Consumers: What Kind Am I?

Hannah Braun

What type of consumer are you?

There are two types of consumers- individual and organizational. Individual consumers purchase to satisfy personal needs while organizational consumers purchase to manufacture other goods, resell materials, or act on an organization’s behalf. I am an individual consumer most days as I just purchase for myself or I’ll go get groceries for my husband and myself. As marketing director/ administrative assistant at my job however I do act as an organizational consumer quite often. Purchasing company equipment, restocking office supplies, and purchasing clothing at a discount to be sold at a higher profit margin are some examples of me being an organization consumer (Kardes, 2020).

What influences your buying decisions and how?

Consumers are affected emotionally, mentally, and behaviorally when making a purchase decision. Emotional responses play heavily on a customer’s mood at a particular state of time. For example, think of the animal shelter commercials that show you the sickest dogs on earth with the kindest-faced celebrity endorsing the charity to the saddest soundtrack you’ve ever heard. These marketing tactics play to your emotions to sell products/ subscriptions. Mental responses relate to a customer’s opinions, beliefs, attitude, and intentions about a product. A great example of this is buying a cordless vacuum. It’s an investment and kind of a big deal, and someone like myself might make a list of pros and cons for each brand that interests them. We use these responses to assign value to objects, and sometimes these can be based off unintentional biases. Like perhaps if you grew up in a household with a Dyson vacuum, you might be more likely to search for or lean towards the cordless Dyson when doing your research. Behavioral responses relate to a customer’s decisions and actions during the ownership of a product, such as paying attention to any recalls released by Dyson, read reviews on their website, discuss the purchase with a partner or a friend, maintain the vacuum by regularly taking it apart to be cleaned, etc. (Kardes, 2020).

Which stage actually leads to your purchasing decisions?

The cognitive stage is what really solidifies the decision whether or not to purchase a product. This stage is all about thinking of the potential effects and outcomes owning this product would provide for you. Is it worth it? Do I really need it? Can I justify this purchase? This stage is where you answer all these questions and come to a purchasing decision (Kardes, 2020).

When making a buying decision, how are you influenced by marketing research and marketing design?

Basic and applied research are used on consumers to look for general and specific relationships between variables. For example, if the dance and fitness studio I work at decided to advertise an event, the marketing team would use basic and applied research to determine their target audience and which social media platform to best reach them by advertising. Our most popular classes are pole-dancing classes, and I can tell you from experience that our main demographic spends the most time social media-wise on Instagram. If we were to advertise on X, formerly known as Twitter, to a demographic of mostly older, white men, our events would either have a terrible turnout with no attendance or a pretty uncomfortable turnout with people that were not there for the right reasons lol. The design is just as important because marketers have to know how to attract the right audience with the right visual appeal. I’m in a Facebook group for middle-aged people (only because my mom sends me so many memes from there and they’re a private page- curiosity got the best of me) and they do not respond to visual advertisements the way that my generation does. Many things that I think are perfectly fine and empowering disgust and appall them, so without the proper research, you could drive away a potentially untapped market (Kardes, 2020).

Do you experience any post-purchase behavior?

We all experience post-purchase behavior! The best example to me is a car; Let’s assume someone spends every last dollar they own on a used car with a full tank of gas. They drive to apply for a job, sleep in their car, and work until they finally get their first paycheck. With that first paycheck, they now have to pay for another tank of gas and an oil change. Not to mention, they spent every cent on this car, so now some money is going towards a gym membership so they have a place to shower, some is being used for food, some is used to buy a blanket to keep over the windows of the car when they sleep at night, etc. The point is, there will almost always be post-purchase behavior- the point of buying things is to use them! You buy a ring, you wear the ring. You buy a pole-dancing class? You go to that class. Post-purchase behavior is simply using/ maintaining the product or service purchased.

All information was gathered from Frank Kardes’ Consumer Behavior, 2nd Edition

Kardes, F. R., Cline, T. W., & Cronley, M. L. (2020).

Consumer behavior

. Mason: South-Western.