When it comes to consumerism, I am an individual consumer. This means that I consume products to satisfy my own person needs or desires. This differs from organizational consumption, which has the goal of reselling or using purchases to create new goods or products.
My buying decisions are mainly influenced by price, as well as convenience. If an item is well priced, I am more likely to buy it. However if an item, or good can make my life easier, or more convenient I am also likely to purchase. One main example of this would be the food delivery services UberEats or DoorDash. While they charge a premium to deliver food, as opposed to me going to a restaurant to pick up my food, the convenience of having items delivered is worth the value to me. When I can save time and energy to get other tasks accomplished, I am willing to spend more money.
The stage the actually leads to my purchasing decisions would be information search or research on the items and competition. For instance if I am searching for an item on Amazon, I will look at other alternatives, and scour the site for reviews/testimonials before making a decision. Reading reviews is a huge part of my decision making as a consumer as well when it comes to dining out. I like to read Google and Yelp reviews before deciding where I would like to eat. When I am spending my money dining out, I want to make sure I will enjoy the meal and atmosphere of the restaurant. Therefore I believe the information and research is the most important stage of the purchasing decision for me.
I love graphic design, so the design choices for marketing are really interesting to me as a consumer. I enjoy seeing that stock photos a company might choose for an ad campaign. As a consumer, I am more impacted by realistic ads. For example, the clothing brand Aerie has done a phenomenal job in their marketing by using women who are not the traditional model body type. They use women with realistic bodies, and they do not airbrush their advertisements. I believe that this influences me to want to purchase their clothing, because they are not trying to paint an unrealistic ideal and are appealing to women of all sizes, while feeling inclusive and welcoming.
As I feel that I am very thorough in my research when I want to purchase items, I rarely have post purchase regret. As I mentioned earlier, when shopping online especially I will usually only purchase items that have many excellent reviews. This leads me to rarely need to return or exchange items because I focus on research so much. However another behavior that I am now aware of that I have now after reading Chapter One of our textbook, is that I tend to only shop at places that have amazing return/exchange policies. I believe that I want to feel secure in knowing that if I spend my money on an item and I am not happy, I am able to get a refund easily with no hassle. For instance, I buy all of my beauty and cosmetics from Ulta Beauty, because they will accept an item even after it has been opened with no questions asked. I will then spend a large amount of money there because I know if I try out an item and it does not make me happy, I can return it with ease.
Thank you so much for reading my post!
-Christianne Dreyer
christiannedreyersinfo.data.blog 