How Consumer Behavior Affects Marketing Strategy
Javier Ramirez
Liberty University
BUSI 520: Strategic Marketing Management
Muriel Wilson
January 6, 2022
How Consumer Behavior Affects Marketing Strategy
Consumer behavior in marketing refers to the study of individuals and groups
associated with the purchase and use of goods and services, as well as the consumer’s
emotional, physical, and mental responses surrounding these activities.
In order to be prosperous in today’s world, marketers need to know what
consumers need, what they think about, how they spend their time, and how they spend
their money. Knowing the influences that affect the decisions of the customer is very
important for marketers. The interdisciplinary social science of consumer behavior analysis
gathers aspects from anthropology (particularly social anthropology), ethnography,
economics (particularly behavioral economics), marketing, sociology, and psychology.
Included in studying consumer behavior are studies of demographics, lifestyle, personality,
and variables like brand advocacy, brand loyalty, usage rates, usage occasion, outside
influences, and willingness to make referrals.
Effects of Consumer Behavior on Marketing Strategies
Consumer behavior is concerned with all aspects and activities of purchasing
behavior as well as all people involved in purchasing decisions. It is one of the most
important aspects of marketing. Here are some effects that the study of consumer
behavior is having on marketing strategies.
1. Internet research
Many companies are now using the internet to carry out a lot of research on
consumer behavior, including the consumer’s activity on the Web. The findings help
businesses figure out the most appealing product attributes, best sales promotions, the
right price, the optimal market conditions, and the best places in which to sell. The Internet
is a very powerful yet cost-effective tool for marketing research. Its flexibility regarding
consumers’ shifting demands and ability to pinpoint specific target areas make it very useful.
2. The elaboration likelihood model
Marketers use the elaboration likelihood model (ELM) to help figure out whether a
central or peripheral route of communication would be best for a given audience based on
their connection or the amount of loyalty they have towards a cause, brand, service, or
product. Marketers will use a central route of communication for consumers who are highly
involved with the subject, while a combination of multiple approaches through peripheral
means is popular for communicating and influencing consumers who are less devoted to the
issue.
3. Complex consumer decision making
This is one type of buyer behavior that comes with a lot of involvement on the
consumer’s part, as it is usually associated with expensive or high-end products or services
that the consumer will want to do a lot of research on before he makes a decision. This
complex decision-making usually involves looking at reviews of different brands and
products that lead toward a better-informed choice.
4. Sales forecasts
Sales forecasts are used to estimate the expected amount of sales for a specific
market throughout a specific period of time. Sales forecasts cannot be higher than the
potential of the market and use different methods such as quantitative and qualitative
forecasts. Quantitative forecasts make their predictions based on past sales, while
qualitative forecasts predict the sales of a product or service based on the opinions of
experts in the field. Businesses can study the past behavior of consumers in order to
determine what should be contained in sales forecasts.
5. Supply and demand
Supply and demand are one of the most basic models in economics and consists of
the proportion between the amount of supply for something and the amount of demand for
that which is being supplied. Consumer behavior greatly affects supply and demand. There
are two different types of supply and demand situations that affect the types of marketing
strategies that are deployed for a product or service. The first situation is when there is an
abundant supply and demand is scarce, and the second situation is when there are scarce
supply and the demand it is great. Assessing these two comparative ratios is extremely
useful for marketers to gain insight into consumer behavior and how they should market
their products.
6. Consumer psychographics
Similar to demographics, psychographics is a way to find out more about your
customer. It is a type of methodology that includes the study and classification of consumers
according to psychological criteria and their attributes, such as attitudes, aspirations,
opinions, interests, values, lifestyles, and personalities. There are two main ways that the
study of consumer activities, interests, and opinions can help affect marketing strategies.
First, understanding consumer psychographics can affect the way in which marketers
choose to communicate with customers. Second, it can change the way marketers build
messages that are meant to capitalize on or influence consumers with already existing
opinions.
7. Market sensing processes
This refers to a set of processes and research techniques that help marketers and
management teams better understand the external market. These processes help
businesses get a competitive advantage because they have a deeper knowledge of
consumers and purport to predict, or “sense,” which way the market will swing in the
future. It is not so much consumer behavior as it is predictive consumer behavior.
At one time or another, we have all shopped online or in a store. What pulls us in
and what pushes us away is the difference between good and bad marketing.
Understanding customer behavior is critically important to understanding what drives your
buyer to purchase your product and stay loyal to your brand. Stay open to what customers
are saying and implement their suggestions and ideas into your marketing strategy to stay
relevant and keep growing your brand.
Moral injury has been predominantly developed from clinical work and research
with soldiers and veterans. Moral injury refers to unprecedented traumatic life events that
refer to perpetrating, failing to prevent, or bearing witness to actions that “transgress
deeply held moral beliefs and expectations” (Litz et al., 2009, p. 1). Morally injured
individuals, for instance, often alter their beliefs that the world is a safe and benevolent
place and human beings trustworthy. Events that may lead to moral injury may be death-
related situations, killings, handling/uncovering human remains, severely wounded victims
that the person was not able to help (Frankfurt and Frazier, 2016). Similar to moral distress,
individuals who suffer from moral injury may experience guilt, frustration, sense of
rejection, difficulty forgiving, self-harm, anhedonia, and shame (Nash and Litz, 2013; Shay,
2014). It is argued that moral injury is one of the precursors of PTSD symptoms (Nash and
Litz, 2013). As well, Shay (2014) contended that moral injury is prevalent in a number of
PTSD clustered-symptoms, specifically: the nature of triggering an event, re-experiencing,
and avoidance or numbing.
Presently, recent research has initiated to empirically study moral injury
experienced in soldiers and veterans. However, current literature has not addressed
(empirically or even theoretically) moral injury experienced by police. Similarly to authors'
perspective on moral distress, present manuscript aims to make researchers and clinicians
aware that is imperative that moral injury in police should be studied empirically.
Nonetheless, police officers often experience atrocities, gruesome crimes, and death in the
line of duty (Papazoglou, 2013).
Moral Injury and Police Traumatization
Analogously, to the experience of veterans and soldiers, police officers are
expected to experience moral injury that may be a precursor to compassion fatigue and,
intertwined with compassion fatigue, a risk factor to PTSD susceptibility and severity. To
illustrate, approximately 25% of a police sample reported killing or seriously injuring a
suspect in the line of duty (Weiss et al., 2010). Of 60 different operational and organizational
stressors common to the policing profession, officers ranked killing someone during a use of
force encounter as the most stressful experience in terms of coping with the aftermath
(Violanti and Aron, 1995). Interestingly, officers conveyed in two different studies that
making a mistake in the line of duty resulting in the death of a colleague would be the most
stressful (also in terms of coping with the aftermath) from a list of 34 potentially traumatic
experiences (e.g., being threatened with a gun, witnessing someone being killed) commonly
experienced by officers (Weiss et al., 2010; Chopko et al., 2015).
Thus, underlying feelings of guilt and shame (i.e., moral injury) and resulting
distress related to the harming of others experienced by law enforcement may have
commonalities with soldiers. Komarovskaya et al. (2011) found that killing or severely
injuring a perpetrator was significantly related with PTSD symptoms among police officers.
Noteworthy, active-duty law enforcement officers reported experiencing higher levels of
PTSD symptoms compared to active-duty U.S. infantry soldiers soon after returning from
combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan (Chopko et al., under review). Furthermore,
subjective ratings of overall posttraumatic stress were more strongly related to maladaptive
outcomes (e.g., dysfunctional alcohol use) compared to PTSD symptoms among police
officers (Chopko et al., 2013). The authors of this research postulated that guilt and shame
related to traumatic experiences might have accounted, at least partially, for this finding.
Lastly, Chopko et al. (2016) reported that greater posttraumatic spiritual growth was
positively related with greater distress (e.g., PTSD, depression) among overwhelmingly
Christian (i.e., “Thou shall not kill”) officers. The authors of this research proposed that a
spiritual quest is initiated by traumatic experiences to cope with guilt and shame
surrounding those events (e.g., harming a fellow human being).
Moral Distress vs. Moral Injury
Moral distress and moral injury may appear to be very similar since both are
related to moral suffering. However, what appears to mainly distinguish moral injury from
moral distress is that moral injury refers to violence and death-related incidents. On the
other hand, moral distress refers to moral dilemmas (or else moral disequilibrium)
experienced by multiple mundane incidents that frontline professionals may frequently
experience in the line of duty. To this end, moral injury, for instance, may be experienced
with intense sense of feelings of guilt, shame, and frustration that an officer may experience
because of exposure to extreme violence or death-related incidents. On the other hand,
officers may experience multiple incidents that may cause moral distress; over time, guilt,
shame, and other feelings may accumulate due to multiple morally distressed causing
incidents in the line of duty.
From a theoretical perspective it may be inferred that moral distress and moral
injury are intertwined in police work and may lead officers to the experience of compassion
fatigue. In turn, the continuous experience of multiple critical incidents that lead to the
experience of moral distress, moral injury, and compassion fatigue, may render officers
more vulnerable to the experience of PTSD symptomatology. That is, it is posited that the
officers' experiences of both moral distress and moral injury are cumulatively intertwined
and eventually may lead toward traumatization (compassion fatigue, PTSD).
Conclusions and Future Research
The issue of moral suffering (moral distress and moral injury) should be also studied
within a law-enforcement context given that all police officers are likely to experience moral
suffering in the line of duty. Such incidents may take multiple forms during an officers'
service, including: officer vs. officer, officer vs. civilian, and officer vs. organization. Although
officers often explore their options so that they act in a way that is consistent with their own
morals and beliefs, they may nevertheless experience inner moral suffering on multiple
occasions throughout a shift. For example, an officer may experience inner moral suffering if
his partner acts against a civilian in a manner that he considers morally wrong, or he may
need to act in a way that is at odds with his moral values in order to comply with the
organization's policies (or their supervisor's orders). One such instance where conflict may
arise between an officer's personal moral beliefs and their duty to adhere to departmental
policy or a direct order is crowd management. In crowd-control situations, officers may be
ordered to use force on protestors—some of whom may be teenagers—and such action
may be inconsistent with an officer's personal moral beliefs. Similarly, an officer may view
her partner's behavior toward an elder as disrespectful, but she may elect to not say
anything in order to avoid conflict with her partner. The authors contend that such inner
moral suffering become intensified when officers are exposed to critical incidents, which are
defined in the literature as the moments in which morally injurious incidents occur (e.g., Litz
et al., 2009). Such incidents may not be traumatic per se, but they can be potentially morally
injurious because they may lead first responders to question their tactical decision-making
in response to the incident, their capacity to prevent what happened, and so forth. For
instance, officers are called to respond to a domestic violence situation, but their arrival is
delayed due to traffic congestion. When they finally arrive, they find two family members
severely wounded. In this scenario, the officers may question whether there was anything
they could have done differently to prevent that incident from happening. In addition, their
actions may be reviewed by their shift supervisor to determine whether they had performed
their duties as they were supposed to. Such an incident may not lead officers toward PTSD
or compassion fatigue per se. However, it is possible that the officers in this scenario may
have experienced moral suffering (especially if they were found accountable by their shift
supervisor) due to feelings of guilt and shame about the incident's outcome. Morally
injurious incidents are omnipresent in police work; thus, incorporating moral suffering
(moral distress and moral injury) into the present study is of great value because it
represents a possible “entrance gate” that can allow for the examination of the different
pathways that officers follow and that make them susceptible to traumatization. Of course,
police work is not solely caring for and protecting those who suffer. Many times, police
officers are supposed to apply use of force or even lethal use of force, if needed. In some
occasions, police brutality, excessive use of force, unnecessary use of lethal force, and
negative behavior toward civilians may occur. It is possible that some (not all) of those cases
may happen because police officers are likely to experience moral suffering and/or
traumatization that precludes their ability to perform their duties, make the right decisions,
or even regulate their negative emotions (e.g., anger, frustration) efficiently. Nevertheless,
future research is imperative to shed light to such cases where officers' show negativity,
hostility, or unnecessary use of force to civilians.
Even though it was out of the main scope of this manuscript, authors would like to
emphasize that literature has also been abandoned on the impact of police stress work on
officers' wellbeing (e.g., Rothmann, 2008; Tomyn et al., 2015). Specifically, officers' negative
coping strategies (e.g., avoidance, self-criticism) (Knowles and Bull, 2003) and lack of work-
related effective stress management (Mostert and Rothmann, 2006) essentially decreased
their wellbeing. On the other hand, balanced workload, supportive relationships by peers
and supervisors, and sense of self-control appear to reverse the egregious impact of work-
related stress on officers' wellbeing (Tomyn et al., 2015; Hesketh et al., 2016). Those
literature findings may support future research and policy programs in trauma prevention as
well as wellbeing promotion among police officers.
To this end, the authors concisely suggest the following action plan for future
research, policy, and clinical work that should be considered in working with police officers:
• Empirical research aims to study the role of moral distress and moral injury in the
experience of compassion fatigue among police officers.
• Development of standardized psychosocial scales intended to assess moral
distress and moral injury among first responders.
• Empirical research aims to study the role of moral distress and moral injury in
officers' susceptibility to PTSD, as well as in the severity of their PTSD symptoms.
• Development of evidenced-based PTSD treatment that addresses issues such as
moral injury and moral distress.
