The Whys and Why Nots of the Purchase Process

Knowing the reasons why someone has bought your product or service is valuable consumer insight, which applies to both consumer and certainly B2B marketing research. Having this data handy makes it easy to answer those nagging questions from your creative team or advertising agency. Knowing the consumer has just purchased from you is a positive experience, after all you are celebrating the win. However, there is a dark side!

There is a slate of reasons why consumers would exchange their resources for yours, but there is an equally long slate of reasons why they would not buy. This is the dark side and is exactly where marketing researchers should spend more time analyzing the data. We can capture this data at multiple points. For my employer, I frequently speak with customers about why they chose a particular training modality. As part of that conversation I also ask what they see as perceived barriers to adoption. Customer exit surveys can also be used to gain feedback on why customers are no longer purchasing from you. Also, consider using a source of non-customers if you want to provide a more complete market picture.

This can present some interesting findings, especially if there is a misperception in the market that is uncovered by your survey. Insight of this nature is something that creative types get really excited about as it provides them a new perspective. It can also be leveraged by those in product management where changes can be discussed and implemented if necessary.

How do you capture insight around barriers to adoption? If you have a working list then it can be applied in a ranking exercise or through a multiple response format. I prefer the latter as there are typically multiple reasons why someone may chose not to adopt your products or services. This can also be implemented through a Max-Diff exercise which provides the user a more robust measure of the relative importance of any given reason. Should you not have a working list then qualitative research can be a useful starting point for creating a list of reasons.

Regardless of where you capture this type of data, you should spend the time and effort to do so. Knowing why someone would not buy from you is the first step in creating messaging to counter that those perceptions.