I decided to get a new perspective on key topics surrounding Gift-Giving. Check out my interview below!
Tuesday, 29 December 2015
Interview: Gift Giving
Interviewing people outside of the class with no knowledge of what consumer behaviour is about and the topics that surround it can be eye opening. Many of these individuals don't think about it too much and its exciting to see their reaction when you present them with theories and explanations behind certain behaviours.
Tuesday, 15 December 2015
My Own Opinion: Christmas & Consumption
Hello and welcome to my blog once more! Thanks for sticking around and reading my posts, I hope you enjoy all of my little rants.
I though I would keep things exciting and post another video post, but this time staring the one and only ME! 'Tis the season for christmas shopping and boxing day sales and holiday madness! I have started my shopping and I thought I would film my opinions about gifting and what holiday gift giving is all about.
Check it out!
I though I would keep things exciting and post another video post, but this time staring the one and only ME! 'Tis the season for christmas shopping and boxing day sales and holiday madness! I have started my shopping and I thought I would film my opinions about gifting and what holiday gift giving is all about.
Check it out!
Friday, 27 November 2015
Black Friday Madness
Another boxing day come and gone. I couldn't help but be shocked by the news coverage today about the events that took place yesterday throughout stores all over North America during this day. As we learn about the patterns of consumption and buying, consuming, and the motives for consuming goods we should also keep in mind the dark side of consumption. Humans are greedy and selfish people by nature, we are taught at a young age by our parents, culture and societal norms to share and be kind. However when an opportunity presents itself to let that selfish nature out we always give in. Black Friday is a prime example.
Originating in the 1980s, Black Friday refers to the end of profit loss (market by red ink) and the beginning of positive sale profits (marked by black ink) due to the start of the holiday season (Ro, Here's why we call it 'Black Friday'. Black Friday has integrated itself into our culture, marking it one of the most important days of the year for consumers. However due to the large amount of sales at tremendous discounted prices happening only once a year, the dark side of consumer behaviour presents itself.
One of the most notorious example of the effects of Black Friday is the death of a seasonal worker at a Walmart in Valley Stream NY. At the first hour of dawn more than 2000 anxious shoppers waiting for the opening of the Walmart were getting restless, violent and impatient to be the first to take as many discounted items as possible. Due to the intensity of shoppers and lack of proper security, a worker was trampled on by thousands of shoppers resulting in death and injuries for other shoppers and Walmart employees (McFadden & Macropoulos, Wal-Mart Employee Trampled to Death).
Other examples of the greed of shoppers can be seen in the video below:
We have become a materialistic society with a an addition and dependency of tangible things we can buy at a store. In the textbook, Consumer Behaviour - Buying, Having, Being we discuss the term consumer addiction, this refers to "a psychological or physiological dependency on products or services" (Solomon, Consumer Behaviour: Buying, Having, and Being). Addiction doesn't just refer to a dependency to drugs or alcohol, at some point shopping and consuming can have the effect of a high, satisfying at a new level that can become extreme.
On the other hand many shoppers are fantasized by the idea of Black Friday as being the one and only day where its totally OK to spend $500 in just one day. Due to the nature of the day they no longer shop for functionality or leisure, rather they practice compulsive behaviour. These shoppers are compelled to shop because they have to and for all the wrong reasons. We buy and buy and buy and spend the money we don't have only just to take advantage of the highly discounted items. Shoppers are no longer thinking if its financially feasible to buy a TV, all they can think about is the big 50% OFF sign stamped all over the TV box.
We need to be aware of our mistakes and take care of the craze Black Friday brings upon our society. We need to be aware of the negativity of consumer behaviour and realize the damage it can do to us.
Originating in the 1980s, Black Friday refers to the end of profit loss (market by red ink) and the beginning of positive sale profits (marked by black ink) due to the start of the holiday season (Ro, Here's why we call it 'Black Friday'. Black Friday has integrated itself into our culture, marking it one of the most important days of the year for consumers. However due to the large amount of sales at tremendous discounted prices happening only once a year, the dark side of consumer behaviour presents itself.
One of the most notorious example of the effects of Black Friday is the death of a seasonal worker at a Walmart in Valley Stream NY. At the first hour of dawn more than 2000 anxious shoppers waiting for the opening of the Walmart were getting restless, violent and impatient to be the first to take as many discounted items as possible. Due to the intensity of shoppers and lack of proper security, a worker was trampled on by thousands of shoppers resulting in death and injuries for other shoppers and Walmart employees (McFadden & Macropoulos, Wal-Mart Employee Trampled to Death).
Other examples of the greed of shoppers can be seen in the video below:
We have become a materialistic society with a an addition and dependency of tangible things we can buy at a store. In the textbook, Consumer Behaviour - Buying, Having, Being we discuss the term consumer addiction, this refers to "a psychological or physiological dependency on products or services" (Solomon, Consumer Behaviour: Buying, Having, and Being). Addiction doesn't just refer to a dependency to drugs or alcohol, at some point shopping and consuming can have the effect of a high, satisfying at a new level that can become extreme.
On the other hand many shoppers are fantasized by the idea of Black Friday as being the one and only day where its totally OK to spend $500 in just one day. Due to the nature of the day they no longer shop for functionality or leisure, rather they practice compulsive behaviour. These shoppers are compelled to shop because they have to and for all the wrong reasons. We buy and buy and buy and spend the money we don't have only just to take advantage of the highly discounted items. Shoppers are no longer thinking if its financially feasible to buy a TV, all they can think about is the big 50% OFF sign stamped all over the TV box.
We need to be aware of our mistakes and take care of the craze Black Friday brings upon our society. We need to be aware of the negativity of consumer behaviour and realize the damage it can do to us.
Thursday, 15 October 2015
Why I Shop the Way I Do
I like to think my shopping patterns are smart. I break the cycle of the usual buyer, I don't particularly start my browsing from the left, I make a beeline to the back of the store where the sale and clearance items are. I always look there first. Although not perfected, I overcome the temptation of full priced items at the front of the stores. I like to prioritize outlet stores first before heading to bayshore and paying full price for an item. I like to think my greatest accomplishment was buying a leather Fossil wallet for less than $25!!! I like to wait for season wide sales rather than shop during regular seasons a well as look online to find better prices before entering a store.
According to the textbook Consumer Behaviour by Solomon, White and Dahl there are 4 types of needs that motivate and trigger the consumer behaviour. Based on my current shopping patters I would say the need that best resembles me is the Utilitarian need.
Practical and useful are the 2 main words used to describe utilitarian shopping values. In essence the"Utilitarian buying motives include convenience-seeking, variety seeking, searching for quality of merchandise, and reasonable price rate." (Sarkar, Impact of Utilitarian and Hedonic Shopping Values on Individual’sPerceived Benefits and Risks in Online Shopping) Based on this definition I can conclude that I am a consumer that values convenience, variety, and reasonable prices for any product I purchase. The intensity of emotional need to shop within the utilitarian value depends on the ability to invest spending emotional resources. With my drive to get the best deal possible at the best price with the best quality motivates me to spend a lot of my resources into any purchasing decision.
But this wasn't always the case!
For most of my pre-teen, early teen years I was one of those young high school girls that only shopped brand names. Remember back in the day when all the kids wore t-shirts with HOLLISTER and ABERCROMBIE were written in obnoxiously large and sowed in letters? Yep, I lived for those shirts. I would purposely make my parents go to Syracuse, NY to be able to buy the authentic shirt. No matter the price, I would splurge and buy too many shirts just so I didn't have to wear the same one and have others know I only had 1 or 2. I was so desperate to portray the fashion fad and align my clothing tastes to everyone else that I shaggily bought the fake knockoffs at GT Boutique! Needless to say I was nothing like my utilitarian buying motive, I was a true consumer with a high psychogenic need. I had a large need for popularity, status, and affiliation with all the cool, well-off kids. With the insecurities of a young kid my need for affiliation drove me to practice unrealistic purchasing behaviour just to be able to have that relevant object to feel cool and accepted.
I heavily practiced compulsive buying behaviour. I would buy and buy and buy. I would refuse to buy anything that was not brand name, no matter how pretty and reasonably priced it was, if it wasn't brand name then it wasn't for me. I was a true consumer, I didn't buy shoes, and clothes, and makeup for what they did but rather what they meant. This of course meant wealthiness, uniqueness, and popularity.
It is important as shoppers to understand differenced between the needs and motives that drive how we spend. We need to make sure that we are SMART shoppers and not compulsive buyers who set standards such as affiliation and luxury items as the sole criteria for their shopping patterns.
According to the textbook Consumer Behaviour by Solomon, White and Dahl there are 4 types of needs that motivate and trigger the consumer behaviour. Based on my current shopping patters I would say the need that best resembles me is the Utilitarian need.
Practical and useful are the 2 main words used to describe utilitarian shopping values. In essence the"Utilitarian buying motives include convenience-seeking, variety seeking, searching for quality of merchandise, and reasonable price rate." (Sarkar, Impact of Utilitarian and Hedonic Shopping Values on Individual’sPerceived Benefits and Risks in Online Shopping) Based on this definition I can conclude that I am a consumer that values convenience, variety, and reasonable prices for any product I purchase. The intensity of emotional need to shop within the utilitarian value depends on the ability to invest spending emotional resources. With my drive to get the best deal possible at the best price with the best quality motivates me to spend a lot of my resources into any purchasing decision.
But this wasn't always the case!
For most of my pre-teen, early teen years I was one of those young high school girls that only shopped brand names. Remember back in the day when all the kids wore t-shirts with HOLLISTER and ABERCROMBIE were written in obnoxiously large and sowed in letters? Yep, I lived for those shirts. I would purposely make my parents go to Syracuse, NY to be able to buy the authentic shirt. No matter the price, I would splurge and buy too many shirts just so I didn't have to wear the same one and have others know I only had 1 or 2. I was so desperate to portray the fashion fad and align my clothing tastes to everyone else that I shaggily bought the fake knockoffs at GT Boutique! Needless to say I was nothing like my utilitarian buying motive, I was a true consumer with a high psychogenic need. I had a large need for popularity, status, and affiliation with all the cool, well-off kids. With the insecurities of a young kid my need for affiliation drove me to practice unrealistic purchasing behaviour just to be able to have that relevant object to feel cool and accepted.
 |
| YES THIS IS ME WITH MY ABERCROMBIE SHIRT |
It is important as shoppers to understand differenced between the needs and motives that drive how we spend. We need to make sure that we are SMART shoppers and not compulsive buyers who set standards such as affiliation and luxury items as the sole criteria for their shopping patterns.
Wednesday, 14 October 2015
The Marketing Magic
Remember these? Can you imagine this was all the craze at one point in time?
Its hard to think people were forking out money to buy these clunky shoes. How did we arrive at a point where we were willing to spend ay amount of money just to be able to afford these shoes? One word. Through advertising. Through this mean used by marketers we subconsciously believed these shoes were the only pair of shoes worth buying. We saw them everywhere! On magazines, on models, in pictures, on TV, in movies, on store posters etc... All strategically placed by marketers. However marketers weren't trying to create artificial needs, they were creating a demand for something we thought we needed and they provided the answer for that need!
In the textbook Consumer Behaviour: Buying, Having, and Being we learn that, "Marketers simply recommend ways
to satisfy a biological need. A basic objective of advertising is to create awareness that these needs exist, rather
than to create
the needs." All products, from platform shoes to kleenex, are created to satisfy needs, what advertising does is communicate and create awareness that these needs exist and portray the product that will best satisfy this need.
For many years there has been criticism about the influence of marketing in the consumption of goods, often deemed as evil doers and manipulators. Making us belief that if we don't have this product then we will not be happy enough or popular enough. It is important to understand the true effect marketing has. For many years fads and trends come and go but we can always rely on marketers revealing to us a new need we never thought we had and conveniently enough offering us the answer to this new found need.
Wednesday, 30 September 2015
Interview: Is Sensory Marketing a Thing?
Hello and welcome back to my blog!
I thought it would be cool to try something new so I decided to create mini-interview blogs with my friends and I discussing consumer trends and topics.
Today's blog covers sensory inputs such as our 5 senses (taste, touch, sound, smell, sight) and how they affect the shopping experience within a store. We also discussed characteristics of these sensory inputs that actually help us as consumer have a better buying experience.
Without further ado, here is my interview vlog!
I thought it would be cool to try something new so I decided to create mini-interview blogs with my friends and I discussing consumer trends and topics.
Today's blog covers sensory inputs such as our 5 senses (taste, touch, sound, smell, sight) and how they affect the shopping experience within a store. We also discussed characteristics of these sensory inputs that actually help us as consumer have a better buying experience.
Without further ado, here is my interview vlog!
Tuesday, 15 September 2015
Introduction to the Notion of Consumer Behaviour
Hello and welcome to my blog!
I'd like to thank you for coming by and checking out my posts! Before we dive in, I'd like to set the stage for the next few posts. The purpose of this blog is to explore the area of consumer behaviour, learn about what drives our purchasing behaviour, how products have an impact on us as an individual and the process we all go through before we make a purchase.
To being... what is consumer behaviour anyway?
Consumer Behaviour: In essence, consumer behaviour is a long process that begins when a there is a desired need and ends with the post-purchase face after we have identified the need we ask ourselves if the precast really satisfied the need or not.
Consumer Behaviour is the study of how people make decisions about what the buy, want, need and behave in regards to a good, service, or organization.
Let's look at it this way, when you've been busy running around all day and get thirsty you automatically have a need that needs to be met. This is where consumer behaviour comes in, do you choose water or coke? Do you buy a $2.00 bottle of water of SmartWater at Starbucks or a generic $.25 Kirkland bottle of water at Costco? Do you keep the bottle for future refills or simply get rid of the bottle once you've consumed it?
The concept of consumer psychology is often times ignored, individuals, including myself, can't answer why they want the things they want. There are many subconscious driver that motivate consumers' decision making. It is important for consumers to start thinking about why they purchase the goods they do and what the reasoning is behind purchases.
When speaking about consumer psychology marketers have a huge impact in understanding and trying to cater towards this phenomenon. The end goal of marketers is to store a chord in the identification of need in the consumer behaviour process. A successful marketer will reveal this need to the consumer they otherwise would have never discovered for themselves. Once marketers are able to reveal this needs subconsciously to consumers the next step is to push their product as top of mind choice to consumers to fulfill this need.
Throughout history many products have replaced our definition of a product. Take tissue paper for example, when you search for tissue paper, most people call it Kleenex. The product has become so ingrained in our language that a company can lose its exclusive rights to it.
Facebook
Google
To being... what is consumer behaviour anyway?
Consumer Behaviour: In essence, consumer behaviour is a long process that begins when a there is a desired need and ends with the post-purchase face after we have identified the need we ask ourselves if the precast really satisfied the need or not.
Consumer Behaviour is the study of how people make decisions about what the buy, want, need and behave in regards to a good, service, or organization.
Let's look at it this way, when you've been busy running around all day and get thirsty you automatically have a need that needs to be met. This is where consumer behaviour comes in, do you choose water or coke? Do you buy a $2.00 bottle of water of SmartWater at Starbucks or a generic $.25 Kirkland bottle of water at Costco? Do you keep the bottle for future refills or simply get rid of the bottle once you've consumed it?
The concept of consumer psychology is often times ignored, individuals, including myself, can't answer why they want the things they want. There are many subconscious driver that motivate consumers' decision making. It is important for consumers to start thinking about why they purchase the goods they do and what the reasoning is behind purchases.
When speaking about consumer psychology marketers have a huge impact in understanding and trying to cater towards this phenomenon. The end goal of marketers is to store a chord in the identification of need in the consumer behaviour process. A successful marketer will reveal this need to the consumer they otherwise would have never discovered for themselves. Once marketers are able to reveal this needs subconsciously to consumers the next step is to push their product as top of mind choice to consumers to fulfill this need.
Throughout history many products have replaced our definition of a product. Take tissue paper for example, when you search for tissue paper, most people call it Kleenex. The product has become so ingrained in our language that a company can lose its exclusive rights to it.
After realizing these components in consumer behaviour I stared to think about the products I use everyday that have become the definition of a product.
Ever catch yourself saying, "I'll Facebook you?" I personally have, I find myself ditching the phrase "I'll call you" or "I'll text you" anymore. Facebook is enormous to say the least. With more than 1.5 billion people using the social network at least every month, if it were a country it would be one of the biggest next to China and India. Facebook is huge and has become a must use commodity in our day to be able to share with out friends and family every aspect of our lives. It has been engrained so much so that it's hard to think of a time when Facebook didn't exist!
Another catch phrase in every day vocabulary. Don't know the answer to a question or the meaning of a word? "I'm going to Google that." With technology and convenience at our fingertips we have the luxury of easily finding answers to issues and questions. We google rather than research and read, Google has incorporated itself into every day life, making it almost impossible to live in society without the internet, much less search engines such as Google. Stats show that over 100 billion searchers are made on Google on a monthly basis world wide with a 65.2% share of web search volume. This is another example of a product marketed in such a way that is has become a part of consumer's day to day usage.
Just based off these examples its clear to see the effect and impact brands have on our dy to day life and how easy it can be for them to partake in our vocabulary.
Sources:
http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/by-the-numbers-a-gigantic-list-of-google-stats-and-facts/4/
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