Consumer Behavior Rituals
(Image sourced from Zain.Love)
Growing up, every Thursday my parents would do the grocery shopping and each week they would purchase the same brands over and over, Colgate toothpaste, head and shoulders shampoo and conditioner, Woolworth’s beef sausages, birds eye fish fingers, Obela Hommus and so on. I was involved in their ritualistic consumer behavior (much to my displeasure).
How was it that I grew sick of having the same products but they never did?
Consumers are habitual decision makers
In psychology, the term ritual is used to describe a repetitive behavior systematically used by a person to neutralize or prevent anxiety. Whilst feeling anxiety over purchasing a low involvement product may seem excessive, there is merit to the psychological definition of ritual when applying it to consumer behavior.
Consumers, such as my parents are habitual decision makers. Meaning they don’t necessarily purchase brands out of preference, but out of habit.
Why do we do this?
We live busy lives and going shopping is a burden that takes time out of our schedules. Who wants to spend time deliberating over whether to get Obela Hommus or Black Swan Hommus when it is much faster and easier to just purchase the same brand you always buy, the one the whole family always eats.
Additionally whilst most items in grocery stores don’t yield high financial risks, there is still potential for money to be wasted if the consumer tries a new brand and doesn’t find it satisfactory. Thus to account for this functional and financial risk users typically just play it safe and purchase brands ritualistically.
Ritualistic Behaviors and Marketers
Inert, evoked and inept are categories that consumers may consciously or subconsciously place brands in during the decision making process (Leblanc and Turley, 1994).
The challenge for marketers is to get consumers to switch from having their brand in the inept and inert sets into the evoked set (Kerin et al., 2003).
Once the brand is in a consumers evoked set it often becomes a ritualistic purchase, a personal example of mine is I stick with Go pro whenever I need to purchase a new action camera. The reason behind this is due to having positive satisfaction with my first purchase and thus have decided to stick with the brand despite it being more costly and not having some of the features that alternative brands have.
Ritualistic behaviours isn’t just about consumers purchasing behaviours
Ritualistic behaviors are also associated with how products are consumed and this is a focal point for a lot of marketers.
Researchers from Harvard recently conducted a study on ritualistic behaviour where the value of a ritual behavior was tested. The participants were tasked to compare the preference of eating chocolate after engaging in the ritual of unwrapping it vs. eating a chocolate already unwrapped . The experiments results showed that to participants preferred the tastes of the chocolate thay got to unwrap and were willing to pay more (Arumugum, 2013).
“In advertising, using ritual consumer behaviour is ideal for brand building communication and increasing product adoption by showing consumers when, how, where or with whom to consumer your product” (Mcnally, 2015)
Nutritional Supplements
Supplements are the epicenter of resistance training, very few consumers go to the gym without taking them. This all comes down to the extensive “ritual” created by marketers within the product category.
All of the supplement stores, health magazines and fitness websites (experts and influencers) recommend having pre-work out, post work out and sometimes even interim workout supplements in order to maximize your health and fitness results.
They have marketed in such a way that I know individuals whom actually get anxious if their protein runs out because they feel as though they will not make any progress. Even though it is not essential, for post work out you can eat a bit of chicken or eggs and get more nutrients then you would from the protein powder.
Furthermore, these companies engage in “Umbrella Branding”, which is where they have a “family” of products under the same brand name. So consumers, after having a positive experience will stick to the same brand as they know it is a safe option and the other products will complement each other.
To conclude
Evidently ritualistic behaviors are a part of our every day lives from the way we shop, to the way we consume our products and even go about our day-to -day business. But just because we do these behaviors doesn’t necessarily mean they are our first preference.
Now that this blog is done, despite knowing better I will be taking some pre-workout and then going to the gym and finishing with post workout.
(Twist it, Lick it, Dunk it)
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Reference List:
Arumugum, N. (2013). Forbes Welcome. [online] Forbes.com. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/forbes/welcome/?toURL=https://www.forbes.com/sites/nadiaarumugam/2013/07/24/how-you-unwrap-candy-can-make-it-taste-better-the-power-of-food-rituals/&refURL=https://www.google.com.au/&referrer=https://www.google.com.au/ [Accessed 5 May 2018].
Dennis W. Rook (1984) ,”Ritual Behavior and Consumer Symbolism”, in NA — Advances in Consumer Research Volume 11, eds. Thomas C. Kinnear, Provo, UT : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 279–284.
Mcnally, S. (2015). Understanding and Using Consumer Behaviour Rituals in Marketing | eris strategy. [online] eris strategy. Available at: http://erisstrategy.com.au/understanding-and-using-consumer-rituals-in-marketing/ [Accessed 5 May 2018].
Kerin, R., Berkowitz, E., Rudelius, W. and Hartley, S. (2003). Marketing. McGraw-Hill/Irwin.
Ronald P. LeBlanc, L.W. Turley, (1994) “Retail Influence on Evoked Set Formation and Final Choice of Shopping Goods”, International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, Vol. 22 Issue: 7, pp.10–17, https://doi.org/10.1108/09590559410069882
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