purchase is made, a post-purchase evaluation is made to see whether the product's performance meets consumer expectations resulting in either satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the product. The expectation confirmation theory proposed by Oliver in 1997 states that consumer satisfaction is a function of perceived performance, expectation, and confirmation of beliefs about the product (Bhattacherjee, 2011). When the outcomes of the evaluations are revealed by comparing expectations against some performance criteria, they fall under three different forms including positive disconfirmation, neutral satisfaction, or dissatisfaction.

Social Media and Consumer Decisions

The impact of social media on consumer behavior is a topic that has attracted the attention of several researchers in recent years. However, most of the research does not address the issue from the decision process point of view which is mostly the determinant of consumer behavior regarding their buying patterns. There is an evident increase in the use of social media by consumers in making their purchase decisions because of two main reasons as identified by Sweeney (2011). The first reason is that social media creates immediate access to necessary information about the products the consumers want to know more about. Secondly, the accessibility of social media platforms creates great convenience for them. As a result, deciding on what to buy, where and how to buy it is now much easier and faster. Additionally, information regarding new products and brands can also be easily accessed. From consumer reviews conducted online, social media has a causal impact on consumer purchase behavior.

One feature of social media platforms is that each network brings like-minded people together which has resulted in the creation of a 'participatory culture' where the individuals engage in a continual loop of sharing information. Additionally, updates on different kinds of products and services are closely monitored as well as constant ratings and opinions on the same given (Smith, & Zook, 2012). Online product reviews are not only perceived to be informative and reliable but also persuasive especially because they are in large quantities across the different social networks. Consequently, most of the users of the networks usually check the reviews of the desired products before they can make a decision. Because the reviews are done by people who usually have had experience with the products or services, social media is perceived to be more trustworthy when compared to advertisements and corporate communications. Darley et al. (2010) found out that people have a mistrust of mainstream media causing them to turn away from mass media such as TV commercials as a source of information to guide their purchases decisions....