Month: September 2010

Today I was looking through the marketing textbook and catching up on my readings when I read about habitual decision making.  The textbook says habitual decision making requires little conscious effort because consumers have a habit of buying the same products every time without even considering the other choices.  I thought this was really interesting because it is definitely true and when I looked at the pictures, I thought “wow, thats what I buy!”  What I saw was this:

I have Tropicana orange juice in my fridge 24/7 since I was young.  Every time I go the supermarket to buy drinks, I immediately go for the Tropicana orange juice with pulp.  Not only me, but my mom also does the same thing with this drink.  We don’t even think of other drinks because we have habit of just buying Tropicana orange juice.  I guess this is also because of the social influence that affect decision making because my whole family loves orange juice and I’ve been drinking it since I was young.  Also, Tropicana’s orange juice always tastes good so I guess I just never thought of other choices.

Two days ago after class, I walked into the sub to Bernoulli’s Bagels as usual because I was hungry.  While I was standing by the counter waiting for my italian cheese bagel with salmon cream cheese, one of the staff who works at Bernoulli’s Bagels approached me.  He asked me if I always come to buy bagels, which I do, because he recognizes me and so he gave me  Bernoulli’s Bagels Card.  The card was nothing too special, just some letters printed on green paper, but it had a special offer: “Purchase 10 bagels and cream cheese and get your next bagel and cream cheese FREE!”

The card itself wasn’t appealing, but receiving it made me feel special because Bernoulli’s Bagels gets ton of customers each day, but it doesn’t seem like they give out these cards regularily.  It tells me that they do recognize their frequent customers and care for them by giving them these little benefits.  I pretty much save 30 cents per bagel…if I buy 10 bagels that is.  These buy 10 and get 1 free offers always stick in my head because whenever think about what to buy for lunch, most of the time, I will end up going back to the bagel store because I know that eventually, I will get a free bagel…so I might as well just have a bagel for lunch.

In the end, I probably end up going to Bernoulli’s even more than usual because of the buy 10 get 1 free cards.  This made me think of how Bernoulli’s uses such a low cost way to market their product.  All they really need to do is print out a some cards and even though they do give out a free bagel, it is only have someone buys 10 bagels.  It probably increases the amount of times each customer who has a card goes to buy bagels every week.

I guess I know what I will be eating whenever I need a snack or lunch 🙂

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