Virtual Baby Pandas and Increased Donations?

Welcome back to consumer behavior, everyone! It's weird seeing the last day of the semester creeping up on my calendar, but I'm sure ready for it. This week, we're diving into chapter 11, which focuses on Attitudes of consumers. However, we're focusing more on how to change attitude, specifically one's behavior. 


Everyone has a specific attitude towards different products. One may know that V8 Vegetable Juice as a product that is composed of 100% juice, they may perceive it as a drink for older individuals or gross, and they may not have any intention of purchasing it. In these thoughts, they describe the main three components of attitude. Attitude is constructed of these 3 main components:

1. Cognitive 
2. Affective (emotional)
3. Behavioral

Oftentimes, advertisers and marketers will look for ways to change each of these components in order to change one's attitude of their product, and thus have a consumer be more likely to buy that product. This can be done in a variety of different ways for each component, but we're focusing on how to change the behavioral component, which is usually done in two different ways: Virtual direct experiences and coupons, free samples, price reduction. 

There usually has to be a pretty direct experience for one to change their behavior of the product. Take for example the conventional method: someone has an attitude towards V8 juice that it's gross and tastes horrible. However, they have free samples at the grocery store and they decide to try it. With one taste, they realize it's actually pretty good, so they buy some. This direct experience of tasting the juice changed their behavior and made them buy the juice. But are there more modern methods of applying a behavioral change?

Me during Finals Week

In my Internet Marketing class, I was offered extra credit by participating in my professor's virtual reality study. All I had to do was show up, answer a few questions, and then put a VR headset on my head. The questions entailed getting some information from me about my propensity to donate to endangered animal charities. Other than that, I wasn't really sure of what to expect. Imagine my absolute joy upon realizing that this virtual reality had me standing in the middle of a panda exposure as baby pandas played around me.

My professor explained that she wanted to see if individuals had more inclination to donate to such charities after having such a direct experience with the animals in virtual reality. As she explained the purpose of her study, it had me thinking about consumer behavior. Couldn't something like this be applied to changing behavioral attitudes? Maybe not for product tastings, but what about those marketing experiences? Could virtual reality advertising about vacationing, or different activities have the same affect that my professor proposed? After all, a lot of individuals don't end up going through with such experiences because of apprehension over the value of their purchase. But if we're able to convey that value through direct virtual reality experiences, could that possibly remove that apprehension?

It's an interesting thing to think about. After all, as technology is improving, so should our methods for advertising and marketing to our target market.

What do you think about the subject? Let me know in the comments!

Purchasing Motives: Manifest or Latent?

Welcome to week 9! I hope your spring break was enjoyable and you were able to rest up. This week, we'll be talking about Motivation, Personality, and Emotions, the internal reasons behind why we buy. For this post though, we're focusing on Purchasing Motives and whether or not they're manifest or latent, and what that means. 

Everyone has a motive when they go out and buy something. When you buy a candy bar, your motive is that you're hungry and want something sweet to eat. When you buy a sports hat from your favorite team, you're looking to support them while also hiding your bad hair day.

The point is that we all have motives behind our purchases whether or not we are consciously aware of them. This where the concept of Manifest Vs. Latent motives comes into play. These are two classifications of those motives:

Manifest Motives

• Known and freely admitted motives behind a purchase

Latent Motives

• Unknown or reluctant to admit motives behind a purchase

So let's take another look at that hockey hat again. You buy this hat with several motives in mind. You have a manifest motive in that you will freely admit you purchased this hat to support RIT hockey; you love the team and everything about the games and want to be associated with them. However, you also have a manifest motive in mind. You were at Barnes and Noble when you suddenly spotted an HR rep for a company that you're vying for. You're in jeans, a sweatshirt, and you haven't washed your hair in DAYS. You scramble to purchase the hat and slam in on your head before they spot you. In buying this hat, you had a latent motive in mind. You would never freely admit it, but you also bought this hat because it could somewhat salvage your horrible outfit for the day and save you some face. 

These two classifications for motives can apply to any purchases and can be quite helpful to marketers when determining what kind of advertisements to produce. If you're selling a swimsuit, it wouldn't be very smart to flaunt its great material or value, but the fact that it will make the consumer attractive, a latent motivation that many of us have when purchasing clothes. Appealing to these latent motives can be a gateway into greater ad relevance to your targeted market. 

Cheese!

Spring Breaaaaak! I bet everyone's excited to spend some great time sleeping in as long as possible--at least, I am. But before we can all head home for a week, I've got one more blog post to publish. This week, we're talking all about memories and learning. For this blog, though, we'll be focusing on Episodic memory: Flashbulb Memories. 


In life, there's quite a few different types of memories: Long-term memories, short-term memories, and episodic memories. This week, we're focusing on episodic memories, memories that someone has of a sequence of events in which they participated in.

Photo courtesy of PsycholoGenie

Think of your first and last days of high school, your first day at a new job, and maybe your wedding day. These are memories that we actively participated in, so we usually remember them pretty well. I can definitely think of my last day of high school. We had a carnival where I played kickball for the last time with a bunch of friends. I slid to the base to make it there and skinned up my knee so bad that my forensics teacher had to clean it up for me (Figures that he would be good at cleaning up blood--Thanks Mr. Lilley!). I remember pretty much every detail of this day, as I played a huge part in it, and it played a huge part in my life.

But do you have a memory that is so vivid in your head that you could imagine what that day smelled like, what you could hear in the background, and maybe even what you tasted? Then you have a flashbulb memory. Flashbulb memories are a special kind of episodic memory; they're extremely vivid and pretty much every detail of the memory can be recalled at will. Our book defines them as, "acute, vivid memory for the circumstances surrounding a surprising or novel event." You might hear a lot of people talking about September 11th as an flashbulb memory. Everyone knows exactly where they were or what they were doing when they heard the news of the twin towers.

These moments in our lives shocked us so much that we remember every single thing about the moment in time. Whenever I think about flashbulb memories, I'm always reminded of the time I came home from vacation to find that my 5-year old Yorkie-mix had suffered an untimely accident while we were away. I remember the warm summer air and the feeling of grass on my feet as we buried her. I could hear the faint sounds of kids playing at a park close to my home. I remember the sounds that my dad made as he cried for the first time in front of me. Her passing came as such a shock for us, as she was so young and it happened hours before we got back. No one was expecting it. It's a memory that I'll never forget.

Flashbulb memories, whether they're good or bad, will pretty much always be in the back of your mind. They're hard to forget, as they're so surprising, and every time you remember them, it's like you're back in that time, holding a small body of something you loved more than anything.