How To Use Surveys To Determine Why Buyers Buy

Understanding why your customers buy is the key to your businesses growth and success.  Buy understanding this, you can market these as your strengths.

By doing some research with your customers, you can determine why they buy from you and not your customers.  You can also determine any number of key items that are important to your business like the frequency of their purchases, level of satisfaction, chances of referral, and, maybe most importantly, likelihood to be a repeat customer.

To do this, develop a survey with your key points. 

Tip #1: Do not make the survey to long!  Length is determined by the type of business you are in.   The desire for keeping the K.I.S.S. principle (Keep It Simple Stupid) in tact is easily overtaken by the desire to gain insight.  Make the survey with just the basic questions on a scale system.  I recommend a 1 to 5 scale as it fits easily and customers can make quick assessments. 

Tip #2: Make the survey anonymous with the option to get customers to fill out name & contact info at the bottom.  Use this to develop your customer database for more in-depth surveys and as a marketing tool.  (See this blog post to see ways you can to do this.) 

Tip #3: USE THE DATA!  I cannot count the number of times I have heard of companies, large and small, that collect information, then do not do anything with it.  Develop a database to enter in the information.  From there you can use the charts and graphs to visually see the information.  You do not need to go out and but a high-end database program like SAS or SPSS.  Use what you know like Excel, Access, etc.  If you don’t know, get someone to do it for you. 

Once you do all this, you can determine the key reasons why customers shop you and not your competition.  Once this is figured out, market these strengths as competitive advantages.

What ways have you used to figure out why your customers buy from you?

–J. Nolfo helps companies understand their customers though a variety of market research strategies.  He has over ten years of experience of market research for strategic planning purposes.  He is the Director of Research at Rhino Market Research.  He shares his thoughts about market research and business concepts with his blog “Pensare…Understanding Market Research in Business“.  If you would like to discuss this blog or how J. can help you understand your customers, email him at jnolfo@rhinomarketresearch.com.