Decision Making and Consumer Insight

     Today, our MRCB (Master of Market Research and Consumer Behavior) program has another interesting- Decision Making. And this topic was exactly the one I did for my independent study. In today´s class, we briefly discussed the general decision making process that consumers go through and then see how can companies and marketers implement strategies to influence on the consumer decision making process. Here are the three interesting learning I found from the readers and lectures for today:

1 Do not seek for interesting contents for the products. Focus on the relevance and find out what do the target customers talk about generally in their daily lives.
FYI: Interesting content is only great for short-term memories and will not have long-lasting impacts on consumers´ lives

2 It is important for companies to identify the need and triggers of the need of the target consumers. The needs could be internally or externally driven, or sometimes could be both. Marketers need to understand which influenced the consumers more and then implement the corresponding strategies.

3 Online Reviews and some small ideas about desk research
As an inspiring market research student, I always know the importance of desk research before and after. But I always have two questions in mind: Where to look for the information and what relevant information should I be looking? Now, I think I have gained better understandings about the types of relevant information to look for while conducting the desk research. The answer is really obvious: it depends.
Through the desk research, we can know more about:
-- Company value, history, mission and current business areas
--Industry Trends
--Opinions and feedback of their experience via social media, blog and online store reviews ( It is extremely important to obtain insights for products of certain categories in which consumers highly rely on the review to evaluate the product and make up their decision)

      Consumers´individual differences matter a lot to market researchers, but we also need to understand their surroundings and whom plays a key factor in shaping their decisions and who do they trust the most?