consumers

The Information-Age Myth

May 5, 2010 By Mark 6 Comments

I went into a large, nationally-known chain store last night to buy a few things. When I what I wanted I went to the check-out lines. Because the store had too few employees handling too many customers I elected to take my five items to the twelve-items-or-less line, on the assumption that fewer items would mean a faster checkout.

Confirming the wisdom of my choice, the customer two places ahead of me breezed through checkout. Because the three women ahead of me were only buying two items as a group, I felt confident that I would be on my way in short order. (In the fable business, this is known as counting your chickens before they hatch.) [ Read more ]

Consumer Expectations and Price

March 19, 2010 By Mark 1 Comment

I am publishing a collection of short stories as an e-book. Continuing a series from last week, I’m trying to work through the relevant pricing issues and set a price for that content.

We all have expectations. Sometimes, particularly when we’re young or old, our expectations can be out of step with reality. When we’re young we don’t have the cognitive ability to understand the world as it is, so we fantasize. When we’re old we may have trouble keeping up with the pace of change, and the world may move on without us.

Perhaps no other aspect of daily life in America defines our expectations more than the price of goods. We are a consumer society, and as such we gauge our worth and meaning by what we have and what we can afford. Goods that are priced out of reach make us feel poor. Goods that are within reach make us feel wealthy — or at least as if we have options.

Everyone has heard a child request a new car or new house in the same way that they ask for a piece of candy or scoop of ice cream. To a child price is no object because money has no meaning. And who hasn’t heard an elderly person comment that a candy bar used to be nickel or a gallon of milk a dime? To an elderly person prices may mark the zenith of their life experience, while also serving as a reminder of the threat posed by inflation and rising prices.

People in the prime of their working lives generally have more realistic expectations about prices, but they can still experience dissonance when the cost of goods change. Gas at $4.00 a gallon is an outrage. Gas falling back to $2.50 is a windfall. But note: these emotions and responses are usually relative, not based on an actual understanding of the costs of production. Because we live lives abstracted from our own survival needs, and because our economic lives are abstracted through bank accounts, direct-deposit paychecks and credit cards, there is often no contextual reality to the prices we pay. We pay what we pay because that’s what an item costs, not because we know that’s what an item is worth. [ Read more ]

BNET: Exploit Your Customers or You’re a Wimp

September 23, 2009 By Mark Leave a Comment

In a previous post I mentioned running across BNET.com, which is a division of CBS Interactive. Yesterday I went back to the site to see if it held any riches, and promptly stepped in this:

The elephant in the room at Advertising Week sessions in New York beginning today is the ongoing reluctance of companies to mine user preferences and other data many consumers are willing to share in exchange for more relevant products and services.

Wow.

I mean, I thought one of the reasons consumers were willing to share data is because they’ve been told that it won’t be used against them. (I mean over and above the fact that you have to share data in order to use many services or sites — which means it’s really a fee.) [ Read more ]