Chapter6: Consumer Decision Making

Psychological factors are affecting consumers’ decision-making a lot. One of the psychological influencers is consumers’ motivation that drives consumers to want products. Without motivation to buy, no business can succeed no matter how their products are good. One theory called Maslow’s hierarchy of needs shows that there are five levels of needs, and that when people satisfy one need, higher-level of needs become important. All levels are following.

1. Physiological needs

People at this most basic needs-level expect basic function. This means that those people do not want high quality but tend to focus on price since basic function is enough to satisfy them. For example, a student who just transferred needs a bed they can have a good night sleeping on. He or she wants to buy a cheap bed that has decent quality. Thus, those people tend to focus more on price. IKEA is offering at least one cheap product in each product lines in order to appeal to them.

2. Safety needs

At this second level, people want security. IKEA’s products are very strong and well designed. For example, they use thick strong board for their desks so that customers cannot happen to break it.

3. Social needs

At this their level Social needs, people want love and sense of belongings. IKEA is especially doing well at this stage. They put model rooms in their stores and pictures that show family with their furniture in their catalog so that customers can easily imagine how their life is going to be with their family if they buy IKEA’s products. This stimulates customers’ needs for love and sense of belongings.

4. Esteem needs

Unfortunately, I do not think IKEA is doing well in terms of esteem level. At this level, people want self-esteem, recognition, and status. One thing IKEA is doing for this level is to make their products easy to assembly so that most of people can assembly by themselves in order to make them to feel accomplishments. However, I think this is not enough in order to satisfy esteem-needs.

5. Self-actualization needs

At this final level, people want self-fulfillment and self-expression. In order to satisfy this need, IKEA offers diverse products in order to give the customers many choices. Since the number of possible combinations of IKEA’s products is infinity, customers can express themselves by purchasing IKEA’s furniture.

As you can see, this is how IKEA stimulates customer's motivation to want and buy their products.