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.....

Image credit  :  http://glowstik.ca/too_much_advertising.jpg