Irrational Consumer Behavior - Essay Example

?Irrational Consumer Behavior Fresh, attractive commercial videos, colorful posters, and environmental pressures have a lot of influence on people before they purchase products. Attention grabbing attractive advertisement and peer pressure are factors that influence consumer mind in seeking some brands. Often a big poster of advertisement or television leads people to make some irrational decision in buying products. The role of television advertisement is significant in irrational consumer behavior (Mafe & Blas, 2007). Consumers often buy a low quality product because they were “deceived” by the advertisement. This happens because a majority number of individuals just trust tons of beautiful fonts, and words on the advertisement without making any further research about the products. The importance of the sensory receptors (eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and skin) plus peer pressure play an important role in irrational buying. Thus, the marketers often create great teasers to play with the consumer emotion because they know that the coherent pictures and the dynamic graphic on the commercial video are enormous stimuli for getting the consumer attention. Advertisement makes a lot of people ignore the details that are more important than the words that are written on the advertisement. If individuals do more research before they buy the products, they will make the rational choice. However, only a few people are eager to look up additional information on the internet when they are already falling in love with the advertisement on the Television, and Posters. Furthermore peer pressure is also involved in influencing people’s mind when deciding the products that they want to purchase. All of this influential advertisements, that are created by marketers often lead people in choosing some of the bad choices. The marketer has a great way to advertise their product in society with the right timing, and at the right moment. Therefore, people’s perception of being interested at some commercial often lead many people to forget about the health issue because of their subliminal perception. This forces the consumers to purchase more expensive products of low quality because of advertisement Stimulus of the big brand products, and get a poor service by paying a great amount of money after just looking at the descriptive terms of the advertisement. Health is one of the crucial issues in this world. Individuals need health in order to do their jobs. However, there are a lot of health issues in today’s world. But why people often make an irrational decision by buying these unhealthy products with higher price instead of cheaper healthier foods? It is because people frequently consume unhealthy foods. For example, they are willing to spend $1 more for Soda like Coca Cola, and Sprite. This is because of they are attracted by the beautiful soda commercial. Many of soda firms contract a great marketers in their division to market the products. So today, a lot of Soda Corporations are focused on the subliminal perception of people. “Stimuli that are too weak or to brief to be consciously seen or heard may nevertheless be strong enough” (Schifmann & Kanuk, 2009, Pg. 160). It is about the stimulated awareness of people that responds to the advertisement they have watched. By understanding this fact, the marketers use the subliminal commands like DRINK SPRITE, and filming a commercial that tells the audiences that COKE is the best beverage to relieve the feeling of thirst. These types of advertisement have a high effectiveness in becoming a great attention grabber. A big number of people make an irrational decision by buying these drinks as their daily beverages when they can buy cheaper bottle of water that is healthier. Even though Soda brings many health issues like Diabetes, and Obesity, they don’t care about that because they prefer to satisfy their needs after watching the interesting advertisement. Mostly these ads are aired on television, and television advertisement plays a great role in purchase decisions (Marketing Charts, 2012). An advertisement that affects well at the subliminal level has a major impact on people in purchasing products. I have seen this phenomenon in my life, my uncle frequently drink soda as their daily beverages. He spends $2.00 for 14 oz for each Coca Cola. In total he spends $8.00 per day for his drinks. I am curious about his behavior, and I interviewed him by asking several questions. He says that there are a lot of advertisements on his office that say “Tired of working and stuck in the office then Drink Coke for refreshing your mind”. These words written near the cafeteria at the lobby, so he sees this advertisement every day. Therefore, while he is staying in his office and is bored because of all of his work, he remembers those words. He decides to buy Coke, and this has become his daily needs rather than drinking water. In a month he spends $240 for buying an unhealthy product. This is an expensive amount of price that he has to pay for something that doesn’t deserve that much price. Talking about an expensive amount of price, people also often ignore the quality of the product while they are having a transaction. They don’t consider the high amount of price because the images on the advertisement are attractive to them. However, they are paying too much for a simple product. This is because of the marketers play on the Nature of Stimulus. “Enormous number of variables that affect the consumer’s perception, such as nature of the product, its physical attributes” (Schifmann & Kanuk, 2009, Pg.161). The model, brand name, and package design are parts that the marketers use to attract customers. For example, when we discuss about drinking coffee, the objective of drinking coffee is keeping people awake. Nowadays, most of people tend to buy a cup of Starbucks coffee by paying $4.99 rather than other coffee products. People don’t realize that Starbucks coffee contains a lot of substances like caramel, artificial sugar, and mocha that decrease the caffeine in coffee. If we compare with the traditional black coffee like Gandorema( Chinese black coffee), and Kapal Api (Indonesian Black Coffee), we just have to pay $3.99 for that 100 sachets of traditional coffee powder. The traditional pure black coffee is more effective than Starbucks. But why people ignore this quality, it is because the Starbucks has a great marketing strategy that can put their brand name on interesting package design. This makes people like to buy starbucks rather than traditional coffee. The fact that people often forget to compare the price and the quality of the product is quite true because the same has happened in my life. Last winter, I went to shopping for purchasing boots. While I am walking on the Bethesda row I saw two shoes that I like one is Louis Vuitton boots (sweat material), and Brooks&Brother (leather material). After comparing the price Louis Vuitton boots cost me $900, and I would spend $500 dollar for Brooks&Broother boots. Finally I chose Louis Vuitton shoes because I feel more confident to use it after I saw a cool guy uses this boots on the advertisement in the Louis Vuitton stores and this is called as stereotypes. Also the peer pressure from the society that using Louis Vuitton is cooler rather than Brooks&Brother played a role in the purchase. This is why I decided to buy Louis Vuitton. Nevertheless my decision was wrong, and in a week my Louis Vuitton started to break because the sweat material can’t stand too long on snow. I realized that this was a bad decision, because I could save $400 if I wasn’t attracted by the advertisement. Besides purchasing a product that is too expensive, individuals often spend more money for bad services. The advertisement of services is really effective to lead people paying for their services. At this time many of the services advertisement like Insurance Company, mobile phone plan, cleaning services, rental car, and other hospitality companies frequently use descriptive terms to market their products. The stereotypes are often expressed in verbal messages, and the simple words can somehow trick someone into a “blackhole”. It is because while people sign the contract with some contract can’t cancel it otherwise if they breach a contract they have to pay for some penalties. By looking at this, Descriptive Terms on the commercial, and posters play as an important role for attracting customer “For example, consumers who eat foods with elaborate names such as ““succulent Italian seafood filet” are very likely to rate those foods as more tasty, and appealing”” (Schifmann & Kanuk, 2009, Pg.167). However, these descriptive terms are not always right; people frequently make a lot of irrational behavior by spending more money on low quality services. People who trust the advertisement frequently disappointed after they realize that the services are not as good as the words that the advertisement promises for them. I feel for those people who trap in this situation because I have been through to some of experience like that. I make an irrational decision while I am choosing for my car insurance. Two years ago I was arrived in the USA, and that is the first time I bought a car in this country. As an international student I love discount in every products or services. When I bought my first car in the USA, I saw a big advertisement on the board from Geico that say you will get 50% discount+discount if you are B+ average student. This descriptive terms stick on my head, and whenever I look other insurance company like Progressive they don’t really emphasize that words. I ended up pay $450 per month, and after 3 months I realized that I made a bad decision. After I did some research through internet, Progressive insurance is cheaper, it is only $230 per month and customers get the premium plan. The descriptive term on the Geico’s advertisement somehow “deceive me”. It ends up more expensive even though they already put the discount on the plan. All of marketers have many ways to make the consumers get tricked, and buy their products. They want to receive a lot of profit from the consumers. They have a concept called perceptual mapping that enables marketers to determine how their product or services to appear to consumers in relation to be one of the most competitive brands. This is why people often make some irrational decision by buying the products that they shouldn’t buy. They often play with the subliminal perception of people to grab their attention this is usually for foods product. Even though it is unhealthy they still buy it because the advertisement hypnotizes them to buy the products. Often people also buy a low quality products buy paying more money because marketer can play with the Nature stimulus of people that is related with trend, brand name, peer pressure, and the packaging. Not just on the product, individuals are frequently “deceived” by descriptive terms on the advertisement. Understanding the perceptive of people is one of the most crucial important for marketer because they make people buy for their products. This is why many individuals often make a lot of irrational decision by purchasing low quality products or unsatisfying services by giving a lot of money for it. By reflecting to this issue people should do more research before they are buying products. So they not waste their money for bad products. References Mafe, C, R. & Blas, S, S. (2007).Teleshopping Adoption by Spanish Consumers. Journal of Consumer Marketing, 24 (4), 242–50 Marketing Charts. (2012). Most Online Consumers Say TV Ads Influence Purchase Decisions. Retrieved from http://www.marketingcharts.com/television/most-online-consumers-say-tv-ads-influence-purchase-decisions-21743/ Schifmann, L. & Kanuk, L. (2009). Consumer Behavior 10th Edition. London: Prentice Hall Read More