Pro Choice (From a Marketing Perspective)

Everyone who has ever heard me talk about my blog knows I pride myself on writing "stimulating" blog entries meaning they aren't about my personal life. For the first time in my blogging career, I am entering the unknown, my personal life.

A little over a year ago a made the decision to live with my (at the time) best friend. While I had heard the saying "good roommates can become good friends, but good friends cannot become roommates" I never thought this could happen to Gabi and me. We had after all traveled the country and outside the country together on multiple occasions (and sometimes she went purely to watch me play Magic: The Gathering!).

After knowing all that, there is no way living together could ruin our friendship right? Within two months of her moving in we never talked and within about three months she had moved out. How could something and someone I loved so much turn into hate so quickly? The answer- lack of choices

I think at the start of this blog I was a little misleading. I am still going to talk about consumer behavior, but I did give you an anecdote about my life ;). People like being able to decide what they can do, what they can buy, and who they can hang out with. It is the basic concept of too much of a good thing.

Anyone who has ever been to a bar with me knows I love cucumber vodka. It is pretty much my go to drink and I drink it almost exclusively, but there are times when I change it up. The same concept can be applied to Gabi; We were best friends, and when given the option I would almost exclusively choose to hang out with her, but sometimes I would choose a night in or time with a friend I hadn't seen in awhile. This being said, if the bartender were to tell me I can only drink cucumber vodka for as long as I drank I would slowly begin to hate the drink I had once loved. Similarly, when I was no longer given the choice to or not to hang out with Gabi, we started to despise each other.

I know you're sitting here reading this going " duh Mary this is all obvious", but I assure you companies make this simple mistake time and time again. Once upon a time in the greatest decade called the 80's Pepsi was making a small dent in the Coca Cola empire. I say small dent because Coke was still the market leader, but was losing taste tests 52/48. Coke could not fathom anyone liking Pepsi more than Coke and immediately took a hasty and reactive approach to the market: New Coke.

Not only does this advertisement tell you you will drink New Coke and you will like it, but it forces people into falling in love with something new. New Coke wasn't the problem; Coca Cola stopped selling Original Coke. They took away the choice of Original Coke, and left consumers to either switch or be left unsatisfied. Unsatisfied it was. That year, Coke saw the biggest plunge in market share to date. It took one mistake to lose market share and many years to gain it back.

Am I saying Gabi and I will never be friends again, I would never drink cucumber vodka, or Coke can't gain back their customer base? No, we may, I would, and they have. All I'm saying is people like choices and a lack of choice can change people's preferences. In closing, thank you to all my friends for never living with me and preserving our friendships :)