How To Influence Purchase Decisions: 9 Factors Affecting the Consumer Decision Process

If you want to get people to buy your stuff, you need to understand how consumers make purchasing decisions.

People research products. They compare competitors. Some 87% of buying decisions begin with research conducted online, usually on Amazon or Google. Product quality and seller reputation matter, of course.

Product quality and seller reputation matter, of course. But what about when the product matches the customer’s needs and they trust the seller? What influences a purchase decision once those fundamentals are in place?

What is a purchase decision?

A purchase decision is the stage in the consumer decision-making process where a buyer chooses whether or not to purchase a product or service. It follows key steps, including: 

• recognizing a need; 
• information; and 
• evaluating alternatives. 

Once the purchase is made, the process often concludes with post-purchase evaluation, where the buyer assesses their satisfaction with the product or service.

Factors such as product quality, price, reviews, brand reputation, and emotional influences all play a vital role in shaping this decision. 

How can you influence purchase decisions?

Understanding your customers’ behavior or why they make purchase decisions is more than just about driving sales, increasing conversion rates, and gaining a competitive edge. It’s about creating long-term relationships built on trust and loyalty and, ultimately, enhancing customer satisfaction.

Here are nine ways you can win over customers as they make a decision to buy:

1. Use reviews to help decide on products and companies

Many studies in recent years have confirmed what we already know: People read reviews and decide what to buy based on them.

Some 82% say they trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations, and 91% read reviews on a regular basis. In fact, only 0.25% of those surveyed don’t read reviews at all. (And that was a few years ago.) We’ve written at length on the impact of user-generated reviews.

There’s a strong correlation between a product’s review stars and purchase decisions.

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So start gathering reviews on your site. If you sell commodity products, you might want to pull reviews from an external site so that you can display more of them. Use structured data to get review stars from highly reviewed products into search results. Our internal study on the impact review stars showed that they can increase click-through-rates by as much as 35%.

More reviews can help insulate your reputation from the inevitable impossible-to-please customer. That said, don’t delete negative reviews. They actually help sales if there are only a few of them and they’re politely worded.

If there are tons of negative reviews, most people are naturally turned off and look elsewhere.

2. Consider that people gather buying recommendations from mixed sources

Even though social media and the Internet rule, customers make purchase decisions using a combination of old media, new media, and conversations with friends and family. (To read more about this, I encourage you to check out People Comparison Shop, Stupid.)

According to Power Reviews, the most common methods for gathering information when considering making a purchase are:

• Ratings and reviews (90%);
• User-generated content (Customer photos and videos)(73%);
• Recommendations from friends and family(73%).

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Although most users rely heavily on customer reviews, considering user-generated content, and asking people around us for recommendations remains commonplace. This means the experience you provide to your customers matters a great deal.

Omnichannel journeys are on the rise as well. Customers are no longer relying on single sources. According to research, 87% of retailers say omnichannel is important to them and understandably so. 

Companies implementing omnichannel strategies retain 90% more customers compared to those relying on a single channel and even a small 5% increase in customer retention can lead to a profit boost of 25–95%.

3. Understand that people don’t often know why they like something

There’s a famous study about jam tasting. Scientists asked a big sample of consumers to rank jams on taste, ordering them from top to bottom.

Then the scientists re-did the study with a different, but still statistically representative, group. This time, they asked the sampler to put the jams in order of taste and explain their thinking. The order flipped. The jams that the first group ranked as the best tasting were judged to be the worst by the second group.

The reason is that the conscious brain suddenly got involved in a task it didn’t really understand. Suddenly, there were social pressures (i.e. what they should choose), leading answers away from what people actually liked.

People make instant decisions with their subconscious. When they have to explain the choice, the choice may change completely because the rational mind is involved. (To learn more about rational and irrational thinking, check out our articles on System 1 and System 2.)

Takeaway: Don’t trust people when they explain why they bought something. They might not know themselves.

4. Analyze the crowd to understand buyer preferences

Most of our preferences are learned and formed by social norms and expectations.

An old Washington Post column uses the example of clam chowder. Decades ago, it was thin. But now, it’s almost uniformly thick. What happened? At some point, restaurateurs got in the habit of adding flour to make chowder thicker and thicker. Now, this is what consumers have come to consider a bowl of “authentic” clam chowder.

These learned preferences can just as easily involve characteristics that, from an objective standpoint, don’t make a product any better—and might even make them worse, especially when it comes to texture.

Ravi Dhar, a marketing professor at the Yale School of Management, notes that although Heinz ketchup does not reliably win in blind taste tests, it has established itself as the gold standard in its category because it’s thicker. In the marketing world, Dhar says, “meaningless attributes often lead to meaningful differentiation.”

Ever wondered why so many products on store shelves are so similar? Wouldn’t it be better to make them different? Not necessarily.

“There are huge incentives in consumer markets, even for competing companies, to make everything the same, ” says Dan McGinn, president of a research and strategy consultancy in Arlington, Virginia.

Yes, our preferences evolve as society evolves. That impacts our purchasing decisions. A “family car” used to mean a station wagon. Then it was a minivan. Now, it’s an SUV.

If you’re interested in this concept, we’ve written an article on the idea of familiarity as a marketing tactic. Essentially, the more we’re exposed to something, the more likely it is that we’ll develop a preference for it and decide to buy it.

Takeaway: In markets where people have a lot of experience with the product category, it pays to mimic the market standard.

5. Use simplicity for decision-making

Cognitive fluency is the human tendency to prefer things that are not only familiar, but also easy to understand. (That’s why simple sites are scientifically better.)

For marketers, this means that the easier it is to understand an offer, the more likely people are to buy it.

Psychologists have determined, for example, that shares in companies with easy-to-pronounce names significantly outperform those with hard-to-pronounce names. Coincidence? Nope.

Why people love to buy unlimited plans

Understanding and comparing different cell-phone plans is a pain. It takes time to identify the best option. Who wants to spend 20 minutes comparing monthly minutes and text limits? So what do people do? They buy the unlimited plan. It’s often not the best value, but it’s easy to understand.

Cell phone companies make the most money from unlimited plans, and they have an extra incentive to make other plans confusing. Plans with a fixed number of minutes charge high fees for going over your allotted minutes. It’s designed to cause you enough pain that you switch to a plan with a higher regular fee.

Previous positive experiences matter

Cognitive fluency also explains

• Why you continue to buy from brands and service providers you’ve used before;
• Why you often order the same thing from the menu.

It’s just easy. You’ve tried it, it worked, and you don’t want to spend a bunch of time researching alternatives. You don’t want to risk a bad purchase.

As a marketer, this means it’s super important to get a customer to decide on that first purchase. Pack your first offer with value and make it as easy as possible to buy. Once consumers have their first positive buying experience, it’s much easier to get repeat purchases.

Hard to read, hard to buy

Make your website easy to read. When people read something in a difficult-to-read font, they transfer that sense of difficulty onto the topic they’re reading about.

The same goes for products and purchases. We’ve conducted a number of original studies on e-commerce product pages. In one of those studies, we found that the way products are described matters. The format of text descriptions influences how people perceive the products themselves.

Takeaway: Make every aspect of the purchase decision as simple as possible.

6. For retail stores, even flooring influences purchasing decisions

Research by Joan Meyers-Levy suggests that the way people judge products may be influenced by the ground beneath them.

“When a person stands on carpeted flooring, it feels comforting,” says Meyers-Levy. “But the irony is that when people stand on carpet, they will judge products that are close to them as less comforting.”

When people were standing on soft carpet and viewed a product that was moderately far away, they judged that item’s appearance to be comforting. However, people who examined products while standing on the same plush carpet judged items that were close by as less comforting.

This translates online as well. The way things are presented and emotional factors come into play. It’s your responsibility to be aware of them and manage them accordingly. Seemingly unimportant details can affect consumers’ decision to buy or click away.

Takeaway: Cover walking areas in your retail store with soft carpet, but use hard flooring next to products.

7. Social media doesn’t just influence buying decisions—it practically fills the cart.

Social media plays a powerful role in shaping consumer buying decisions, influencing everything from brand awareness to impulse purchases. 

Platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook serve as digital storefronts, with almost 56% of adults making online purchases weekly.

Approximately 81% of consumers report that social media influences them to make spontaneous purchases multiple times a year or more, while 28% indulge in impulse buying at least once a month.

Moreover, we’ve entered the era of virtual word-of-mouth, with 80% of people making purchases based on friends’ social posts.

But social media is shifting from being a passive marketing tool to an active, immersive shopping destination. Brands like Nike are already leaning into augmented reality (AR) try-ons, resulting in a 28% reduction in online returns by 28% and millions of dollars in savings.

Platforms like Flipkart and Brightcove are paving the way for fully immersive “window shopping” experiences with video e-commerce or live shopping. Between January and June 2024, over 75 million users engaged with video content while shopping on Flipkart, collectively spending more than 2 million hours on its video commerce offerings, including Vibes and Liveshop+. 

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Social media engagement has an influence, too

Research suggests that Facebook “Likes” alone do not have a strong direct impact on consumer purchase decisions. 

Studies revealed that while liking a brand on Facebook allows users to follow updates, it does not necessarily indicate a positive attitude toward the brand or influence purchasing behavior, nor does it significantly change consumer attitudes or behaviors. Participants’ attitudes toward brands remained unchanged regardless of whether they liked the brand on Facebook, indicating that pre-existing positive attitudes toward a brand were more influential than the act of liking it. 

However, Facebook “Likes” can have a more meaningful effect when combined with paid advertising. Other studies showed that boosted reach through paid ads led to a notable increase in program participation. Additionally, although social media fandom, including likes and followers, could increase brand awareness and purchase intent, it had a lesser impact on actual financial outcomes. 

These findings suggest that while Facebook likes can help spread awareness, they are not a direct driver of sales or purchase behavior without additional strategies like paid advertising or meaningful consumer engagement.

8. When it comes to buying, we make emotional decisions and rational justifications

Do people make decisions based on emotions or logic? According to Gallup, Emotional factors influence 70% of decisions, while rational factors account for just 30%.

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Several studies support this dual process of decision-making, where emotions play a significant role in initial choices, while rational thought helps justify those choices afterward.

According to Antonio Damasio, known for his work on emotion and decision-making, emotions are crucial in driving decisions. Damasio’s research suggests that emotions can override rational thought during decision-making processes. The study found that consumers who made decisions based on emotional responses were able to rationalize their choices afterward, making emotional decisions seem more justified and acceptable to themselves and others.

Studies in neuromarketing have shown that the brain’s emotional centers are activated during purchase decisions, particularly when consumers are exposed to marketing materials that evoke strong emotional responses (e.g., advertisements with relatable stories or visual appeal). A study by Harvard Business Review concluded that emotional responses to advertisements have a greater influence on consumer behavior than the content of the ad itself. After the emotional reaction, consumers tend to justify their purchase with rational arguments such as the product’s benefits or value.

The dual-process theory suggests that consumer decisions are influenced by two systems: one emotional (System 1) and the other rational (System 2). System 1 makes quick, automatic decisions driven by emotion, while System 2 involves more deliberate, thoughtful reasoning. A study in Psychology & Marketing showed that consumers often make purchase decisions based on System 1 (emotional) responses, such as liking a product because it evokes a feeling of nostalgia or happiness, but justify these decisions through rational explanations afterward, such as the product’s durability or practicality.

What does this mean for marketers?

Personalization and trust-building are key to making consumers feel connected and confident in their purchase. This means crafting campaigns that first engage emotions through storytelling, relatable content, and visual appeal. 

After sparking emotional interest, it’s important to provide logical reasons, such as product benefits, quality, and value, to justify the decision. By combining emotional engagement with rational validation, marketers can increase the likelihood of conversions and customer satisfaction.

9. The subconscious drives purchase decisions

For the last 50 or 60 years, market research, as an industry, has believed that people make decisions based on rational, conscious thought processes. Science tells a different story, one that turns that fundamental belief on its head. Most decision-making happens at the subconscious level.

According to Harvard Professor, Gerald Zaltman, consumers aren’t as perceptive as they often think— 95% of purchase decisions are subconscious.

For instance, although many consumers claim to compare various competing brands and prices before making a purchase, Zaltman’s research shows that this is not actually what happens.

Additionally, by analyzing consumers’ unconscious physical reactions, Zaltman discovered that their true thoughts and feelings frequently differ from what they express.

Although we may focus on facts and numbers, in many cases, it’s the subliminal that makes people decide one way or another, which is often driven by emotion.Additionally, cognitive biases such as the framing effect demonstrate how the presentation of information can shape decision-making. The framing effect occurs when people react differently to information depending on how it’s presented, such as emphasizing potential gains or losses.

“People make most choices… by identifying options as good or bad and then ranking them. This process of editing and evaluating choices means that our perception is biased by the way information is presented. Presenting the same information positively…or negatively…can influence people’s perceptions of those facts and their choices.”

—Dr. Regina Lazarovich, PhD, clinical psychologist and founder of Compass CBT

This bias can significantly impact consumer perceptions and purchasing decisions. Marketers can use the framing effect to influence consumer decisions by presenting information in ways that highlight potential gains or minimize perceived losses. For example, emphasizing the benefits of a product, framing discounts as limited-time offers, or showcasing risk-reducing guarantees can make the product more appealing. By carefully crafting how they present choices, marketers can nudge consumers toward making favorable purchasing decisions.

By designing campaigns that tap into implicit emotions and carefully crafting how information is presented to consumers—emphasizing gains rather than losses or highlighting positive outcomes—brands can drive purchase behavior without consumers being fully aware of the influence.

Conclusion

People are complex. We’re just beginning to scratch the surface of what they really want. Sometimes we make purchasing decisions even when we aren’t paying attention to the products. New questions about human thought processes and decision-making pop up every day.

Neuroscience is still working on the answers, but there are some insights that we can start putting into play now.

To dive deeper into understanding consumer behavior and improving purchase decisions, consider taking CXLS’s Digital Psychology course. This course provides valuable insights into various psychological principles that can be leveraged to influence consumer choices effectively. Enhance your ability to drive conversions by understanding the hidden drivers behind consumer choices.