Impulse-buy or carefully considered? How the magnitude of the purchase affects your marketing

How big a decision is it to buy from you? Do your customers choose your products on a whim or do they think carefully about it?
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Unfortunately it isn’t simply a case of being one or the other. And the magnitude of a purchase in the eyes of the buyer affects how you market your business. So how do you work out where you are on the Purchase Spectrum?

Impulse buys

At one end of the spectrum you have the "impulse buy". These purchases are quick and easy decisions to make:

• I buy the same brand of toothpaste I always do
• I'm thirsty so I buy the cheapest bottle of water on offer at the shop I'm closest to (because I don't care about water enough to pay a premium for a particular brand or go out of my way to get it)
• I see a beautiful scarf that I immediately love and can't leave the shop without

Impulse buys are:

• Low risk (eg the toothpaste - what's the worst that could happen?)
• Involve a relatively small amount of money
• Won’t take up much of the buyer’s time
• Don't impact on anyone else
• Are either functional purchases (eg the water) or emotional purchases (eg the scarf) – not both

Considered purchases

At the other end of the scale is the "considered purchase". These decisions take a bit of thinking about.
For example:

• Buying a house or a car
• Signing up to an expensive and time consuming coaching course
• Investing in a software system that will be used by everyone in the company
• Buying a car seat for a newborn baby

Considered purchases are important, and are complicated by various factors that mean buyers instinctively slows themselves down to avoid making the wrong decision. The things that affect how "considered" a purchase is are:

1.The cost
The more expensive the purchase, relative to how much the buyer can afford (premiership footballers buy diamonds on a whim because they can afford to), the further to the right the purchase lies.

2.The time it will demand
Similar to cost above, if a buyer will need to invest a lot of their time in the the purchase, such as in the coaching course example above, then they will think carefully about whether they are likely to commit that time in order to get value for money.

3.The people affected
If the purchase involves a lot of people (eg the software system above) or people who are very important to the buyer (eg the newborn's car seat) then this makes the purchase more considered.
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4 Emotion AND logic
If the decision is both logical and emotional, then the buyer will slow themselves down.  For example the baby's car seat needs to fit into both Mum and Dad's cars, is safe, and has good reviews (all logical reasons) but will also protect this precious baby in the event of an accident and that the parents will feel comfortable using every day (emotional reasons).

How to locate your product/service on the spectrum

First of all, download and print off my Purchase Spectrum Worksheet. ​

Purchase Spectrum Worksheet (pdf)
File Size:	241 kb
File Type:	pdf

Download File

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Then consider each of the four factors above in turn and, for each one, put a cross on the line for how your product or service ranks.

The cross the furthest to the right sets the bar for how considered a purchase your offering is in the eyes of your customers.

And the further to the right your offering is on this spectrum, the more important it is that you support your customers through their buying decision.

This phenomenon is described in more detail in the book Watertight Marketing by Bryony Thomas.

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This article is derived from the first edition of 'Watertight Marketing' by Bryony Thomas. It was written with permission and under licence during my time as a Certified Practitioner 2014-2019. The original intellectual property remains with Watertight Marketing Ltd. For more information visit watertightmarketing.com

Please note I am no longer part of the Watertight Marketing network and so I now use other methodologies instead of this one to achieve the same great results for my clients.

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