8 Common Buyer Motives to Consider for Your Business in 2025

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However, customers’ decisions to purchase are driven by a wide range of emotions and practical considerations. So, how do you know your customer’s buying motives?

Read on to find out. In this article, we’ll explain what buyer motives are, define different categories of buying motives, and list eight standard buyer motives to consider when developing your sales and marketing strategy.

Here’s a rundown of what we’ll cover:

What are buyer motives?
3 primary buying motive categories
8 common buyer motives to consider for your business
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What are buyer motives?
Buyer motives are the emotional and intellectual factors influencing a consumer’s decision to buy a product or service. These factors include cost, accessibility, emotional value, societal pressure, and quality.

3 primary buying motive categories
An individual’s decision to purchase an offering is based on their rationalizations, emotions, and gut reactions. The following are the three most common buyer motivation categories:

Conscious vs. Dormant Buying Motives
Rational vs. Emotional Buying Motives
Product vs. Patronage Buying Motives
Conscious vs. dormant buying motives
Conscious buying motives are the buyer’s apparent motivations for making a purchase. For example, a buyer may have conscious motives, such as wanting to save money or needing a particular product for an upcoming event. They know what’s driving them to purchase a product or service.

On the other hand, dormant buying motives only influence the buyer’s purchasing decision once your sales and marketing representatives actively persuade them to take action. Dormant purchasing reasons appeal to a desire in the buyer that they didn’t know they had before.

Rational vs. emotional buying motives
Emotional buyer motives drive consumers to make purchases based on their desire for sensations of safety and well-being, status, fascination, respect, adoration, and so on. It’s also driven by their desire to be admired, loved, and regarded as beautiful.