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. 

YES THIS IS ME WITH MY ABERCROMBIE SHIRT

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. 

The Marketing Magic

Hello and welcome back to my blog! Today I wanted to discuss the magic of marketers and the wonders advertising can have on why and if we buy a product.

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.