Free Essay

You Are What You Buy

In:

Submitted By thorntonke
Words 445
Pages 2
When purchasing a product there is a number of factors that influence a consumers decision on what product or service they purchase. Two of these factors is the actual self-concept and ideal self-concept. The actual self-concept is defined as the individuals belief about himself, which includes the person’s attributes and how they evaluate themselves. The ideal self-concept is how you would like to see yourself. When consumers purchase products they are often purchasing the product to enhance how they feel about themselves as well as get closer to their ideal self.

My most recent important purchase was a car in September. I purchased a 2012 GMC Terrain with some special features. The GMC is a mid size SUV that is known to have one of best gas mileage for its type. My choice of an SUV was mainly based on the fact that I like bigger cars because I travel a lot with large items (bowling balls) and I like to sit up higher in a car so I can see everything. Most of the time, SUV drivers are described as people who like to feel in control, which is a lot of the times what I like to do. I often take control of situations because that it is personality.

The purchase of a newer also indicates that I want to have a sense of pride and a feeling of accomplishment because I purchased a brand new car. This explanation would be an example of how I tried to enhance my ideal self-concept of being someone who looks accomplished. I also chose the vehicle based on needs. My old car had very poor gas mileage and it was costing me a lot of money to travel to and from work every day. This was one of the main factors when purchasing the car because I knew that one of my needs was a more fuel efficient car. I also believe the color of a car indicates some ideas of a self-concept. My vehicle color, white, often means that the person is positive and often likes things to be neat and clean. The color also indicates that the owner has the belief that are pure, honest and an overall good person.

The brand personality is the way a brand speaks or behaves. In this case, the brand personality is that the SUV provides people with the necessities in addition to allowing control over the road and ultimately certain aspects of their life. The new car defines my personality of the need to feel accomplished as well as the sense that I like things to be neat and organized.

Similar Documents

Premium Essay

“People Are Becoming More Materialistic. They Are Concerned with Making More Money and What Money Can Buy.” What Is Your Opinion on Being Materialistic? You Should Write at Least 350 Words.

...today’s society, nothing is free. The side effect however is that people are becoming more materialistic; more concerned with making money and what money can buy. But how much money is enough? Is it ever enough? To some, it will never be enough. In my opinion, I truly believe that this statement is true and that people are becoming more materialistic in nature. In this essay, I will discuss how materialism has affected modern society’s way of life on an individual level, the country’s economy as well as our spiritual and moral beliefs. First and foremost, each individual is affected by materialism to some extent in this day and age because hedonism is becoming an uprising trend. This is because today's generation are geared towards making more and more money so that they can enjoy the carefree lifestyle that is so popular these days. Moreover, people now are striving to earn more income in order to afford things that are more expensive and branded. For example, people spend their hard earned money on material objects like genuine LV and Coach handbags, expensive gadgets like Iphones and Tablet pcs and so on which in my opinion is a waste of money when regular goods may prove to be good enough. Therefore, while individuals become more focussed on their pursuit of material wealth and improving their standard of living, they may forget that what matters most in life is quality time spent with family and friends and not the quantity of their material goods. Secondly, when society...

Words: 641 - Pages: 3

Premium Essay

Fight Club Research Paper

...“You are not your job, you're not how much money you have in the bank. You are not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet. You are not your f***ing khakis. You are all singing, all dancing crap of the world.” -- Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club People are always asking themselves what defines them as a person. How do I express myself? How can I show who I am? What clothes should I wear? What car should I buy? People are very often defined and classified by how they dress, what career they have, or how much money they have in the bank. People become obsessed with what they own. They need that cute new outfit or those “sick” new shoes. Your dwindling bank account is all happening because you needed to buy that new coffee table,...

Words: 675 - Pages: 3

Premium Essay

Topic

...want to buy something, we usually go to a shop. There is no doubt that there are many kinds of shops in every town or city, but most of them have a food supermarket, a department store, men's and women's clothing stores, grocery, bakery and butchery. As for my family, my parents like to do shopping at big department stores and supermarkets. As a rule, they sell various goods under one roof and this is very convenient. A department store, for example, true to its name, is composed of many departments: readymade clothes, fabrics, shoes, sports goods, toys, china and glass, electric appliances, cosmetics, linen, curtains, cameras, records, etc. You can buy everything you like there. As far as I know there are also escalators in big stores which take customers to different floors. The things for sale are on the counters so that they can be easily seen. In the women's clothing department you can find beautiful dresses, costumes, blouses, skirts, coats, underwear and many other things. In the men's clothing department you can choose suits, trousers, overcoats, ties, etc. In the knitwear department one can buy sweaters, cardigans, short-sleeved and long-sleeved pullovers, woollen jackets. In the perfumery they sell face cream and powder, lipstick, lotions and shampoos. In a food supermarket we can also buy many different things at once: sausages, fish, sugar, macaroni, flour, cereals, tea. At the butcher's there is a wide choice of meat and poultry. At the bakery you buy brown...

Words: 1028 - Pages: 5

Free Essay

Media

...What is Dealite? Dealite is a disruptive social commerce startup based out of Mumbai, India. • We provide a unique auction experience that combines the thrills of online shopping with entertainment. • We source the best deals on the latest, branded, box packed products and make it available for our members at unbelievable prices. • All you do is browse available auctions, buy your seat with bids and you could win at up to 99% off. If you do not win, you have the option to Buy It Now at a discount covering 100% of your seat cost and paid bids.  How do I get started? Getting started is simple. Register by filling a simple form, browse Available Auctions, buy a seat with bids and bid away when the auction starts. If you win, you claim and pay or opt for Buy It Now (with applicable discount) to own the item. Dealite Tip: When you Buy Seat, Dealite gives you an equal number of bids called ‘free bids’ which you can use to place bids in that particular auction where you have bought a seat.Buy Bids now!  Make sure you go through our How It Works page to find out how you can enjoy participating in a Dealite auction. [pic] I haven't received your verification email? If you did not receive our verification e-mail, check your spam or junk folder or Click Here to request another verification email. [pic] Are products on Dealite brand-new? Yes, All products featured on Dealite are brand-new, box-packed and with warranty (if applicable). [pic] Can I really save...

Words: 2938 - Pages: 12

Premium Essay

Finallos

...people usually use to buy things are online shopping and buy in a supermarket.It is seem that there are some different between two kinds of shopping. First,when you buy in the supermarket,you have to leave your home and drive to the supermarket,it’s cost a lot of time,maybe when you need to buy somethings,the weather is bad or your car is broken,so it’s very difficult for you in this case if you want to buy something.However,when you shopping on the internet,what you need to do is sit in front of your computer and purchase what you like.Second,when you go shopping online,you can’t control what you buy.I mean when you go shopping online,the products may not the same with what you see on the page,the products may have low quality or the size is not suitable for you.There are no guarantee that your money will be given back to you if you want to restore the things you bought.But,when you buy in the supermarket,you can choose exactly what is the most suitable for you,you can check the quality,what the products come from.Finally,when you go shopping online,you can select from a wide range without hassle. Simply, clicking your mouse in browsing the different products,if the website didn’t have the products you want to buy,you can move from the other website.On the other hand,when you buy in the supermarket,you depend on it.That mean if you wanted to buy a product which was not sold in the supermarket,you would move to the other supermarket until you got the things you want. To sum up,...

Words: 359 - Pages: 2

Free Essay

Consumer Behaviour

...University of Surrey | Consumer Behaviour | Factors influencing students’ choices of branded grocery products when grocery shopping’ | | Thomas Partridge (6166777) | 4/22/2013 | A focus groups, face-to-face interviews, and in-store observation of a shopping will be used to investigate the factors affecting purchasing behaviour of students. A Comparison of the strengths and weaknesses of each of the three data collection methods. Suggestion of ways in which marketing managers could use your findings on shopping/purchase determinants to improve business performance | Contents 1. Introduction 2. Fieldwork Results 2.1. Price 2.2. Quality 2.3. Discounts 2.4. Personal Preference and taste 2.5. Brand Reputation 2.6. Other peoples reviews 3. Analysis of data Collection Method 3.1. Advantage and disadvantages of collection methods 3.2. Summary of the three research methods 4. Practical implications of findings 5. Appendix A. Focus Group B. Interview 1 C. Interview 2 D. Observational shop 1 E. Observational shop 2 1. Introduction Within this report explores the factors influencing students choices of branded grocery products when grocery shopping through a three types of data collection methods, which are a Focus Group, two Face-to-face- interviews and two observational shops. After analysing the findings the advantages and disadvantages of the research methods are discussed...

Words: 13815 - Pages: 56

Free Essay

Trading E.Book

...How to use Oscillators to BUY an SELL Who must Read this Book This book is going to teach you some basic and most important concepts of Technical Analysis . Anyone who trades or Invests in any Markets like Stock Markets , Commodities , Currency etc, can use these concepts . These Concepts in themselves do not guarantee any success , there is much more than Technical Analysis which you need to understand and Learn like Money Managemenet , Investment or Trading Psychology and Discipline in Stock Markets . Important Points ● ● ● ● Each Chapter has example's to help reader understand the concepts well. You are Free to share the content “provided” you link back to http://www.jagoinvestor.com and give proper credits to Author ie. Manish Chauhan . If you have any questions or concerns , mail me at manish.pucsd@gmail.com Do not Use this ebook or its contents for any commercial Purpose . Fundamental Analysis and Technical Analysis There are two important questions which you have to answer when you want to buy shares ? They are "What to buy" and "When to buy" ? You may be familiar with Fundamental Analysis , Fundamental Analysis answers the question "What to buy" ? . It a study of companies Financial statements , cash books , markets study to find out the future prospects of a company. It answers the question "Will this company be a good buy for long term" ? , "Will it be more valuable than what it is now " etc etc " But !! , Even though you have picked up some excellent...

Words: 2984 - Pages: 12

Free Essay

Begin with Why

...How do you explain when things don’t go as we assume? For example, why Apple so innovative? About three and a half years ago, Simon Sinek made a discovery and this discovery changed his view on how he thought the world worked and it even profoundly changed the way in which he operate in it. He create his own definition, which called “golden circle”. Why? How? What? It’s a little idea, which explains why some organizations and leaders are able to inspire where others aren’t. As an example Simon Sinek providing an Apple company and how they trying to sell this product. If Apple were like everyone else, a marketing message from them might sound like this: “We make great computers. They’re beautifully designed. Want to buy one?” That’s how many companies sell their products. Here is how Apple actually communicates. “Everything we do, we believe in challenging the status quo. We believe in thinking differently. We just happen to make great computers. Want to buy one?” It sounds totally different. The basic sentence of this topic is that people don’t buy what you do; people buy why you do it. If you don’t know why you do what you do, then how will you ever get people to vote for you, or buy something from you. The goal is not just to sell to people who need what you have; the goal is to sell to people who believe what you believe. Even if person working in a company just for money, but if he will start to believe what you believe, he will work harder with blood and tears. I learned...

Words: 304 - Pages: 2

Premium Essay

Counter-Trade

...Entrepreneurial skills Presentation Finance for entrepreneurs There are two classical ways to finance business you put money in your business out of your pocket, and there has to be a share of there own money that is called owner equity genereric for funding business, you have to borrow. The exray of the business a reflected on two documents balance sheet income table Balancesheet vs. Financing needs Balance sheet is a table, with two sides, with two colums, on the left you have the assets, and at the other side you have the liablility ( this is the money you borrow from others), and as well owner equity (this is the money you put in your business out of your pocket). Assets fall into two main categories, you have current assets and fixed assets. Fixed assets, are land, building, machinery, eguipments, vehicles, fax machines etc. If you are a manufacturer, you need to buy alot of equipments, but if you are a trader buy and sell, you may not need alot of items. At least some items should be in the fixed assets. How do you finance them You may wish to buy a place where you do business or you can simply rent it, and you need to put machinery in the office. For this you need money. Not all does come out of your pockets, financing needs are even for the richest corporations. In each business there are ownersmoney, or the money that the entrepreneur had borrowed. The golden rule: debt to equity should bet two times. The total...

Words: 1702 - Pages: 7

Premium Essay

The Importance Of Capitalism

...Identity is important for most of the purchases made by a human, it is common thing which we can see in every human that we see a product and we tend to buy that product or item, the other things like price, uses all comes after that, and if we start to buy an item, we sometimes buy related products of the main item. For e.g., if we buy dress, we will also buy the accessories, necessary things like sandals, mobile cover or pouch , can also be bought accordingly. This is called as Diderot effect. It is that a chain of products can be purchased with the main product what we purchased first. It can lead to profits for a retailer, he /she can sell by changing your perceptions and ideas of purchasing a product, there is a statement that, at this...

Words: 888 - Pages: 4

Premium Essay

Cvxm

...How to benefit from stock futures You are bullish on a stock say Satyam, which is currently quoting at Rs 280 per share. You believe that in one month it will touch Rs 330.  Question: What do you do? Answer: You buy Satyam. Effect: It touches Rs 330 as you predicted – you made a profit of Rs 50 on an investment of Rs 280 i.e. a Return of 18% in one month – Fantastic!! Wait: Can it get any better? Yes!! Question: What should you do? Answer: Buy Satyam Futures instead. Effect: On buying Satyam Futures, you get the same position as Satyam in the cash market, but you pay a margin and not the entire amount. For example, if the margin is 20%, you would pay only Rs 56. If Satyam goes upto Rs 330, you will still earn Rs 50 as profit. Now that translates into a fabulous return of 89% in one month. Unbelievable!! But True nevertheless!! This is the advantage of ‘leverage’ which Stock Futures provide. By investing a small margin (ranging from 10 to 25%), you can get into the same positions as you would be able to in the cash market. The returns therefore get accordingly multiplied. Question: What are the risks? Answer: The risks are that losses will be get leveraged or multiplied in the same manner as profits do. For example, if Satyam drops from Rs 280 to Rs 250, you would make a loss of Rs 30. The Rs 30 loss would translate to an 11% loss in the cash market and a 54% loss in the Futures market. Question: How can I reduce such losses? Answer: It is very easy...

Words: 35834 - Pages: 144

Premium Essay

Notes Mktg Mng

...imposed by the gov. agencies in relation to the nutritional facts, but people don’t always have the tools to understand them. Chapter 1 Marketing: * Creating values for costumers. * Customers relationships can be: * Attracting new customers (potential) * Retaining and growing current customers (actual) We need one mktg strategy for the actual and aother one for the potential customers. * Studying needs: a need is smth that you can’t live without. * A need is shaped by your culture and your personality. * Demand is a need backed by the purchaser power. * Product is a tangible good. If it were not tangible then it would not be a thing. * Service is intangible. 21/1/14 If you download music and you pay for the service, you pay to listen it. Then every time you do it you have to pay for it. A product is something you download once, you pay for it once and then that’s a product. E-books are e-products because you consume them; you buy them once and after you always have it. Benefits | Costs | - Prod./Serv. | - $ | - Prestige | - Hours/Time | - Function | - Effort | Value: the value on a product depends on circumstances, depends on the object. Eg: there’s an exam and a student does not have a pen to write so he will pay more for a pen than a student that has one. Why? Because if he can’t...

Words: 1607 - Pages: 7

Premium Essay

Concept

...the item that we’ve been wanting for a long time and buy. There is a little different for men, because most men find shopping is boring and they don’t like to walk through a crowed mall. The first difference is women are very hesitant when they comes to shopping, because we can not make up our minds about what we want to get, or what we like. Men always look like know what they want to buy and need then pick only that item up. Ladies can take hours to getting one item, while men can get three items in 10 minutes or maybe less. Women spend more money than men because women want everything that they see. Men and women are really different in shopping concept. First, women are hesitant when shopping but men are not. A woman goes into a store with every plan on getting one item. When a woman sees all lovely things at a store, she wants to buy them all, and sayings “buy me.” But when she go to other store sees other cute things, she wants to buy that too. That is why a woman can be very hesitant. When a man says that he’s going to buy one thing from the store, it’s a guarantee that he will come home with that item because things do not scream out at him, “buy me”. Secondly, a woman always can take longer time to shop that a man does. A lady has to look at everything she finds appealing to the eye. Some women knows when they go shopping are for a pair of jeans they end up with a shirt and a pretty pair of shoes to match. What should have only taken 20 minutes to begin with became...

Words: 1562 - Pages: 7

Premium Essay

Br Questionnaire

...market, and other aspects of evaluation. Thank you for your participation and cooperation. 246 Personal question 1. Your Gender ○Male ○Female 2. Your Age ○Under the 20 ○20-25 ○26-30 ○31-35 ○36-40 ○41-49 ○50-59 ○Over 60 3. Your Education ○Professional diploma and below ○Senior middle school ○Bachelor degree ○Master Degree ○Ph.D. and above 4. Your monthly income (RMB/mouth) ○ 2000 - 3000 ○ 3000 - 4000 ○ 4000 - 6000 ○ 6000 - 8000 ○ 8000 - 10000 ○ 10000 more ○ Students Alternative question 1. Multiple choices: How do you think about foreign brand? □ Low Price □ Good quality □ Well-known international brands □ High price □ Poor quality or general □ No practical significance, but the hype 2. Do you want buy game console after the law ban? Intention If “Not” please go last page only If “Willing to buy” or “Definitely buy” please go next page and don’t need answer last page 1. What prompted you most recent game console purchase? ○as the present ○for personal ○home improvement 2. What kind of game brands you known? ○ Sony - PS4 ○ Nintendo - Wii ○ Microsoft - Xbox ○ Huawei - Tron ○ Lenovo - eedoo ○ Supbro - supbro 3. What’s your consumption attitude when you buying game console ○ Intellectual type purchased:...

Words: 477 - Pages: 2

Premium Essay

Creating a Business Urban Outfitters Case Study

...finding a good staff is all linked together but can be challenging when opening up a business. Finances have a big part to opening up a business. You will have to find the right lender and see who has the best interest rates for business loans. For example, if I was to start up my own restaurant I will need money to buy or rent a facility, buy restaurant equipment, or buying the food. First I will have to sit down and set up a business plan and see what is within my budget. If the bank qualifies you for a $100,000 loan you know that is your budget. Figure out what you need to get for the business, find the location, and hiring a staff. A good way to budget is find stores that sell cheap items and buy things in bulk. Budgeting money can be very challenging because when you have that large lump sum it’s easy to just buy whatever you see. So as a new business owner plan out what you need for the business and budget the money you got. Finding a location can be very challenging. Explore your options to see if it is the right place to open up a business. You will have to see if it fits into your finances and if the bank approves it (if you buy the location). While finding the right location you should see what the area is like, research your competition, and check the volume of traffic. This can be challenging because you never know if the business will turn out good or not. It’s a win or lose...

Words: 1084 - Pages: 5