Purchase drivers: what they are and how to use them

The challenge for many businesses is how to present their product or service in a way that outshines the competition. Understanding customer needs is a strategic way to get them to buy what you’re selling. 

Knowing what influences consumers to buy a certain product or service empowers you to align your marketing goals with their purchasing habits. Tracking these purchase drivers is a marketing technique that every marketer should use to increase sales.

A purchase driver is a key performance indicator (KPI) used to understand consumer purchasing and usage priorities in any category that’s typically not tied to a specific brand. 

This type of KPI is based on purchase behaviour more than how the product or service meets customer needs. While the attributes of a product or service may have played a role in the early stages of a consumer’s buying preference, habitual buying influences usually take over. Those influences could be related to convenience, familiarity, value, education and even what the brand stands for concerning its mission and vision statement. 

A purchase driver is part of the consumer decision-making process before the actual purchase takes place. And it usually happens once the consumer has come to terms with the need for the product or service, the information that comes with it and other alternatives. A purchase driver also reflects why consumers inherently buy the same brand or service.

Understanding customer needs and knowing what drives consumers to purchase allows for a tailored marketing strategy. And brands that promote repetitive purchasing are a step ahead. Learning what drives a consumer to make a purchase decision and using that information to market to them can ultimately turn them into a loyal customer. 

Loyal customers can help your business grow because it’s likely that they’ll share their buying experience with friends and family. This type of loyal customer is also known as an influencer. An influencer is a customer who markets your business based on their customer experience. Gain a better understanding of what drives your customers to buy into your business. 

Purchase drivers are important because they help refine brand positioning, drive sales and acquire new customers. Let’s take a deeper look at how these benefits work. 

Brand positioning is what allows brands to distinguish themselves from competitors. You can use Brand Tracker, powered by SurveyMonkey, to spot trends and monitor key metrics in real time to determine your brand’s health in the marketplace. You’ll also be able to monitor competitor brands and even benchmark how they perceive you, giving you a competitive advantage.

TIP: Learn more about brand positioning and use brand monitoring in your market research. 

Brand values and associations also influence brand positioning. What inspired you to build your company and who you’re partnering with to achieve these goals can have a significant impact on your brand’s success. This is because brand values and brand association inform part of brand positioning. It’s essential to recognise that these principles are important to consumers. 

And when you understand what’s important to consumers, you’ll tap into which aspects influence them to choose one brand over another, giving you the insight you need to create a refined brand positioning.

The more you understand consumer needs, the better marketer you can become. Knowledge of consumer buying habits and preferences can enable you to align your marketing strategies to meet their specific needs. Some consumer needs that you’ll want to know are their price preference, the convenience of the product or service, durability, effectiveness, formulation and status. 

Packaging also makes a difference to consumers. A more in-depth understanding of consumers’ wants and needs can help with product ideation as it will ensure more effective development of a product suitable for them. But it’s also important to understand that most buyer preferences can be influenced by a variety of expectations along with social norms. 

Often, people can’t clearly explain why they like something; they know they do, and they make an instant subconscious decision to make a certain purchase. When you understand what drives consumers, you can get better at attracting them, which will increase your sales and attract people who subscribe to other aspects of your brand. 

For example, endorsements, sponsorships, vendors, charitable affiliations and partnerships can be used as attributes of purchase drivers. Learn which attribute types drive your target market. 

Some of the most common purchase drivers that help us to identify customer needs are engagement, convenience, fulfilment, options, price and trust. Let’s take a closer look at how these purchase drivers work to influence purchasing decisions.

You can also uncover your customer value drivers using surveys powered by SurveyMonkey.

This approach helps customers solve a pain point or get a job done. Aligning your product to fulfil a consumer’s specific need influences them to make an instant buying decision without much thought. McDonald’s milkshake may be an unconventional choice for a breakfast item, but it’s an easy and unmessy on-the-go item that’s great for morning commutes. And it sold for them. 

Whenever you can undercut the competition in terms of price while maintaining profitable margins, you will most probably always be meeting the fulfilment of affordability. In the US, when Subway launched its $5-foot-long campaign, some restaurants followed suit, such as Little Caesars with its Hot-N-Ready $5 pizzas. 

Convenience can mean many things:

Subway met the need for convenience. In addition to their standalone brick-and-mortar stores, you can find Subway in shopfronts, petrol stations and motorway service stations. Starbucks also makes its product convenient to purchase outside its standalone franchise, with its coffee being sold in supermarkets, cinemas, railway stations, etc.

Consumers appreciate being entertained along the way. Remember, marketing aims to connect with consumers and keep their attention. Any type of entertainment can be implemented into a marketing plan to spark engagement. For instance, insightful product information, brand knowledge, social media content, in-store customer service, online chatbots or multimedia demonstrations can increase and retain consumer engagement. 

As long as you have consumers’ attention, you have a chance of turning them into a customer. If you’re using the right purchase drivers, there will also be the possibility of them becoming a repeat customer. To increase engagement, Netflix focuses on personalising each user’s experience by recommending a watch list based on the movies and shows that they’ve previously viewed. Spotify does the same with its list of music and podcasts. 

Consumers also appreciate having options. The more opportunities you can provide to shoppers, the better your chances of landing a sale. However, providing too many choices can result in an overload of information, causing consumers to seek out a simpler display of options. 

For example, in e-commerce, it’s best to provide shoppers with the most popular shipping and payment options so you aren’t overpopulating the checkout page with unnecessary text and images. But when it comes to product features, the more pictures you display, the better consumers will understand what they’ll get.  

Trust is vital to consumers, particularly as more shoppers turn to reviews online for products and services. Consumers have so many options to choose from that a simple customer review or testimonial can make all the difference. Allowing consumers to read customer and product feedback on your website displays transparency that helps establish trust and can influence consumers to make a purchase.

The cost of products and the experience of buying them can, collectively, have an impact on consumers’ attention. Your price point matters. And to maintain trust with consumers, you should avoid pricing your products or services too low because that might cause shoppers to question the quality of what you’re selling. Learn how to set the right price for your products using the Gabor-Granger and Van Westendorp pricing methods. You can also price your goods and services too high and lose out to a competitor that’s priced more affordably. 

These purchase drivers play a part in your marketing strategy, but you should conduct a key driver analysis to determine which ones are the main KPIs. Learn which purchase drivers to focus on to drive performance. 

Learn what consumers want so you can market your product or service to them in a strategic way that produces results. Use Consumer Segmentation powered by SurveyMonkey to learn about consumer preferences in order to optimise your next marketing campaign.