Let’s start with a basic but key criterion. They have to be comfortable spending time with and listening to consumers. A fundamental starting point for any great marketer is: get out of your office and spend time in the places and spaces where your consumers experience the product, no matter how senior or ‘important’ you consider yourself.

-Do you have six-pack to be a great marketer? By Mark Ritson

• Visit the places where your customers experience your products/services
  Listen to the feedback, reviews and experiences on the products/services from a diverse group of customers. Avoid third parties as much as possible while you are in contact with the customers. Try to be as close as possible while your customers are using the product.
• Observe the usage –why-where-when-how
  Keep your eyes wide open when your customers using the product. You may come across some simple ideas to improve your product that have a great impact and design new products. Note each and every aspect such as why your customers are using your product (in some cases the usage may not reflect the actual purpose of the product), where they are using the product often, when they are using i.e. at what time, location etc, and finally how they are using. Always look for the strange patterns in the customer usage or experience.
• Ask questions and listen to answers from the horse’s mouth
  Try to listen unbiased and objectively what the customers meant while they give the feedback rather than just what you heard or perceived. Avoid structured customer feedback environments as much as possible as this may influence and hamper the quality of the opinions of the customers.
• Spend time with the customers
  Listening and understanding a customer is not a one time or a yearly programme. It is a constant and continuous process. Often the executives decrease the time spent on to listening to customers as they grew in their position and influence the business decisions.
• Act on the feedback
  Don’t make listening to customers a namesake activity. Not valuing the information gained from the customers is a symptom of change aversion for the improvement. Make sure that the result of the action taken based on the feedback serve the purpose.

One out of the three golden Dell rules emphasis on customer feedback- Always listen to the customer.

Dell Computer was the first company to build and operate itself around the customer feedback. “Our attitude is diametrically opposed to the engineering-driven thinking of ‘Let’s invent something and then go push it onto customers who might be willing to buy it.’ Instead, I founded the company with the intention of creating products and services based on a keen sense of the customer’s input and the customer’s needs. I spend about 40% of my time with customers”, says Michael Dell

Related Links:
Automotive marketing
Ad serving

Suggested Reading:
Differences Between Web Browsing and Research
Marketing Is Often Misunderstood As Sales
Sales Vs. Marketing Vs. Advertising
The Evolution of Marketing
Why is Marketing essential for any business today?
Why Marketing people are the most likely people to become CEO’s

Importance of customer buying behavior
Studying customer behavior helps you in understanding how customers think, how they are influenced, who influences them and what motivates their purchase. Purchase is the end result in the process of customer’s decision-making. By knowing the buying behavior of a customer, businesses can get more sales out of their products or services.

Understanding customer buying behavior – what does it do to your business?

Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower – Steve Jobs

Innovate. It gives you an opportunity to be the first in the industry to identify changes in buyer’s decision making process. This provides you with a platform to come up with products or services that suit customer’s preferences more, taking them closer to the purchase. Studying customers’ buying behavior helps you in tracking the varying customer preferences, giving you a scope to innovate accordingly. Understanding customer buying behavior is important for any business as it helps in figuring out the changing needs of customers and targeting their products or services in a better way.

How to track customer buying behavior?
You can track customers’ behavior by asking them a series of questions in the form of an interview. Questions could be about various aspects like when they buy, how often they buy, in what quantities they buy, where they prefer to buy from, whose advice they choose before buying, etc. This will help you in understanding the efforts you have to take to motivate customers to purchase your products.

Going through the customers purchase records in the store can provide you with information regarding their purchase patterns. This leads to identifying the products or services that will be immediately popular and will sell well.

Being alert to the pain points or the inconveniences faced by the customers while shopping for your products proves useful. It gives you an opportunity to redesign your processes and strategies to make purchasing process simple, easy and customer friendly.

What influences CBB?
Social factors like culture, family, reference groups, opinion leader etc. play a key role in impacting purchasing decisions. Other factors like age, occupation, income levels, personality traits of individuals, degree of awareness of products and services among customers also influence customer buying behavior.

The extent of complexity involved in the purchase motivates the customer either to choose the product himself or approach his social circle for advice. For example, a customer purchasing a car tries to get as much information as possible about the various models, price, availability etc. from all sources before making a purchase. But the same customer would not gather as much information before hand when purchasing groceries.

Businesses must also keep in mind the Government policies, seasonal changes etc., which form the external factors that alter the buying patterns of a customer. For example, a sudden increase in the price of gasoline may result in an increased purchase of certain types of automobiles and vice versa.

Customer preferences do not remain same all the time. Products or services must be suited to the current needs of customers that may have changed from the past. Understanding customers’ buying behavior helps in designing products, processes, communications, advertisements, strategies that make it easy for customer to purchase the product or service from you.