Want a larger mind space through Brand Promotion?
Get a closer insight of your Customers
The customer’s mind is a black box. Most of the time he himself is not aware of the reasons behind his every purchase decision. One of the past CEOs of Chrysler Motors Corporation, Lee Iacocca succinctly says that the customer’s mind is a dancing duck - unpredictable.
For every purchase decision made, the customer consciously defends himself with a strong reason, but at a deeper unconscious level, there are many powerful hedonistic instincts that compulsively force him to go for a particular brand. It is a Herculean task to track this consumer behavior which is intrinsically blended and intricately interwoven into a highly complex cornucopia of Personalities, Lifestyles, and the Brand data. To perform this task, Marketers, and Manufacturers rely on continuous market research data of Consumer Behavior with respect to various dimensions.
Marketers use sensible segmentation practices beginning from demographic data and ending with their Psychographic behavior in order to understand and decipher the Customer’s mind space at a closer level.
To enable this, William D Wells, who is considered to be a dependable customer segmentation expert has classified 8 male Psychographic segments based on general Lifestyle dimensions which can be still be used to understand the customers to a certain extent. This classification enables the Marketers to understand the customers in terms of their personality, the style of living, and their purchasing power which are enlisted below.
I. The Quiet Family Man
II. The Traditionalist
III. The Discontented Man
IV. The Ethical Highbrow
V. The Pleasure Oriented Man
VI. The Achiever
VII. The He-Man
VIII. The Sophisticated Man
Most of the Researchers agree to the fact that the customers of all ages strongly tend to shift upwards from their current Personality and Lifestyle to their desired Personality and Lifestyle which is the ‘Secret of Power Brands’.
This unpredictably shifting behavior rules their purchasing decisions. They consistently maintain their aggression in shifting to a higher Brand leading to a serious Brand search that enhances their Lifestyle. The lessons that the Marketers (Advertisers) and the Manufacturers must learn is a clear understanding of the segments and a better logic and rationale of their customer’s mind-shift. When this is rendered possible, you are almost there in clearly coining your positioning tag line rather precisely.
The Secret of Power Brands
The Power of Marketing Strategies, therefore, becomes imperative to change the Personalities and Lifestyles of Customers through your Brand Promotion. If you track the success of Top brands, most of them have used this secret most intelligently and succinctly. Hence for effective branding, all your integrated marketing communications, and Brand promotion activities should focus only on pushing the customers from their existing personality and lifestyle to their desired personality and lifestyle.
Two questions for Effective Branding
It is thus worth asking two questions for Effective Branding
Have I understood my Customer segments clearly in terms of their Personality and Lifestyle?
Have I understood how my brand would persuade and push my customers from current Personality & Lifestyle to their dream Personality & Lifestyle?
If the answers to both the questions tend to be ‘Yes’, then match suitably your array of products into respective segments and go for your Power Brand strategy of shifting the Customer’s Personality and lifestyle to their desired ones for owning a larger portion of their mind space.
Dr P C Sekar.
Let’s continuously work on Sensible Branding!
