Personal Factors Influencing Consumer Behavior

Definition: The Personal Factors are the individual factors to the consumers that strongly influences their buying behaviors. These factors vary from person to person that results in a different set of perceptions, attitudes and behavior towards certain goods and services.

Some of the important personal factors are:

1. Age: The consumer buying behavior is greatly influenced by his age, i.e. the life cycle stage in which he falls. The people buy different products in different stages of the life cycle. Such as the purchase of confectionaries, chocolates is more when an individual is a child and as he grows his preferences for the products also changes.
2. Income: The income of the person influences his buying patterns. The income decides the purchasing power of an individual and thus, the more the personal income, the more will be the expenditure on other items and vice-versa.
3. Occupation: The occupation of the individual also influences his buying behavior. The people tend to buy those products and services that advocate their profession and role in the society. For example, the buying patterns of the lawyer will be different from the other groups of people such as doctor, teacher, businessman, etc.
4. Lifestyle: The consumer buying behavior is influenced by his lifestyle. The lifestyle means individual’s interest, values, opinions and activities that reflect the manner in which he lives in the society. Such as, if the person has a healthy lifestyle then he will avoid the junk food and consume more of organic products.

These are some of the personal factors that influence the individual’s buying behavior, and the marketer is required to study all these carefully before designing the marketing campaign.