Analysed by: Tom Jörder & Joonas Keinästö
Companies and Corporations intend to sell their products and services to consumers. In order to understand consumers and their needs, they need to look at the behavior of consumers. Consumer behaviorism examines how individuals acquire , use and dispose of company offerings.
When a consumer starts his/her normal everyday life, he/she buys and uses products and services through out the day. But what makes him/her choose for instance, product A and not product B?
There are several factors that can impact the consumers' behavior. We divide them in three groups, starting with external influence, followed by internal process and lastly, the post decision process. If we focus on the external process of consumer behaviorism, we see that psychological processes take place in the mind of the consumer. This domain contains the topics motivation , perception , attitude and knowledge of a subject or product (Noel, 2020).
Companies and corporations can use this information for their own goals, which are often making the most profit as possible. There are several ways to exploit this advantage and one of them is using behavior modification in advertising and marketing campaigns. In order to tell you more about this phenomenon, behavior modification, we will talk about a very persuasive marketing campaign by Volvo in the next paragraph.
The Volvo Marketing Campaign
The Swedish car manufacturer is known for its unique marketing campaigns and advertisements. The company is trying to promote itself as a car manufacturer which thinks that security and family are very important. But Volvo is also doing something else! If we look at the history of marketing campaigns and advertising, this is quite an extraordinary thing. We are talking about the latest advertising video’s of the new Volvo cars.
Did you notice it?
The commercial contains different signs in order to describe modern consumerism. At the end of the commercial you are able to read the slogan ‘’By not owning things you are not owned by things.’’ This is quite a contradictory statement, knowing that Volvo is a car manufacturer that tries to sell cars. But what are they doing? And why?
Volvo is trying to communicate with consumers by sharing their values and needs. The brand is giving a statement in order to create trust and brand loyalty for its possible consumers. This message contains the statement that Volvo is a service and not just a luxury product.
Behavior model
BJ Fogg Behavior Model recognizes three key elements to influence human behavior. It is quite simple and can be found in many commercials, games, websites and phones for example. Three important factors are: motivation, prompts and ability to do. Ability means that the easier the action, less motivation is needed. This also accounts vice versa.
Which type of prompt it is?
Volvos commercial slogan ‘’By not owning things you are not owned by things.’’ changes the perspective of driving cars in the future. Nowadays, owning a car means a lot of costs which are impossible to predict. Insurance, taxes, maintenance, fixes and lost value are thousands of euros in the first year and tens of thousands in five years time. And when you want to sell the car and buy a new one, you need to sell the car first. All these negative things for moving from one place to another.
Volvo has modified its products and services to meet with consumers wants, needs and expectations. Now, you don't have to take a loan and predict your expenses and you can still have a safe, premium car with high quality features. If we analyze similarities in Volvos campaign and in BJ Fogg Behavior Model, we can find that Volvo did not only make driving cars easier, but it simplified the whole process of moving and transport by removing most of the unpredictability and buy-sell processes. The customer is more likely to choose Volvo, because it is much more easy to do so. It does not need a lot of motivation. Combine these advantages to Volvo's good reputation of safety and quality which uplifts the buyers motivation. This gives Volvo a very good position in the future regarding the transportation market.
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