A Very Cliche Blog

As the semester comes to an end, I decided to write a blog about the top ten things I've learned about consumers and their behavior through my Senior year at MSU, or at the the top ten ideas that stimulated my interest the most.

10. Controlling the Market

There is always been a debate does the market drive the consumer or does the consumer drive the market. The majority of the time, I feel consumers drive the market; people buy things that they need. In class today we were talking about whether minimalist running is a fad or here to stay. While we all agree barefoot running is a fad, minimalist running is here to stay. Big name brands like Nike started designing minimalist shoes following consumer wants.

9. Beguiling the Consumer

To contradict my first point, consumers who drive the market can be easily tricked. Consumers are extremely simple minded when it comes to persuasion of purchase decisions pushing favor at times into the markets hands. When the bread machine was first introduced by Williams-Sonoma people did not buy it, but when a different "higher end" model of the bread machine was introduced the original and lower price bread machine flew off the shelves. The idea running through people's minds is well if I were to buy a bread machine I would like the cheaper and smaller version. This tricks the consumer into thinking they need a product because there are two options to chose from. This is called the decoy effect for anyone interested in learning marketing terms (Ariely 14-16).

8. Confronting Choice more of this blog to come.....still more than most of my class writes for one blog....

Exam 3: Rituals

Consumers engage in dramatizing activities that make an event to be something much greater than it actual is by giving these events meaning. This process is referred to as sacralization: “ordinary objects, events and even people tak[ing] on sacred meaning”. “Sacred consumption occurs when we ‘set apart’ objects and events from normal activities and treat them with respect or awe” (Solomon 541). Places, people and events all share a special spot in making something ordinary sacred.

While places people think of as being traditional sacred are attributed to religion such as shrines, temples and synagogues, in the event of sacred consumption the places which become sacred are more often an emotionally sacred place (Solomon 542). Thanksgiving is a very common day for sacred consumption. In the event of this day, it is often a specific family member whose house becomes the sacred place (Solomon 543). As we saw in Pieces of April, the family was appalled to be going somewhere other than their house for Thanksgiving. Yes, there was the long drive and their dislike of April, but there was also the feeling that if we have Thanksgiving anywhere else it will not be Thanksgiving. Similar to April’s family, my extended family always met at our house for Thanksgiving. After we moved to Cincinnati and away from my family, everyone stopped celebrating Thanksgiving as an extended family get together and started celebrating it at their own households even though everyone else still lives close together; the only thing that changed was that we moved (We Gather Together 29). Without the existence of your sacred place, events that were once habitual seem to fizzle out.

Similarly to the creation of a sacred place, sacred people often become symbolic of the sacred consumption. Going back to Thanksgiving, the year after we moved to Cincinnati is the same year my grandpa died. He was always the head of each Thanksgiving dinner, praying for the meal and cutting the turkey. It’s not that someone else could not have done the same tasks he did or we felt he had superhuman powers, but he was idolized and sacred to the event (Solomon 543). Without him there to do his part of the ritual, it seemed odd to celebrate. This could be another reason our Thanksgiving fizzled.

I think it’s the events which transpire at every individual Thanksgiving that separate say my Thanksgiving from yours. Experiences become sacred as events occur more and more and become part of the sacred consumption (Solomon 544). Every Thanksgiving my family spent together we would gather round the table, and before we ate would sing Doxology; it was not until writing this paper that I knew the name of the hymn (I Googled it), but I could tell you all the words. While I have never attempted to eat without performing this task, I believe if I did something would seem missing. The events which happen before you eat and as you gather around the table are also key parts to any family’s sacralization (We Gather Together 16).

While I talked more about feelings and emotions for many people getting the right brand at Thanksgiving is part of their ritual (We Gather Together 27-28). A Thanksgiving with any turkey other than a Butterball turkey is not a Thanksgiving anymore. These brands or objects become part of one’s extended self, if not just for the day. If the brand connects to one’s sacred consumption in such a way the day would not be whole without its existence; it has successfully become part of the extended self and invaluable to the consumer (Solomon 176). Many brands try to prey on the emotional connections people make around holidays in order to boast sales.

Many different life events can become sacred to a consumer: opening day, family vacations and holidays are just some examples of an ordinary event becoming dramatized because of the meaning it brings to the consumer.

That Inevitable Evil

I don't usually blog about TV shows. I watch so many that I could have written all twelve of my blog posts about the shows I watch. From product placement to sponsorship, you can't just watch TV shows like you used to; everywhere you look a well place advertisement is sneaking it's way into your vision.

While I was thinking about how Project Runway is brought you by HP and Intel and Top Chef is brought to you by GE Monogram Appliances I began to wonder what happened to reality TV. I remember growing up and watching the Real World black out every brand that came across the screen. What caused the shift in TV shows avoiding brand names and displaying them everywhere?

In 1989 the first film crossed the line by integrating a product into the plot line. I am of course talking about E.T's use of Reese's Pieces (Walton 71). After film came Sit-Coms, most famously, Seinfeld.

From Sit-Coms to sponsorship to product placement the evolution of where we see our "commercials" has certainly changed with the times. This is largely due in part to the decline of people sitting in front of a television and watching the full hour slot of a show. Programming used to get most of it's profits from selling commercial spots, but now brands will pump money out to been seen within the show. Whether a viewer is watching on Hulu, Demand, or Netflix the only way to fast forward through the new type of advertising is not to watch a show at all.

One more blog to go :D

Awkward on Both Sides of the Wrapping Paper

We all remember our first time. You're sitting there, the anticipation killing you, expecting something special, when suddenly you look down and are unimpressed. Sadly, this happens way to often, when someone close to you spends a lot of time picking out what they think is the perfect gift for you, but the gift was as far from perfect as they could have gotten.

This didn't really start happening to me until I was a teenager, maybe because as a kid every new toy you got was cool.

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.