50 Consumer Behavior Survey Questions to Uncover Behavioral Insights

Whether you’re starting a business, launching a new product/service line, or trying to gauge your success — everything begins with understanding the customers. 

Who are you targeting?

What are their preferences?

What kind of environment do they live in?

What factors influence their decision-making?

These are just a few examples of what you need to uncover to get a glimpse of your audience and how to target them successfully.

One way to explore your audience is through consumer behavior surveys and asking the right questions. 

So, let’s see what survey questions on consumer behavior you can ask at each customer journey stage to get a clear picture of your customers and their behavioral traits.

What Is a Customer Behavior Survey?

Understanding your customers’ behavior, needs, and preferences is a powerful tool for becoming an industry leader and trendsetter. 

And consumer behavior surveys are an excellent choice to gather significant customer insights that clue you in on your customers’ buying patterns and preferences. Think of these surveys as a marketing tool that you can use for market research and UX research.

Also read: 100+ Market Research Questions to Ask Your Customers

Best Consumer Behavior Survey Questions for Customer Journey Stages

It’s time to move on to the highlight of our discussion – what consumer behavior questions can you use to gauge customer behavior?

Since collecting feedback is an ongoing process that isn’t limited to one stage, we’ve divided survey questions on consumer behavior into stages. Let’s begin.

Consumer Behavior Questions at Discovery Stage

At the awareness stage, your potential customers are unaware of your offering or even that they require it. Sometimes, the audience isn’t even aware of their pain points and how they can remove them.

So, asking these questions will help you understand what they require and the strategies you can use to convert them:

1. What are your current challenges without a product like [Product Name]?

2. When you think of [Product], what is the first company that comes to mind?
3. Have you ever heard of [Product Name] before?
4. What are the issues you continuously face in your day-to-day operations?
5. What are your biggest challenges?
6. When was the first time you heard about [product Name]?
7. How familiar are you with [Product Name] and what it does?
8. When was the last time you used the [Product Name]?
9. Have you ever tried [Product Name] from other brands before?
10. Are you the decision-maker for this product/product category type?
11. How do you search for products like [Product Name]?
12. How does [Product Name] make you feel?

Consumer Behavior Questions for Consideration Stage

At this stage, your prospects are aware of your product. They understand its features and the fundamental ways it can help their business to an extent. 

So, besides pushing your case studies to deepen their understanding of your offerings, you can ask these consumer behavior questions to ensure they convert.

1. What is stopping you from purchasing with us today?

💁‍♀️Pro Tip:

You can use this question as a pop-up exit-intent survey to collect insights from the customers who are about to leave your website/app to avoid cart abandonment.

1. What do you think of our brand as a solution?
2. What would motivate you to consider buying from us?
3. Do you plan or decide in real-time to purchase a product like [Product Name]?

4. Have you ever purchased with us before? If yes, follow up with – Would you consider buying again?
5. Can you walk us through your process when buying for the first time?
6. What would you choose as an alternative if [Product Name] is no longer available?
7. Please select the options that are crucial to you when purchasing [Product Name].

Consumer Behavior Questions After Purchase

Once customers make up their minds about your offerings, they’re likely to purchase. At this stage, you can ask about their motivators, reasons for buying, and more to understand their needs and buying patterns. 

Here are some examples of consumer behavior survey questions you can consider:

8. What motivated you to purchase today?

9. Once you solve your problem with [Product Name], what’s next?
10. What persuades you to buy a product online?

11. Does the product/service justify the pricing?
12. What demotivates you from purchasing a product online?
13. What are you planning to do with [Product Name]?
14. Which pain points do you plan to resolve with [Product Name]?

💁‍♀️Pro Tip:

You can use screening questions before the actual questionnaire on consumer behavior to weed out undesired candidates and only collect responses from the required demographics. 

For example, you may not want to collect insights from the prospects but only from customers who have made the purchase. 

In that case, a simple screening question, “Have you purchased anything from us before?” can help you eliminate unsuitable respondents.

Consumer Behavior Questions at Onboarding Stage

Collecting customer feedback goes beyond the purchase stage. Some rich insights await you at the onboarding stage to help you improve your customer experience. 

And to tap into these rich customer insights, you can prepare a questionnaire on consumer buying behavior based on these questions for the onboarding stage.

15. What do you think of our onboarding process?

16. Was the onboarding process necessary to help you use the product?
17. On a scale of 0-10, how likely are you to recommend [ProductName] to your friends and family?

18. Was there anything critical to your success that we should have covered during the onboarding process?
19. How easy or difficult was it for you to use our [Product/Service] the first time?

1. Please tell us how we can improve our onboarding process.

Also read: 14 Customer Success Strategies You Can’t Ignore to Craft an Unforgettable CX

Consumer Behavior Questions for Usage Analysis

Now that your customers know your product/service and how to leverage it, you can understand how they interact with it and put it to use. 

You can use these questions in your consumer buying behavior questionnaire to understand experience on the usability front.

2. How often do you use [Product Name]?
3. How satisfied are you with the performance of the [Product Name]?

4. What do you use [Product Name] for?
5. How many people use this product/service?

6. Do you prefer to use [Product/Service Name] on desktop or mobile?
7. Is this your first time using [Product Name]? If no, follow up with “How often do you use it now compared to last time?”

8. How easy or difficult is it to use this product?
9. Do you wish [Product Name] was on sale?

General Consumer Behavior Questions

Here are some more questions to add to your customer behavior surveys depending on the kind of customer data you require:

1. What was the primary reason you started using our product?
2. How do you typically find information about this type of product?
3. Which portals do you use to discover new products?
4. How would you rate your experience with us?
5. How would you rate [Product Name] overall?

6. What do you look for when researching a product before the purchase?
7. What type of product do you research the most before purchase?
8. Which product/service are you likely to buy with [Product Name]?
9. What factors determine your budget for a product like ours?

Mind you, making mistakes while creating surveys is more common than you’d think. But it’s easy to avoid them if you know what they are. You can go through this article on types of survey errors and steer clear of those survey blunders.

Note*

Simply collecting customer data won’t get you the results you need. Analyzing the data is what will turn the raw data into actionable insights. You can use multiple customer feedback analysis methods and reliable tools like Qualaroo to derive insights.

Customer Behavior Survey Templates

You have two ways to create customer behavior surveys. The first involves starting from the ground up, using the questions provided. Alternatively, you can use a more efficient and effective approach by leveraging Qualaroo’s ready-made consumer survey templates.

It’s easy to tailor these consumer survey templates and align them perfectly with your brand, choosing fonts, colors, and the questions you wish to include or exclude. 

You can also integrate additional customer behavior questions from the list above to these templates. What’s more, these survey templates empower you to employ conditional logic so you can create personalized survey flows based on the responses.

Check Out This Consumer Survey Template

Why Do You Need to Track Customer Behavior?

As a business, if you know how your customers behave online, what influences their buying behavior, what they prefer, and where they come from, you’re already on the path to success. 

How? You ask.

Here are some ways understanding user behavior and asking the right consumer behavior questions helps your business.

Customer-Centric Business

A survey of 6000 customers by Salesforce found that 66% expect brands to understand their expectations and needs.

If you want to shorten the empathy gap, leverage survey questions for consumer behavior to your advantage and discover what you think you deliver, what customers think they get, and how you can meet their expectations.

Consumer behavior survey questionnaires can help you deep-dive into your customers’ minds and align your business strategies and goals accordingly.

Create a Viable Pricing Strategy

Having detailed buyer personas allows you to design business strategies that will work, such as pricing and revenue. If you don’t know your target audiences’ buying preferences and habits, your pricing strategy might not work on them.

For example, you can create various pricing plans based on the audience from different income groups and how frequently they purchase. You can create loyalty programs for regular customers to offer them benefits.

Also read: Customer Engagement: A Complete Guide

On-Point Marketing Campaigns

Want to grab customers’ attention? You need to show them what they want to see and what they are attracted to. 

That’s where understanding your customers through consumer behavior surveys can help you identify the right way to convey your brand messaging and create marketing campaigns that resonate with them.

Bonus read: Brand Experience For Your Business: What Is It & Why You Should Care

Ask the Right Consumer Behavior Questions for Reliable Insights

If you ask the right consumer behavior questions at the right time, there’s no limit to the useful insights you’ll get. Survey questions for consumer behavior are a great data source, but only if you create surveys that customers won’t mind taking.

So, while designing your consumer behavior questionnaire, a few points to consider are:

• Keep the surveys short. If you’re launching pop-up surveys, keep the questions between 2 to 5. 
• Create surveys with the target audience in mind. You can create different surveys depending on customer segments and demographics.
• Find the gaps in your data using tools like BIGContacts CRM to create surveys that collect the missing information.
• Use simple and everyday language while avoiding jargon.
• Avoid making survey errors such as framing leading and biased questions.
• Try to add different question types to keep the survey engaging, such as the Likert scale, rating, dichotomous, open and closed-ended, etc.

Once you practice these tips and create consumer behavior surveys with the given questions and templates, you’ll see a high response rate that’ll allow you to gather actionable insights and improve your business strategies.