The Over-Thinkers, The Simple Minded, and The Brainless

Since my last exam blog got such a positive response I decided to post my Exam 2. I was prompted to talk about the level of involvement consumers place on buying a product and how it varies depending on the type of product they buy. Various products have different prices, associations, uses and risks that change the consumer’s attachment to the buying process. With that in mind, I hope you enjoy and hopefully learn something from reading this blog.

“It helps to understand the decisions-making process when we think about the amount of effort that goes into a decision each time we must make it” (Solomon 308). “Habitual decision making choices with little to no conscious effort” (Solomon 309). Buying hair dye is a habitual decision for me. I have a loyalty to a certain brand’s color which I use to re-dye my hair month after month. Therefore, I can brainlessly walk into Wal-Mart go to the grocery section, pick up my chosen shade, and walk out within minutes. “We make these choices without conscious control- researchers call this process automaticity” (Solomon 309).

I orginally looked for this Shaun of the Dead clip because I thought he was brainlessly shopping and thus making a habitual decision. After reading the next paragraph, think back to the video and hopefully you will see (like I did) Shaun isn't as brainless as he looks.

Other decisions are slightly more involved; limited problem solving is used to make such decisions. In limited problem solving “we’re likely to use simple decision rules as we chose among alternatives” (Solomon 309). For me, purchasing gas is a limited problem solving activity. When my gas tank hits “E” I simply look at the gas stations located adjacent to one another and chose the lowest price. It’s a pretty simple thought, but there is still some thought involved.

For the most part I am more of an impulse buyer; therefore, I tend to avoid extended problem solving in my purchases. On the rare occasion that I make major purchases (“and…feel that the outcome may be risky in some way” (Solomon 308)), I “try to collect as much information as possible, both from memory… and…Google” (Solomon 309). When I purchase a plane ticket home, is one of those rare occasions when I use this type of problem solving. First I check multiple websites such as: Cheap O Air, Kayak, Priceline, Expedia, and Travelocity. After I have found the cheapest site, I look at neighboring cities to my departure and destination. The information search alone to go home for the holidays takes many hours.

Brands try to simplify the decision making process by evoking archetypes and making strong connections to consumers’ psyche (Solomon 218). “Today thousands of brands…borrow personality traits of individuals or groups to convey an image they want customers to form with the ” (Solomon 222). Take Apple for example, they have created a strong brand personality. Buying electronics is normally a decision which follows the extended problem solving model i.e. more expensive, higher risk, higher involvement (Solomon 309); however, Apple has created such a strong brand personality, and by extension brand loyalty (Solomon 222), that many hipsters (see discussion in class to understand joke) make these decisions almost haphazardly.

An easier way to attract a strong brand following without zoning your brand into a specific personality is to associate with a lifestyle. “Lifestyle marketing perspective recognizes that people sort themselves into groups on the basis of the things they like to do, how they like to spend their leisure time, and how they choose to spend their disposable income” (Solomon 227). The main idea is the consumer will identify with the product as a group they belong, as opposed to how the product defines who they are as a person (Solomon 228&229). Patagonia is a brand that has been very successful in their use of lifestyle marketing. They connect to a segment who likes to do things outdoors thus creating a community of outdoor enthusiasts.

For some brands however, getting past memories associated with the brand (not due to the brand itself but other circumstances) can prove to be difficult to overcome. “Episodic memories relate to events that are personally relevant. As a result, a person’s motivation to retain these memories will be stronger” (Solomon 106). In Susan Fournier’s article, Consumer’s and Their Brands, we meet Karen a recent divorcee (Fournier 347). Karen associates many brands she used in her marriage as her husband’s brands. Now a single woman, she is looking for a fresh start including a new set of her own brands. Pinesol (a brand Karen attributes to her ex-husband’s memory) will probably never be a brand Karen considers purchasing again, even if they are proven to be the best for the job.

Connections to the human psyche, negative or positive, are proven to be stronger than pricing structure. Marketers must switch tactics and take advantage of the associations they have control over in order to capture a larger portion of the market.