Marrying The Subconscious Analysis

How will a consumer decide whether to purchase a good? When a consumer purchases a good, what does this reveal?

The truth is that as consumers we are prone to being taken advantage of and more specifically, ripped off. How this occurs is quite simple. It is the technique of persuasion that forces people to do things, believe things and in this case purchase things that are not necessary. Tactics to persuade people can range from rhetoric devices to the structure of the message itself. Rhetoric devices, such as logos and pathos, and the structure of the message come together to ultimately persuade people to buy into things that they normally wouldn’t buy. Pathos appeals to emotion and logos describes the idea of logical reasoning. Then comes the structure of the message itself which enhances an idea to its full potential. The main purpose of these techniques in literature is to serve as writing strategies to convey an idea in words. Two examples of authors utilizing writing strategies to persuade readers that stores and advertisers manipulate shoppers take place in “The Science of Shopping” by Malcolm Gladwell and “Attention, Shoppers: Store Is Tracking Your Cell” by Clifford and Hardy. The author of “Attention Shoppers” uses the writing strategies of pathos, logos and the structure of the writing better than the author of “The Science of Shopping” to persuade readers that stores and advertisers are manipulating shoppers.

When a consumer walks into a store they know what products they want to buy,

There are many products and services offered to consumers on a daily basis. These are separated into four general categories. However, according to Tanner and Raymond (2012), it is important to note that these categories are not meant to differentiate the characteristic of the product, but more as a category of how a consumer views or purchases them (pg. 117).

The society enforces consumers to unawarely advertise products with the cost of their close ones. Kunzru and Chang wish for people to cease marketing of goods, because they eventually become capable of sacrificing their families and friends for materialistic objects. The authors do not desire their readers to be driven apart from their families and friends due to objects the

Understanding consumer behaviour is essential to succeed in business. As Solomon et al. (2013) stresses, businesses exist to satisfy consumer’s needs. By identifying and understanding the factors that influences their customers, firms have the opportunity to develop a more efficient strategy, marketing message and advertising campaigns that is more in line with the needs and ways of thinking of their target consumers (Perreau, 2015).

As variety and option tend to lead to the peaking of consumer interest since human nature inevitably values choice and the allure of something being new or revolutionary, it is easy to see how interest can be closely linked with consumption. Singer stated that, “In its first 24 hours, the app was downloaded more than one million times” (2015: 1). This points to the universal nature of the product stemming largely from the ease at which the product can be accessed. Also, Boush and Loken pointed out that a sense of familiarity with the product regarding the brand largely contributed to the consumption adding to the fact that the product is already highly convenient to purchase (1991: 16). Boush and Loken stated, “Capitalizing on an established brand name is a growth strategy that seems destined to increase in popularity,” which accentuated the idea that convenience in the use of a product strongly linked with a brand not only involved the product itself yet involved the brand as well (1991: 16). Thus, it is seemingly clarified that convenience in use helped to make products, brands, and trends beyond culture, for the appeal to innate human tendencies in clinging to what is comfortable, known, or familiar is beyond cultural norms. Allison further clarifies that convenience in use is a key component for making a product, brand, or

The normal mind does not focus on the here and now - the time and place that you are! The normal mind's cognitive functions ensure that you pay little or no attention to the here and now - the time and place that you've got to turn up to to get anything worth talking about from your life. The normal mind's capabilities that allow us to repeatedly perform routine functions mindlessly result in us doing pretty much everything mindlessly. And, all the while, the normal subconscious mind is indulging in its obsession with the key events of our formative years - the conditioning that has made us who we think we are. Quite obviously, this way of using your mind simply leads to what de Mello describes as the 'nightmare' than the normal mind sleepwalks through.

Consumers have certain behavioral tendencies when faced in certain situations. In Why We Buy, the author Paco Underhill details certain behavioral characteristics people tend to have in different types of retail stores. Many consumers don’t think about what their actions mean when checking out or buying products. But to Mr. Underhill, the gender of the person, the people they’re with, the amount of times the person touches an object, the amount of time spent on checking a particular product, the time they came in, and the time they leave, all factor into a database to determine different behavioral trend consumers have. It is these trends that they find in order to correct a problem a store or retailer didn’t know they have to increase sales and create a better flow in the store environment.

Marketing is an important tool for retailers as it provides them with a medium through which to communicate with customers (Boone, 2007). It is vital for producers to use the right marketing strategy as it has a direct impact on the sales of their products. Consumers are not the same and can be divided into different categories depending on their age, preferences, and financial status. The main advantage of categorizing consumers is that retailers can use different marketing strategies to target them in different categories to maximize sales. Retailers face competition from other retailers. For this reason, producers must take into consideration consumer behavior when marketing their products. Analysis of consumer

Throughout history, intuition has been regarded with scientific speculation, or as a sort of sixth-sense,

Value is also perceived differently between customers, and is relative to the value customers perceive is available from market alternatives (Smith & Colgate, 1988). Customers may choose to shop at Smiggle over alternatives such as Kiki K because they may perceive Smiggle to have similar quality products at a lower monetary cost. Conversely, other customers may not place a high importance on colour and aesthetical appearance when shopping for a pen, and consequently may take their money to somewhere with more standard office pens, such as a newsagent. When assessing value, customers only factor in features of a product which they deem are important (Kotler et., al). Compelling value propositions must be created in order to entice customers and meet their specific demands (Smith & Colgate, 1988). Smiggle offers products that are functional, affordable and are creatively and colourfully designed to inspire fun in school and work tasks. Customers match their expectations to Smiggle’s value proposition, and if a customer believes the product does not hold the benefits it is supposed hold, the customer will be dissatisfied (Kotler et., el). Therefore, Smiggle must either meet or exceed customers’ expectations in order to satisfy them. This process is integral to the ‘mutual exchange’ characteristic of marketing, because companies must gauge demand and then deliver value in

Everyday, every minute, and every second consumers are making decisions on whether or not they should purchase a given product. The product could be as small as a candy bar to as big as a car. The processes that flow inside the mind of a consumer when making a decision is both psychologically and economically based. So, understanding the process is central to making rationally based decisions. However, this decision is not only important to the consumer purchasing the product, it’s also of important significance to the marketers and policy makers. Reasons why making decisions can be so difficult is that the consumer is dealt with many alternatives, and with the rapid pace in technology this is making it more difficult.

Consumerism is a description of society’s lifestyle in which many people embrace to achieve their goals by acquiring goods that they clearly do not need (Stearns, 7). The idea that the market is shaped by the choice of the consumers’ needs and wants can be defined as a consumer sovereignty (Goodwin, Nelson, Ackerman, Weisskopf, 2). This belief is based on the assumption that the consumer knows what it wants. Contrary to this logic, marketers convince us that the consumer does not know what they want. The consumer has to be told what they want or be persuaded by advertising items in a matter that demonstrates the reason a product makes their life easier or will improve their life instantly. As one of the most successful entrepreneurs,

Marketing of income-sensitive goods has to take into consideration the shifts in personal income and savings habits.