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2 Important Factors that Influence Consumer Behavior (in Hospitality)
The area of marketing that small hospitality businesses often struggle with is consumer psychology. We observe our audience through their buying behaviors to understand their purchase decisions, but it seems impossible to predict what they’ll do. It seems clear that the goal is to understand how to influence customer behavior and the truth is, you can’t — but you can try your best to understand what influences it.
Understanding consumer behavior has many, many benefits. An understanding of how your customers feel and what they want from your company is important to ensure the connection between the two of you is solid. Without that solid connection, you risk miscommunicating your offerings, and a consumer risks identifying what they are explicitly looking for. Developing this understanding mostly comes from experience, but you can also work backward to see the underlying factors.
There are many of these factors that can influence consumer behavior: households, personal needs, safety needs, attitude, and many more. I’ll highlight two very important factors impacting the behaviors of hospitality consumers both externally and internally: culture and personality.
