By Bryce Hatton

Motivation in the Marketplace

Hey guys today’s blog will be about Motivations of the consumer when purchasing a product and the importance it plays in a businesses product development and marketing. Motivation in the marketplace is driven by two key factors of a consumer they are the reason why the consumer buys your brand and their motive for purchasing your brand. To elaborate on these two points the “why they buy” is focused on the product and the environment that the consumer is in at the time of the purchase meaning that if your product fills the need of the consumer at a particular place and time the consumer will buy the product. Now for the “motive for purchasing” is what the consumer takes into account about your brand and product to make a purchasing decision such as cost, brand loyalty, brand awareness, health rating, packaging etc, and whether these factors align with their needs and psychological sate. Here’s and example of motivation purchasing, a fitness buff consumer wishes to buy a new pair of shoes due to their old pair wearing out and due to their fitness mindset they gravitate towards the Nike brand whose image is that of professional sports showing a successful use of the consumers why and motive being respectively old pair of shoes wearing out and Nike providing a suitable product and a brand image that aligns with the consumers psychological wants.

In regards to how Nintendo utilizes the understanding of consumer purchase motivation is quite simple, being the top provider of family friendly games that are aimed at parents to purchase for their children due to their minimum violence and lovable and recognizable mascot-like characters such as The Super Mario and Wii Sports games. The long successful history that Nintendo has had with these characters has also engraved nostalgia into the consumer base as they are characters that an entire generation has grown up with and loved over the course of their lives which no other entertainment company e.g Xbox and Play-station has capitalized on and it is what Nintendo uses in order to maintain their competitive edge in the current market and needless to say it working. So in summary Nintendo knows that the consumer purchases their product because it satisfies the need for a family friendly electronic game product while backing these products with a history of lovable characters such as Mario, Sonic the hedgehog, Zelda and others that the generation of up coming adults have grown up with, appealing to the psychological disposition of the consumer creating a bond of trust developed through years of involvement with the Nintendo Brand name.

References:

• Solomon, M, Russell-Bennett, R. and Previte, J, 2019, ‘Consumer Behaviour’, Australian Edition, 4th Ed., Pearson
• Tiago Gonçalves 2019,  Nintendo: A Consumer Behaviour Approach, available at: 
  https://www.slideshare.net/TiagoAfonso11/case-studynintendo-aconsumerbehaviourapproach

Consumer Perception

Hello again every one this blog will be about the influence of perception in the market place and how this intricate concept influences consumer behavior. So to get right down to the bones of what perception is, perception by definition is the human response to external environment and how we make sense of all of this information by stringing it into a coherent view of our surrounding even if the stimuli given is a unreliable source perception is generally taken as reality (Solomon, Michael, et al). Now in terms of applying this in a business stetting organisations utilize advertising, packaging, price, among other controlled information to attract a consumers attention and once successful in that uses these stimuli in order to influence consumer perception of their brand to increase sales.

In the case of the organisation Nintendo the organisation has over the years created a stable perception as a family oriented technology brand. this perception is created through their advertising which consistently contains the imagery of families of all ages playing games on their Nintendo consoles (Adam Edwards 2013). This family friendly perception is also backed up through their exclusive games e.g Mario, Wii sports, Zelda and a wide variety of others that have become house hold names since the beginning Mario who has been a staple face of the Nintendo brand and embodies their ideal perception of family friendly gaming with iterations of the famous plumber such as Mario tennis, Mario Party, Mario and sonic at the Olympic games And my personal favorite of them all the classic Mariokart.

Now i’d argue that that it is because of Nintendo’s great effort to carve itself into a family friendly perception within the market that allows it to continue to compete against more popular consoles such as Xbox and PS4 who are more perceived as young adult and violent game titles Such as call of duty or Halo. So in essence by utilizing stimuli for their product such as price, packaging, and imagery in advertisements are used by organisations, like Nintendo in this case utilizing family friendly gaming as imagery prompting parents to purchase their consoles and games over competitors for their children (or at least that’s the reason my house hold has a Wii), so in this modern era of the market were games are getting more sophisticated Nintendo capitalizes on it’s perception to maintain their competitive edge show just how potent perception can be to the survival and success of any organisation. What do you guys think let me know in the comments.

References:

Solomon, Michael, et al. Consumer Behaviour: Buying, Having Being, Pearson Australia, 2018

Aaron Edwards ,How Perception Is Key to Nintendo’s Survival, Nintendo world report, 2013, http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/editorial/35059/how-perception-is-key-to-nintendos-survival