Consumer behaviour is a very curious subject. All of the concepts and ideas are based around consumer behaviour being rational, meaning the people are well informed and that they make reasonable decisions based on logic. I read a very interesting blog that I found on an external blog website written by Dan Ariely that talks about the irrationalities. I encourage everyone to read his post before reading on…
Dan speaks about four very common irrationalities concerning consumer behaviour and the decisions that consumers make in dynamic consumption situations. I think the first irrationality is hilarious! It’s funny because I know that I have been guilty of this exact behaviour while making purchasing decisions. For some reason, consumers think that discounts are proportional to the price of a good or service, me included. I don’t know why I would change my behaviour when the discount is low on a high ticket item rather than the same discount on a low ticket item, just that I have intuitively considered this rational behaviour.
The third irrationality I again was guilty of. He uses a volunteering example vs. a paid work position. I’ve done volunteering in the past where I’ve actually been offered money for my services but I’ve declined payment because I would rather know that I was volunteering than be paid because at that point I would no longer be volunteering but rather doing paid work. On the flip side, when I do paid work, I expect to receive monetary compensation for my efforts. But it is interesting my irrational behaviour to decline the money option in order to receive the gratification of volunteering.
He goes on to talk about two other familiar behavioural irrationalities, both very common in every day situations. The thing that I found interesting about this blog is that it is easy to relate to the topics at hand. The irrationalities are so common that I found myself guilty of said behaviour without even knowing I was doing anything out of the ordinary or something that was no expected. It just highlights how difficult it is to pinpoint consumer behaviour in the real world because everyone acts differently. Every perceives reality different from the next person and many social factors also influence our decisions so to generalize consumer behaviour is in itself…irrational. Marketers must be very observant and detailed when studying the behaviours of consumers in society as each consumer will be different from the next in some way, shape or form.