Significance of Consumer Behavior in Contemporary Era Marketing

Marketing in contemporary era has assumed status of integral part of businesses provided the ever increasing competitiveness is the global industrial scenario. It is agreed that along with having so much importance in the modern era, marketing has also been subjected to various concerns that make this field one of the most toiling and taxing domains both in academia and corporate world. What makes the discipline rigorous is the product of modern consumer behavior spanning across the globe.   state that by definition, the consumer behavior is: The study of individuals, groups, or organizations and the processes they use to select, secure, and dispose of products, services, experiences, or ideas to satisfy needs; and the impacts that these processes have on the consumer and society.

Researchers are of view that consumer behavior has been a fully-fledged discipline that counts in considerable support from the other disciplines such as psychology,  sociology , social anthropology , marketing  and  economics. In order to understand the dynamics of buying behavior, marketers act as useful interface between the organization and consumers. Hence therefore consumer behavior is taken in perspective with multiple factors that are related to demographics and psychographics of consumer base. 

Consumer behavior works for the benefit of both organization and customers since both the parties end up with their motivations tapped and aspirations fulfilled. It is evident that marketers struggle day in and day out to make a match between what consumers think of their wants and needs and what organizations are capable of putting on offer for them. This match determines the fate of a company’s repute and tells the successful brands apart from others. We can describe consumer behavior as; It attempts to understand the decision-making processes of buyers, both individually and in groups. It studies characteristics of individual consumers such as demographics and behavioral variables in an attempt to understand people's wants. It also tries to assess influences on the consumer from groups such as family, friends, reference groups, and society in general. Significance of the study for consumer behavior can be explained with the fact that presently marketers see three pronged advantage as the study of consumer behavior reveals the attitudes of consumers in capacities of user, payer and buyer. All the capacities have different connotations over the buying decisions. 

Consumer behavior is an esoteric area in the light of this fact that researchers have come up with multiple fields within the traditional marketing such as Customer Relationship Management and others. The focus of emerging fields is to make the most of understanding of consumer behavior studies and to obtain exactitude in the findings. At present tumultuous patterns of the markets require the companies to keep a sharp eye on consumer retention, customization of offerings and one-to-one marketing. 

Keywords: Consumer Behavior, Customer Relationship Management, Consumer Decision Making.