Purchasing Motives: Manifest or Latent?

Welcome to week 9! I hope your spring break was enjoyable and you were able to rest up. This week, we'll be talking about Motivation, Personality, and Emotions, the internal reasons behind why we buy. For this post though, we're focusing on Purchasing Motives and whether or not they're manifest or latent, and what that means. 

Everyone has a motive when they go out and buy something. When you buy a candy bar, your motive is that you're hungry and want something sweet to eat. When you buy a sports hat from your favorite team, you're looking to support them while also hiding your bad hair day.

The point is that we all have motives behind our purchases whether or not we are consciously aware of them. This where the concept of Manifest Vs. Latent motives comes into play. These are two classifications of those motives:

Manifest Motives

• Known and freely admitted motives behind a purchase

Latent Motives

• Unknown or reluctant to admit motives behind a purchase

So let's take another look at that hockey hat again. You buy this hat with several motives in mind. You have a manifest motive in that you will freely admit you purchased this hat to support RIT hockey; you love the team and everything about the games and want to be associated with them. However, you also have a manifest motive in mind. You were at Barnes and Noble when you suddenly spotted an HR rep for a company that you're vying for. You're in jeans, a sweatshirt, and you haven't washed your hair in DAYS. You scramble to purchase the hat and slam in on your head before they spot you. In buying this hat, you had a latent motive in mind. You would never freely admit it, but you also bought this hat because it could somewhat salvage your horrible outfit for the day and save you some face. 

These two classifications for motives can apply to any purchases and can be quite helpful to marketers when determining what kind of advertisements to produce. If you're selling a swimsuit, it wouldn't be very smart to flaunt its great material or value, but the fact that it will make the consumer attractive, a latent motivation that many of us have when purchasing clothes. Appealing to these latent motives can be a gateway into greater ad relevance to your targeted market.