Perceptions And Values
Scenario-1- Thinking Excercise
Close your eyes and think of the last purchase(s) you made! It could be software, a car, a piece of clothing, or the vacation you booked!
Now, how many of these purchases can we rationalize without any emotional reasoning? In other words, how many of these purchases were driven by careful analysis, and objectively led to an “Answer”
In most cases, it’s ZILCH.
Scenario-2- Personal Experience
Ok, I’ll go this time. I bought an iPhone 13 Pro. While there were other phones in the market, I justified it by telling myself that I need it to shoot videos for my Youtube Channel.
And now, I plan to buy a whole bunch of things to ‘fit’ into the ecosystem.
- Was iPhone 13 Pro the best bet for my Youtube channel? Probably not. There are economical options that could have gotten the job done at a fraction of the cost.
- Do I need all the accessories that come with it? Absolutely not. I could still get away with headphones, watch, and systems from other brands.
Here’s What I Observed About Purchasing Patterns
- We don’t value things, we value their meaning. The reason we ‘feel’ personal with certain belonging as opposed to others.
- We tend to optimize more for how things make us feel, not what they do. What will it mean for me to own a brand of phone/clothing from another brand that does the same functionality?
- If you’re a marketer (like myself), it’s more important for you to understand human psychology and motivations as opposed to science/ attribution models.
We tend to take decisions emotionally, and justify them with rationality.