Theory of Planned Behavior & Purchase Intentions
Attitudes, peers, and perceived behavioral control affect how consumers feel about a specific behavior. As a result, the Theory of planned behavior is essential to marketers when it comes to understanding where specific consumer behaviors are generated. Additionally, this increases marketers’ abilities to predict the behaviors consumers will complete based on these factors. The ability to predict consumers’ behaviors significantly benefits marketers because it provides information on how, when, and where to promote products that specific consumers are interested in. Suppose a marketer understands the attitude a consumer has towards the behavior of making a purchase. In that case, the marketer can implement strategies to increase the consumer’s likelihood of making a purchase.
For example, let’s say Kraft is introducing a Kraft Salad “Frosting” product, which is really Ranch dressing in a frosting tube. This product was created with the intention of assisting parents in convincing their children to eat healthy vegetables. Kraft opts for a social media marketing plan that promotes the idea that parent “up” their lie game to trick their children into eating vegetables because they are healthy. After the product launch, Kraft conducted a study to determine the salient beliefs for mothers’ attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control regarding purchasing Kraft Salad “Frosting” for their kids.
Further, the study results showed that the mothers’ intentions of purchasing the product were most strongly influenced by perceived behavioral control. Because Kraft was able to obtain this information, they can now alter their marketing strategy to increase the healthy mother’s intentions of purchasing the product for their children. Perceived behavioral control plays a crucial role in the Theory of planned behavior and refers to people’s perception of the ease or difficulty of performing the behavior.
So, how will Kraft increase the likelihood of mothers purchasing their product if their most substantial influence is relative to perceived behavioral control?
There are many solutions to increasing sales based on perceived behavioral control, but we will only talk about one for the purposes of the blog. First and foremost, perceived behavioral control is the mother’s perception of the ease or difficulty of purchasing the product. Therefore, it is now up to Kraft to implement strategies to increase the mother’s perception of ease to purchase the product in order to increase their intentions of buying the product.
If I worked for Kraft, I would implement a marketing strategy that promoted the Kraft Salad “Frosting” by positioning the product in the front of all major grocery stores or near the checkout aisle in a special display shelf to increase the mother’s perception of ease of purchasing the product. This is because this tactic will increase the mothers’ perceived behavioral control by making it significantly easier and appealing for them to buy the product because it will not only be available for them to purchase in all major stores, but it will also be easy to locate in the store.
As you can see, the Theory of planned behavior provides marketers with many options to increase sales. When information regarding a consumer or a group of consumers’ behavioral influences is made readily available to marketers, they can optimize and alter marketing strategies to increase consumers’ intentions towards completing a specific behavior or purchasing a particular product.
