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One of the reasons why we study marketing is to become a more savvy consumer. I have recently wondered how “smart” I am as a consumer. After reading Chris‘ blog post on himself as a consumer, I have decided to reflect my very own consumer behaviour on my blog.

As with Chris, price definitely affects me the most out of all four Ps when I make purchase decisions for most things I buy. I guess promotion is related to the price if there is any promotion going on. But often times, I see a lot of promotions going on at different retailers, so it does not affect me unless it’s a REALLY great chance to buy “more of less”. The next big thing I care about would be the product itself. I try to gather as much information I can to evaluate various options. It is in fact very tiring and time consuming as there are so many features to consider and it is often difficult to rank them.  I don’t really care about places as long as shipping fees are not too expensive.

I have to say I am not a savvy customer yet as I fall for in-store promotions like “buy one get one free” too easily…and I just do not have the guts to complain for bad qualities when I have a legal right to do so. But learning marketing has taught me about such things. However, as a business student, I am sometimes confused as to on which side I should be standing. On the consumer side? or on the business side?! I guess “it depends” as my statistics professor has taught us to say when you are not sure.

I was going through my classmates’ blogs to write about their posts, and I found Sally’s article about K-Pop marketing. A decade ago when I was in Arizona, NO ONE knew where South Korea was despite the fact that the country held the World Cup that year.

The South Korean economy has grown incredibly and it is now one of the major economic players in the world. People all over the world know K-pop groups and they sing their songs and gather together to dance along the songs and they even protest to launch the K-pop groups’ concerts at their regions. How amazing!

Anyhow, Sally’s article was about how Korean pop groups are starting to diversify to target different markets internationally. More and more entertainment businesses are casting foreign members that are from the countries where they hope to target. This is a huge advantage as the fans abroad will be more familiar with people from their own country and will not feel hostile to foreign groups.

I think Youtube has played a HUGE role in the international success of K-Pop groups. A lot of K-pop groups that have succeeded in other parts of the world say they are surprised to see how many people know of them. They have not really put much effort into promoting themselves. Youtube and other social networking services have done it for them.

I hope the K-pop groups become more prosperous worldwide, but they will have to be cautious about cultural factors as they have a huge influence among younger generations and essentially they are the faces of South Korea.

Here is the link to SM’s offical Youtube channel :https://www.youtube.com/user/SMTOWN?ob=0&feature=results_main

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