Understanding Consumer Sentiment Indexing in New Normal

Authored by Novus Insights 12/07/2022

Customer behavior analysis has been a key factor in formulating business strategies across the globe for years. The Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted its significance more than ever. The post-pandemic period comes with its challenges, requiring businesses to adapt to changing consumer attitudes, opinions, and beliefs in the new normal. A ubiquitous shift from in-house market research teams to outsourced dedicated research companies is allowing organizations to tap into the proven potential of consumer behavior research. Consumer Sentiment Indexing presents a great way to uncover how your target audience is thinking and feeling about the economy in general, and more specifically, your products and services. It helps anticipate demand and adapt to changing circumstances. In this blog, we discuss three essentials of customer behavior analysis to understand consumer sentiment indexing in the new post-pandemic normal.

1. Types of Customer Behavior

The primary and inarguably decisive factor in customer behavior analysis by consumer research companies is the types of behavior that govern consumers’ actions while buying products or consulting for services. Analyzing consumer sentiments or behavior (Consumer Psychology in Marketing) is one of the core pillars of market research, making it an evitable aspect in the new normal. The different types of consumer behaviors are:

Perpetual Consumers: Perpetual consumers are known for making instant purchases without spending time on which brand they are choosing.
Dilemma Prone Consumers: This type of customers get overwhelmed with the choices available in the market and find themselves struggling with the thought of post-purchase regret.
Complex-Minded Consumers: Complex-minded consumers go the extra mile to gather all the info about what they are looking to buy and pay attention to minute details of available products or service plans.

2. Categorization of Customer Behavior

Categorizing customers based on their behaviors is as vital as segmenting the path for constructing a sales funnel model for any business, due to customer experience and customization. Factors segmenting customers into various categories can be computed as:

Benefit Seeking Customers: Buying products that offer a 360-degree solution has become the new normal, requiring brands to come up with innovative offers.
Customer Loyalty: Most valuable among all, customer loyalty can sometimes reach demographics that marketers might fail to reach.
Event-based: Event-based targeted marketing campaigns can generate valuable leads and have the potential to reach untapped demographics.

3. Factors affecting the Customer Behavior

Understanding the ins and outs of factors affecting the customer satisfaction analysis model, such as why, how, when, and where, helps in focussing on the right target audience. Some of the factors that govern the purchasing psychology of consumers are:

Financial Limitations: Analyzing demographics based on economic grounds has always been at the forefront among all the factors. During a financial crisis, consumers won’t buy premium products or services and will search for economic alternatives.
Marketing Campaigns: The first step in curating a business strategy is to build an engaging marketing campaign. Launching consumer-centric marketing campaigns is the best way forward.
External Influence: No matter how quirky or innovative your marketing strategy is, if it doesn’t make people talk about it (Referral Marketing), it won’t help in attracting or retaining customers.

While these factors provide insights about how and what people think while or before buying, it is also vital to understand their sentiments at both micro and macroeconomic levels. The nature of sentiment (positive & negative) among people is crucial to amend necessary changes to the overall business model.