Purchase Behavior Data: Best Purchase Behavior Datasets & Databases

What is Purchase Behavior Data?

Marketers believe that the modern-day business environment involves a complex buying process. As such, there is a need to study the decision-making process of modern buyers to understand their behavior. Purchase behavior is an indicator of the factors that influence consumer purchases and helps track down emerging and changing commercial trends. When brands understand consumer purchasing behavior, this information assists them in formulating marketing concepts. These concepts are ideal as far as coming up with robust marketing intelligence that answers the what, where, when and how consumers buy.

How is Purchase Behavior Data collected?

Customer purchase behavior data is captured by companies in three ways: a direct survey by asking customers what works for them, indirect tracking of customer activities through online monitoring and by acquiring information from third-party companies. The most obvious place that brands gather information on consumers is through analysis of purchasing activities on company websites and social media platforms. Additionally, companies also collect consumer purchasing behavior data by inspecting customer service records. Record inspection helps in understanding how consumers have previously interacted with sales and support teams in the past. Direct feedback assists brands to fully comprehend what worked and what didn’t, and what a customer liked and disliked.

What are the typical attributes of Purchase Behavior Data?

The common attributes of customer purchasing behavior data depend on the stages of the buying process that consumers go through before making the final decision to buy a given product. As such, purchase behavior data include attributes about customers’ initial intent - the earliest stage in the buying journey. The second attribute is information about the ‘research# stage of the buyer journey, when consumers brainstorm the possible places to get what they want to buy. The third attribute is information on the evaluation of available alternatives that the customer can buy the product before making the purchase. The fourth and final attribute involves the mechanisms for actual purchase and the post-purchase evaluation that assesses the rate of satisfaction or dissatisfaction from the purchased product and transaction method, if applicable.

What is Purchase Behavior Data used for?

Purchase behavior data helps brands to:
• Improve customer experience - With purchase behavior data, companies can obtain information that assists in understanding their customer base and its pain points and as a result, strive to meet their demands.
• Refine a company’s marketing strategy - Because marketing is becoming more about personalization, understanding consumer purchase behavior helps brands to tailor their marketing strategies towards the overall satisfaction of individual consumer needs and desires.
• Secure more data - Purchasing behavior data enrichment helps brands to further contextualize more data about consumers depending on their line of business.

How can a user assess the quality of Purchase Behavior Data?

As a user, when assessing the quality of purchase behavior data, there are several core factors you ought to keep in mind.
Relevance - Whether it suits your needs in terms of how you intend to use the data.
Timeliness - When was the data collected (is it up to date)?
Accuracy - Is the dataset complete and can it be verified?
Privacy-compliance - To what extent does it uphold the ethical considerations in terms of privacy infringement and PII?