Photo By: Melanie Deziel

When researching your brand or product’s target market, you must know what types of consumers you influence. This is directly correlated with the positioning that your brand settles into. From a consumer perspective, it helps to know what category you fall into as it influences you to buy the brand and specific products you do. With so many products being identical with small variations and made by different brands, what causes you to pick one over the other? Loyalty to a brand? Price? There are many different influential pieces to the puzzle that cause us to purchase certain items.

It is best broken down by Itamar Simonson, a professor at Stanford University, and Emanuel Rosen, an author, in their book “Absolute Value” which was published in 2014. The consensus of their story was that we are moving into a digital age where we have perfect information and how it plays a key role in data analytics. Within the book, they introduce the idea of how to break down consumers based on the influence mix. The influence mix is based on their PMO theory. PMO stands for the three different categories that consumers fall into: Preference, Marketers, and Other.

Preference:

The preference group is based on prior preferences, beliefs, and experiences. Purchases made in this group tend to be smaller and necessities like groceries. They buy certain brands out of habit and positive past experiences while not being forced to think much. This group is most likely to influence buyers when they are making routine purchases.

Marketers:

The marketers group is based on the influence of traditional marketing. Where products are in the store, their packaging, advertising, and pricing. This group has the most influence on emotional purchases as they can be influenced to sway from their routine based on new factors. Purchases made in this group tend to be larger than those in the preference group such as luxury items. Brand status plays a key role.

Other:

The other group is based mainly on the influence of others. Whether it is from word of mouth, reviews, websites, or social media, this group is greatly influenced by the words and experiences of others. Technology is a product that is normally in this group because of the wide range of availability but uncertainty about quality and functionality as it differs from model to model.

Now how can we use this information to our advantage in marketing? Depending on where your product lies, this process can tell you whether to focus on the loyalty of your consumers, traditional marketing and advertising, or social media and spreading the word. After you decide this, it is important to create a plan on how you can use this to your advantage. Maybe you realize you should shift towards social media to market rather than in stores or create more eye-catching packaging with a great price. With the current generation and trends that do not seem to be disappearing, building a strong online presence for your brand is a great place to start.

The easiest breakdown to remember of the influence mix is prior beliefs and experiences, influence from marketers, and influence from others. While it is important to get a feel of what category you fall into, it is important to make sure the one you fall into is also the one you are trying to market to. This will not only help sales but also increase your brand awareness and visibility.

Author: Joseph Scalzo

Joseph Scalzo is a Social Media Strategist Intern at the National Institute for Social Media. He graduated from California Lutheran University with a Bachelor of Science in Business Marketing. He is currently attending San Francisco State University where he is a student-athlete playing baseball and working towards getting his second Bachelor in Communication Studies. He has also completed many courses in International Relations.