Consumer Behavior is everywhere

After attending my Marketing 343: Consumer Behavior for this past semester, I have come to realize that consumer behavior is everywhere.  Whether Im out deciding what brand of soda to buy or Im doing research on

It all seems to start with some sort of motivation or need when you are consuming any type of product or service.  From there you can look at yourself and your consciousness  of why exactly you make some decisions.  This ended up being a big one for me because I soon realized that I make some purchasing decisions based off of my past experiences while growing up.  And for me once I realized what I am motivated by, I almost challenged myself to try a new brand or switch things up a bit.  This was hard to me and I ended up resorting back to my original consuming pattern (this particular example was me purchasing a laundry detergent that my mother had always used while I was growing up).

I also found the subcultures and group influences very interesting.  These were two other influences that I wasnt necessarily aware of and once I realized I was making certain decisions in order to comply with a certain group or subculture, I attempted to change my ways and "do my own thing". Try to be my own person, but once I realized this is pretty much impossible because almost every decision we make was influenced by someone or something else, I just continued to make decisions based off of my own satisfaction and I quickly learned not to care what others thought.

Image Credit: http://de-motivational-posters.com/images/belonging-is-fitting-in-really-worth-the-trouble.jpg

Product Placement

               

After class on Monday, I really started to think about how much effect product placement actually had on me.  At first I think everyone feels like they are very resistant towards being influenced to chose a certain brand after seeing it in a movie or show.  But the more I think about my own experience and how easily I can relate a brand to a certain movie, it seems more obvious that it does work.

Product placement works in the sense that it gets me thinking about their particular product over the competitors.  It doesn't necessarily make me want to go out and purchase a product right after I see it in the movie or show.

I think it has a lot more to do with your subliminal awareness.  This can have a huge influence on you in the long run because when it comes time to buy a product and when you are choosing which brand to get, that image in the back of your mind reminds you that youve seen it before and for whatever reason it is superior to other brands.


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Myths and Moral guidlines

At first when I tried to think of some "myths" that I heard growing up I couldnt really think of any but now that I think of specific personal things my mom used to tell me rather than general ones that we all might have heard from comic books or children books, there is one that I think I heard more than once.

When my brother and I were young I guess you could say we went through a "phase" of calling for help with something or asking for something then just laughing it off by saying "oh nothing" or "nevermind".

My mom soon became sick of this little game and she told us the myth of "the boy who called wolf". From what I remember this story referred to a little boy who would constantly act like he was being chased by or saw a wolf and would yell out "WOLF!!" and of course anyone in the nearby area would come running to his aide.  Turns out he just liked to play this little joke on people, whether it was for attention or for whatever reason.  

After a few times of this people stopped coming to his "rescue" and the one time when he actually encountered a wolf and needed help nobody came to his aide when he yelled wolf. The boy was seen as a lier and people stopped believing him.

For me this meant to not joke around with serious problems and only ask for some one's help if you actually need it.  So if it was for something that I could easily deal with on my own then I shouldnt ask for someone else's help. And also I didnt want to be seen as liar or else no body would ever believe anything I had to say.

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Acceptance

After listening to the Rights of Passage Wiki today in class, I continued to think about any time in my life where i was tested or required to perform a certain act in order to be "accepted" or just looked at as a different person.

Since I didnt grow up in a religious household, I was never under any pressure to believe in any certain way of living. For example a jewish family celebrates a bar mitsvah for a boy on his fifteenth birthday. This is there way of "entering manhood" and starting to change from a boy to man.

But there is one way that I can think of where I was required to perform a task as a sort of right of passage.  That is back when I used to play team oriented sports.  For example, in order to play on the varsity team, I would be in a stage of liminality because I would have to leave the junior varsity team and try to make the varsity team. During this time I would be be performing certain tasks and tests that demonstrated my skills and showed that I was ready to play at a higher level.

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The differences in growing up

After watching the babies movie in class on wednesday, the one thing that really stood out to me was the amount of freedom the babies in Mongolia and Namibia had compared to the babies from San Francisco and Tokyo.

When I say "freedom" I am specifically looking at how each one of these babies were pretty much on their own as far as entertaining themselves and playing with others.  They could walk (or crawl) as far as they wanted outside and they didnt have special toys that were necessarily bought from a store.  The baby in Mongolia was always crawling around with the farm animals and playing with buckets of water.  And the baby in Namibia was playing with sticks in the dirt and splashing in the puddles and streams.

As for the babies in San Francisco and Tokyo, they were much more pampered and catered to as far as being entertained.  They were given toys to play with, they had books read to them, and their parents even took them to several really weird "mom-sibling" yoga type classes where they would sing and dance together with other mothers and their babies.

These to very different ways of growing up really shocked me.  It seemed to me that the two babies from Mongolia and Namibia were almost always having much more fun and laughing while they were playing. As the babies from San Francisco and Tokyo were always upset about something or bored with the stupid classes they were at (I specifically remember one baby trying to open the door and escape).

To me I would much rather be outside roaming around and playing in the mud and dirt with no worries.

Decision making

After listening to the decision making wikis last week, I have realized what type of decision maker I am when it comes to purchasing products.  I tend to make different decisions based on different products.

For most products that I purchase (the less expensive and not as drastic ones) my problem recognition is usually based off of my actual state being moved down.  I realize I need something when I am running out of it or I realize I dont have any left of a certain product.

My information search for these products is mostly an ongoing search.  I dont need to do research on the best type of peanut butter before I go to buy more.  But on the other hand, a more expensive buy such as a car or a nice pair of skis or even a snowmobile, I tend to do a large amount of prepurchase searching.  I put a lot more time into making sure I know what I want and I am buying the right one for the price.

When I have to decide between alternative brands I tend to go the cheaper route when it comes to small purchases such as food and stuff.  Although there are a few products out there that I am brand loyal to because of what my mom usually bought and I am used to them.  I always buy Tide laundry detergent for example.  Even though there are much cheaper generic brands out there.  As for being biased towards or against certain brands that are more expensive purchases, I have certain brands that I naturally gravitate towards due to past experience and also their good durable image.

conformity and norms

Along with fitting in with certain subcultures, I have found that my behaviors have had to change in order to just hang out with different groups of people.

Sometimes I have caught myself acting differently around certain people attempting to fit in to that particular subculture's "norms".

For me, it could have a lot to do with age cohorts but I have found myself acting differently when I am hanging out with groups of older people.  These older people arent just a few years older, Im talking like around the age of my parents.  I find myself being more mature, a lot quieter, and not as outgoing around this group. But of course this is more common when I first meet them or arent familiar with them.

After I get to know them I tend to warm up towards them and I can act as I normally would around some of my best friends who are closer to the same age as me.

Age

After listening to the wiki about age subcultures and cohorts, I started to think about how things have changed in my life.  I feel like age cohorts used to be a lot stronger when you were young.  This could be because of schooling or it could even have a big part of how your parents controlled who you hung out with growing up.

I feel like a little bit of both could have influenced us hanging out with kids of similar ages, and in turn end up having similar experiences and memories.

When we were young schooling kept us pretty separated into age groups because of the grade we were in but as we got older we started taking classes with younger or older people and started mingling with other age groups much more often.  Also sports could have a big effect on this especially in the high school age when you start playing with everyone within a 4 year age span.

And now that I am in college I find myself getting along and hanging out with kids who are substantially older than me and also kids who are a couple years younger than me.  I suppose all of our interests sort of "peaked" and we can get a long with a larger variety of age groups.

Groups

When it comes to determining what kind of "group" I associate myself with, things start to get a little complicated.  I seem to be someone who can usually get along with and at least accept pretty much anyone.  Some people look at my personality as friendly and fun to hang out with but there are others that think I am too nice and I need to have better judgement or be more "picky" of who I hang out with.

The types of people that I hang out with can fit into almost any category.  Sometimes I am ridiculed by some of my friends for hanging out with others.

This problem most often occurs when I am friends with two people who dont get along together and when I try to hang out with both of them it ends up backfiring on everyone and none of us end up seeing each other.

My friends arent necessarily different because of what they directly consume or purchase but more along the lines of activities that they are interested in which in turn eventually dictates what they may or not consume in the overall picture.

Brand Personality

Until today I never really thought of my products as having their own "personality".  But now that I think about it, there are a lot at attributes that I can see some of my most prized possessions having.

One example of this is giving some of my equipment images of useful reliable friends.  Now that I think about it I consider my skis to be my "companions" out on the mountain. When it is just me and them flying down the hill dodging obstacles and getting me safely to the bottom.  Another one of these is I used to think of my football cleats and pads as "protectors" that would help me stay safe and play well out on the field.

Also now that I sit back and think about giving certain products personalities,  these certain products tend to be some of my most prized possessions and I use them more often then any other products that I own.

Exposure to everything

Now that I look back on being exposed to advertisements, I have realized that everywhere I look there is an advertisement for some type of product or a promotion for a certain company.

I dont realize it right away but the images or sounds stick in my head.  If I see catch a glimpse of an ad one, I wont realize it until I see the product or service that was being advertised again a few days later and I feel like Ive seen it before and it makes me think back to what the advertisement was.

I think this has a huge part to do with subliminal perception.  The stimulus of these particular ads is just below my level of awareness to the point where I dont realize it right away but I still remember it and recognize the company or product at a later time.

This is almost a scary thought of how observant our brains really are.  They must be working overtime to take in all of these advertisements.....

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Sex Role Identities in todays world

After hearing the Wikis about gender-bending products and androgyny, I started to realize that a lot of ads today are more targeted towards people who possess both masculine and feminine traits.  There has been an increasing number of these and I have started to notice more and more men for example wearing tight pants and make-up.

These advertisements must be very convincing or maybe these people are confused on their sex or they might find this style attractive (cause there is no way they think those clothes are comfortable).

I guess Ive never really been into the emo or gothic ways.  I mean Ive never even stepped foot into a hot topic store in my life.

NEEDS

During this past week I have been paying much more attention to what I actually need in my life and what I have due to a want that I had at one point.  I always have thought of myself as a pretty low maintenance person and Im not always out buying new things because they are popular or I like the way it looks.  But the more thinking I did about what is actually needed in order to survive (in todays day), it soon came to my attention that I do in fact have quite a few things that I dont need.  As I acquired all of these objects I came to the conclusion that they must have been something that I wanted at a certain point in time and I no longer use or I dont use it as often anymore.  It was fairly simple for  me to pick out was a "need" and what I wanted at one time.  The things that I "need" are things that I use on an every day basis or at least a few times a week.

After thinking back on the reading in the book I realized that in today day and age we need much more than just food, shelter, and water to "survive".  I say this because yeah sure we could actually survive with these very basic items but I feel like there are a lot of people out there that think they would die if someone took their smartphone away from them.

I think the same goes for other objects like computers, cars(or transportation), and even forms of entertainment like video games and television.  These things are not needs at all, they are wants that we as humans have become very dependent on as technology has advanced within the last decade.

Emotions and Advertisements

After doing the writing assignment in class last week about using emotions as a tool in advertisements, I really started to notice how certain commercial or ads make me feel.  One commercial that really stood out to me as an attempt to use emotions to catch consumer's attention was an ad during the super bowl yesterday.  It was the Coke commercials with the polar bears.  I think this could grab people's emotions because they were going for the "cute and cuddly" image during these ads.

Aside from TV commercials there are some pretty frightening billboards along the sides of the freeways nowadays.  The ads that really hit my emotions and gross me out are the Meth billboards.  They are just all around disturbing and really hit the nail on the head when it comes to scaring someone out of trying Meth or anything like that

Tends and being "Hip"

While watching the X-games over the weekend I noticed some unusual styles that some of the competitors had.  This style didnt have to do with how they performed but more of how they dressed and looked.

There was a substantial array of fashion particularly involving the snowboard athletes.  Their style of clothing has always had the baggy "gangster" image but lately there are a few people out there who are putting off more of an emo/punk rock image.  They have much tighter or snow pants and some are even wearing leather jackets instead of a normal winter coat.

I am very curious to see how the image of snowboarders may change.  Right now the trend is still the baggy pants and oversized jackets but the few that are trying out this new "hip" emo style might be able to some day make it the new trend.  I think if the right people (such as the well-known athletes and the best competitors) take part in this "hip" style then it very well could take over the current trend and become the new norm for snowboarders fashion choices.

Specific Ads

I was in the store the other day and after I checked out I noticed some advertisements on the back of my receipt that seemed very specific or fitting for me and my purchases.  I had just bought some toothpaste and shampoo and on the back of my receipt was advertisements for dental floss and whitening aids for my teeth.  This just seemed very relevant to our conversation in class about how companies target specific ads to people and how they track almost everything that you do, such as what you buy or what you look at on the internet.