Today I reviewed our most recent analysis of affluent consumers with marketers for a non-profit organization. For a change I began with a description of the mental process the consumer goes thru, as reflected in our data.
There are five simultaneous equations, so to speak, that the consumer processes. The output of each equation impacts the processing of the other 4 equations. The first equation captures how the consumer personally responds to the item. The second is a more objective assessment of the items actual qualities. The third equation describes how others the consumer knows will respond to the consumer owning the object. The fourth is how the consumer will react to the responses of others. Finally, the consumer computes the actual image that ownership of the object will project to 3rd parties who the consumer does not know personally.
The response to this sequence of presentation was positive. My mon-profit marketers were able to relate this to their own sense of their thought process went, especially when being asked to consider something a bit out of the ordinatary for them.There was also agreement that most of the time this process runs at the "subliminal" level, when relatively routine purchases are being considered.
Comments