Consuming across cultures

Consumer's mind is a field in which any good marketer would like to get in.

Human behaviour is amazing in the way that is generally unpredictable and unexpected. However, sociologyst, phsycologist, anthropologyst and now more than ever marketers spend their life making exhausted researchs so as to understand human's being.

And as a part of human behaviour consumer behaviour is one of the amaziest fields to get in.
How do people behave when shopping? How do people get the products that are sold? Why do they decide going to a place and not in another?

Eventhogh human being is difficult to predict, our environment in which we live everyday make us behave in a generally way that make us consum and buy in a way that don't differ pretty much from others in the same place. At this point, we get at the issue of my next paper.

What are the differences that we can percieve in consumption across countries? How different cultures and values can affect consumer behaviour? What make us behave so different from other countries and so equal from people from the same country when buying and consuming goods? Have you ever wonder why some business success in some countries and fail in others?

Having a look at the States and trying to comparing this lifestyle with the european one, I realise that culture, values, geography, politics and all the environment that envolve us during buying moment affects to our behave. For example, european countries are small and cities are really crowded in such a small space. At a result of that, cars in those cities tend to be smaller than in the states, 'cause people tend to look for practical and easy to park cars rather than big and comfortable ones. Does it mean that people have different needs or the same need has to be satisfyed in a different way?

Those and many other issues will be threated in my paper, as a way to understand different cultures and how it affects the way the consumer behave and how companies can go throw that issue so as to take advantage instead of fail.


One related articles: Convergence and divergence in consumer behaviour. Marieke De Mooij

How does Store merchandising can influence on our shopping decisions?

If you are a smart shopper, it is not that easy to persuade you to actually buy something. There is the science behind how the products are organized, labels are written and sections are ordered to guide you through to making a purchase. That’s a wealth of tricks based on psychological theories and practices that in the end convert you from a regular visitor into the buyer. All these tricks are usually called merchandising techniques and could be classified in the following ones:

· Environmental: Color, Music, scents, lights,

· Design: layout, distribution, product presentation

· People: staff, customers, density

If focusing our attention in just the environmental ones, it is possible to discover some powerful tools that will enhance our customers buying one or another thing.

For example, one powerful method to appeal to a potential buyer is applying color theory to commerce. Has it ever occurred to you why you feel safer in one store and more energetic in another one? Have you ever noticed that landing on some web page you feel like clicking some button and keep browsing the site? Color is believed to be one of the most powerful elements of design for web sites, direct mail, ads, and other marketing materials. While calid colors generate a high impact in impulsive or non-planified purchases, cold and neutral colors are more useful in purchases that need a larger decision process.

Another method that produces distortions among customers is music. Have you ever perceived that in Christmas or sales period music rhythm is usually faster than in other occasions? This is because music rhythm, type and volume affects the way the consumer shops so the stores try to adapt those behaviors depending on their interests. While “slow tempo” music permits a slow purchasing rhythm, “fast tempo” music produces the opposite effect. Also, music type affects our perception in the way that traditional or known music make the customer loose perception of time while the opposite occurs when talking about not-familiar music.

As the same as music and colors, scents also affects at our senses and feelings making the customer more or less willing to any potential purchase. Did you know that in Las Vegas some particular scents are used so as to increase people’s optimism? Actually, well-combined scents can relax or even stimulate the customers as desired. Moreover, some aromas can make us evoke some feelings or perceptions like just baked bread in bakeries, coconut scent in travel agencies or leather scent in new cars. All these scents produce a distortion in our perceptions which make us feel higher quality in the case of the car or remember something special in the case of travel agency.

At the end, you might wonder if what you’ve just bought is what you really wanted or what it was really wanted you to shop. Actually, it will probably be both, ‘cause even if when you entered wanted such a detailed purchase, there’s too much unconscious tricks on the store that influence you and may change your mind.

Overwhelmed by freedom

Choices, choices, and more choices. That's a current day for a current person in any part of the world. Since we wake up until we come back to bed, thousands of choices are flooding us obligating us to decide whether to take one option or another. As a result of that, paradoxially, people usually experiment paralysis, insatisfaction and self-blame.

Does it really make sense? How can be freedom and choices the reason of such negative effects in our lives?

Thinking it over, what I feel is that the power of freedom consist on deciding wether we want to decide between many different options or just not. When applying this knowledge in marketing, there's lots of examples that make us understand my words.

For example, in Spain, the current most succesful supermarket Chain has dealt with a product range strategy that differenciate from others and seems to be paradoxal at the same time: its strategy consist on having the least brands as possible of every kind of product, what normaly means just having its own brand (white label) and the most succesful brand of each product. Actually, getting there means having less product brands than in others supermarkets, but for those who decide going there, it's supposed that they've already decided not to have so much options in exchange for other advantages. In fact, these supermarket chain is deciding for the consumer the supposed best range of products that are in the market. Then, the customer's confidence play a substantial role when deciding wheter to go to an hipermarket and decide between thousands of options or just going to this supermarket and deciding between some options already chosen for us in advance. What are they really doing? They're deciding for us, and we love that when we have de freedom to chose whether if we want some decisions done or not.

Obviusly, choices have to be in the world as freedom is a part of our lives, but people also will want to chose having less options, while also means chosing. The work of marketers, then, is to find out what should be the options and the number of options that make us feel we are deciding at a time that make us easier the chore of deciding.

What's your last name? So I can find you on facebook...

Increasingly, youth from every part of the world are using social networks as virtual community centers, stay and sit for hours and share pictures, experiences and emotions with friends from all over the world. Generation Y is socializing online as off. Actually, It's innate in this generation that people belong to facebook or some kind of electronic networking.

But...What's exactly going on with us? As a member of this generation, I assume that there are lots of significant points that are shared by most of the teens currently belonging to this "group"and need to be considered in order to be profitable for new marketers generation.
First of all, I consider we are re-born global society. Most of them bornt before internet expansion, have grown up with the development of internet and have taken advantage of that. Our generation have become global at a time the world becomes globalized. Our knowledge about the world increase exponentially at a time that any information needed is available by just a click. And, more important than that, is that we know he own this tool and we know how to use it more than our parents, a fact that gives us a competitive advantage and differenciate us from previous generation.

Moreover, external factors make us much more different that what internet itself has done with us. All bornt in a peaceful and protective environment, most have raised in dual-income and single-parent families, which have been given considerable financial responsibility and, at a consequence of this situation, have felt powerful and narcisist. Parents have tried to give us as much as they have been able in terms of education, love, and "stuff". As a result of this combination (knowledge power, high education, spoiled) most feel that can literaly "eat" the world, as the ambitions in this generation are quite higher that the ones from our parents. Actually, it does exist the need of going further and make "dreams" come true.

Another fact that affects this generation and partly comes thanks or due to internet phenomenon, is the worry about the image. Our image is so exposed to so much people around the world throw facebook or other network that there's an insight need of being perfect, beautiful and wonderful all time. I'm talking about these new trends of boob's implants for 18th birthday or a rhynoplasty at 21, for example.

Even though each member of this generation is different from another, those aspects are shared by most of them and should be considered by any companies that want to appeal to this segment. Internet is our communication tool par excellence, so marketing actions should be done throw this channel. At the same time, our generation acts as internet do: "what I need, here and right now"; which means that actions taken out of time, that require time or not available at a time, will probably fail.

So, companies, this is what I call "facebook generation," networking 12* hours a day , 7 days a week.


(*Rest 12 for sleeping and eating)