We define consumer behavior as those actions directly involved in obtaining, consuming and disposing of products and services, including the decision processes that precede and follow these actions (Engel, 1990). These methods are the focus of businesses, governments and consumer organizations (Arnould et al, 2002) The purpose of this project is to investigate what self images we have and what brands we use to express and attain those self images.
Our project objective was to carry out a qualitative research project comparing consumer behaviour theory to actual consumer behaviour in real life. Our interviewee was a twenty year old male from Skibbereen.

Methodology

A significant section of our project was the interviewing process where we carried out two phenomenological interviews. A phenomenological interview involves an informal, interactive process and utilizes open ended comments and questions (Moustakas, 1994). All questions flow from the dialogue as it unfolds rather than having been determined in advance (Pollio et al 1997).Put more simply, the focus of phenomenological interviews is to explore the lived experiences of an individual. Therefore, when executing the interview, our objective was to get a first person description of a particular experience.
For this project, we followed McCracken’s long interview technique. The McCracken long interview technique consists of the following stages:

Above: McCracken’s Long Interview Technique (McCracken 1988)

We used a semi-structured interview approach i.e. we had our broad questions and the terrain that we wanted to cover in mind but we were still flexible in that if something interesting came up, we asked follow-up questions. For instance, our first question to interviewee 2 was: “So tell me a bit about yourself?” and thus, this lead to follow up questions from this answer. The main concern of our interview was to produce a conversation, rather than just ask a series of questions.
The aim of the interview process was to allow us to identify patterns in self concept and decision making processes which could explain patterns in their consumption. We banned the use of the word “why” so that the respondent didn’t feel threatened and start to evaluate their own behaviour. We tried not to ask leading questions, but this did occur once in the interview: “Did you find when you crashed your car your independence was affected?”
After we carried out the actual interview which was recorded using a digital camera we transcribed the interviews. The next task was to examine as a group, our perception of our first interviewee. We looked for consistent patterns to back our impressions and described the patterns in detail before moving to a more abstract level and making connections between our data and consumer behaviour theory.
Self-Concepts

According to Rosenberg (1979) self-concept refers to all of the subjective thoughts and feelings that a person has about him or herself as an object.
Mr. Slave to Brands
According to Holt (1997), the current postmodern consumer culture is premised upon the pursuit of personal sovereignty through brands. John showed how he is in pursuit of brand sovereignty through his reluctance to tell of his brand driven consumption. When asked about the top he was wearing and if he would buy clothes from brands like Abercrombie and American Eagle. John replied:
“I got that when I was America, it was there on the shelf and it fit well so I bought it. I didn’t know much about Hollister at the time. I would buy Abercrombie, its nice stuff, a small bit different. I would be kind of brand driven, I wouldn’t like to admit it but I am, most people are but they wouldn’t admit it.”

John tries to normalize his brand consumption by reassuring himself that most people are brand driven. Despite John’s reluctance to admit his brand driven consumption there is compelling evidence throughout the interview to suggest that John is a slave to brands.
John is happy to be associated with brands such as “Abercrombie” and “Hollister”, but has no time for own brand clothes like Penney’s. When asked if he finds more expensive clothes to be of better quality, John said:
“Ya you would like the Abercrombie gear would be very good quality and last long longer than clothes from Penneys like a hoodie, it would probably fall apart and wouldn’t fit as well.”
John’s obsession with brands is also evident when he tells us how he would buy any designer clothes that were cheap; this was in relation to his trip to Boston. “Oh yea well obviously like if you saw something that was €80 or €90 here on sale for a tenner over you’d just buy it for the sake of it. Its way cheaper there.”
John is not only a slave to branded clothes, but also IT products. He said he would by a Mac computer despite the fact that he has issues with its interface and is aware of potential problems with it.
“Ah, to be honest I’d probably get a Mac actually because the interface and all that is different, but there’s meant to be kind of issues with opening software and things like that, but ya I’d probably buy a Mac.”

Independent Guy
John sees himself as being an independent person, not having to rely on anyone. He is proud that he pays most of his rent this year and pays for all of his groceries.
“My mom and dad would have paid the majority of my rent and I would have bought my own groceries. This year now I pay three quarters of my own rent and pay for all my own groceries.”
He is willing to work long hours at the weekend to keep this independence.
“I have a few sources of income, and my main one would be at the weekend I work in the local shop/local bar. I work there every Saturday and Sunday, about 10 hours, 12 hours the odd weekend. I work 9 in the morning till about 2 in the day so I still have the rest of the day to myself.
John is also intent on making his own career choices and would not like to follow the footsteps of his family:
“Ehm the guards wouldn’t be too bad. I’ve a few uncles in the guards. But to be honest it’s not for me I’d be more inclined to do to my own thing.”
To sum up Johns consumer self-concept, it is clear that he sees himself as being an independent guy. Although he is slow to admit it he is also a slave to brand names in particular designer clothes. He sees his obsession with brand names as nothing out of the ordinary and considers it the norm among all guys.