What if you could improve accuracy of your sales forecast? Learn how to determine purchase intent and properly allocate your resources for the next period.
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“We would become excellent planners if we could see into the future. If only we knew exactly who was coming to buy from us and when, we would save so much wasted cost. ”
Exhausted buyers, salespeople and managers
Purchase intention is the probability that a consumer will make a purchase in the following period of time.
The more accurately we can define purchase intent, the more accurately we can allocate all our resources. If we find out what is affecting the purchase intent of consumers in our industry or directly in our niche, we can then start to influence purchase intent positively by ourselves.
So far we have answered this question only in general terms. Let’s go more into detail. There are so many processes in each company that lead to one main goal - to sell the product. Every process is a part of a chain, there is literally no process that would be totally independent of other processes. Because the individual processes interact so much, inconsistencies in one process always carry over to another process.
Purchase intent is closely related to the main goal. Knowing the details about purchase intent will help you optimize almost all key processes and eliminate errors that affect the following processes.
With the help of questionnaires, we try to estimate the purchase intent in order not to waste money, time and human capital unnecessarily.
The more expensive a product is, the less often people will buy it and the longer they will think about who to buy it from and what exact type of product it will be. How often do you buy groceries? Almost every day. You don’t overthink, you just buy what you want to try out. If it doesn’t taste good, you will buy something else next time, no big deal.
Do you think the same way when buying a winter coat? No. You let it go through your head more precisely. You'll be wearing that coat for the next five years, so it needs to be nice, made of good quality material, windproof and waterproof. And the price has to be within your expectations too. And when you buy a new car? It can take up to a year from the first idea to the actual purchase. An ordinary mortal will only make such a purchase twice in a lifetime.
You have probably heard of the four stages of the marketing funnel - Attention, Interest, Desire, Action (AIDA). Especially if the customer journey is long (for example, when buying a car), the purchase intent of each consumer for the next period of time depends on what stage the consumer is currently at. It is essential to map the specific customer journey including crucial touchpoints. If you are aware of how people behave and what type of content and contact with your brand they currently need, you will be able to influence the real purchase intent and perhaps be able to speed up the whole customer journey.
It may be obvious which products are seasonal until you look inside the mind of the consumer. There are people who only wait on the post-seasonal discounts because normally the product would be too expensive. There are people buying bikinis in winter because they are about to spend Christmas in the Caribbean. Get to know your niche and the approach to purchasing products. Then you will be able to keep marketing and seasonality in balance. What if there is a certain group of people who buy your products out of season for a specific purpose? Get to know their characteristics and tailor your marketing communications to them.
For some people, purchase intent is more predictable than for others. Some people buy more impulsively and some more rationally. Some people buy a new coffee machine because their old one broke after seven years. Some people buy the same new machine because they don't like the old one anymore, it takes up too much space and can't make coffee as fast. Your goal is to find out how most of the people who buy from you behave and think. Do you dazzle them with new functionalities and design or do they need to see a famous person next to your product as an ambassador to make a purchase? By getting to know your target audience, you expand your understanding of how to influence their purchase intent.
When we invest in advertising, we do so with the assumption that it will pay us back in the form of increased sales. We have written a special use-case on this topic: How to Create Advertising Effectiveness Survey.
It is crucial to measure purchase intention regularly. You can check the purchase intent only once and keep track of your customers' purchases for the next period. But you'll never get as much out of the data as you can when you compare it over time.
Not only can you compare the outputs of the surveys you conduct to make predictions for the future. You can also compare individual surveys against historical data and see over time whether the prediction has actually been reflected in real data. This way you will be able to estimate purchase intent much more accurately.
First, select a sample of respondents whose characteristics match the target group. Make the selection carefully. If the characteristics of the respondents differ from your target group, you will get biased data and will not be able to use it as a basis for decision-making. To find out more about how to identify the characteristics of your target group, read our use case: How to Create Market Research Survey.
Then conduct the survey itself (send out questionnaires and collect responses). Make sure that all respondents understand that the answers to the product questions refer to a specific time period (for example, the next six months or year).
Finally, predict market sales by converting your research results to the total size of your market.
The main objective is to find out the volume of projected sales for the next period. You can go for it with a Likert scale:
with a question type called multiple choice:
