To Sum It All Up

So, we have come to the end of our technological journey; we have seen how so many aspects of technology influences our daily decision making process and what might happen if we didn't have them. Technology is so influential in our consumer behavior, as well as our everyday lives. Technology has aided in the way and the number of times that we are able to view advertisements as well has how businesses get their message out there. Technology has not only aided in advertising, but it has also added a tremendous amount of clutter. This clutter can then lead to consumer frustration, which then leads to a decline in consumption.

So technology can help and hurt consumers behavior. While technological advances have ultimately helped our day to day routines, it has also led to an overload of information, which can ultimately slow us down.

So, my question is: is technology helping or hurting consumer behavior in the big picture? And how do we, as marketers, break through the clutter that is surrounding consumers?

The Daddy of 'em All!

And then there was the creation of the computer... Do you ever wonder what life would be like if we didn't get to log on to our Facebook everyday, or check our email, or see the new celeb gossip online? Without computers, where would we be today?

Computers control and aide in our everyday lives; we schedule our days around computers, use them in our spare time, and treat them like our adopted children. If there were no computers, would we still have a connection to the outside world. Or what if today all the computers in the world stop working; could you imagine the chaos that would result? It is truly hard to imagine that kind of world after all of the advances that have occurred throughout our lifetime.

Would we, as consumers, still endured the massive amounts of clutter in advertising as we do today; would companies still be able to thrive with the lack of free or cheap advertising? Would we just resort back to the way things were before modern day technology?

Dating Made Easy!

It used to be you would meet the man or woman of your dreams at school, a bar, through friends, etc. These days, people have begun resorting to the thing that we resort to for pretty much everything else for dating advise; the internet. Dating websites have become increasingly popular to meet people your own age in your area. The website matches you up by similarities in your interest, and *Poof* you have a date in no time at all!

This has given marketers another mode of transporting their message, not only through the advertising on the website, but also through the datin spectrum. When you go on dates, you usually go out to eat, get flowers, have wine, etc.; this makes it easy for company's that offer those products or services to supply a solution to your need.

Are You in or Are You Out: LinkedIn

Although we have an overabundance of ways that people can interact via social networking sites, one more can't hurt right? Especially one that keeps you linked in to the professional world, rather than a social world. LinkedIn is a fairly new social networking site for professionals to network themselves as a professional, rather than an everyday person (like Facebook), to the professional world.

This website has geared itself more towards gaining employee's or employer's rather than gaining customers or a fan base. Thus, this website can help people become more productive by reducing the amount of face-to-face networking that is required to be successful in the business world.

How it all started...Instant Messaging and Chat Rooms

Do you ever think about how this whole social media craze started; I'm not talking about Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook. No, I'm talking about before even Facebook; I mean instant messaging and chat rooms. Chat rooms gave people a channel to meet new people, people from all over the world that they might not have the opportunity to meet otherwise; and instant messaging was one of the first ways that you could communicate with people instantly (other than using a phone).

While these two modes of communication gave a lot of parents headaches because of the worry of who their children were talking to online, it also became a useful tool and is basically (in another form) still used today. These modes are now used for communication from person to person, but also from business to business, from person to business, and from business to person. Business have seized this opportunity to increase their advertising and get their name out on the market in yet another way.

From Snail mail to Email

Remember the good old days when you would send a letter to a loved one, they would recieve the letter three days later and you would recieve a response three days after that? It felt so personal and difficult to contact the person that you wanted to talk to; these days if you don't send or recieve a response back within one day it feels like forever!

Email and instant messaging has not only increased the speed in which we communicate with other people, it has also increased the number of ways that advertising is able to reach us. It seems that everywhere you go these days they are asking you to get on an 'emailing list' so that you can get 10,000 junk emails per day. Emailing could be a productive (and inexpensive) way to reach your target audience; however, people are becoming so loaded down with clutter that we hardly read or notice half of the emails we recieve today.

To Tweet or not to Tweet....

Do you ever wonder what your favorite celeb is doing every second of every day? Well you are in luck! Thanks to the new Twitter engine you can know close to everything someone is thinking if you only just follow them on Twitter!

While it is one of the newest social networks on the market, Twitter is on the move! It is nearly everywhere now, especially when it comes to the rich and famous. Twitter is now becoming a site that is used to influence consumer behavior; celebs (or everyday average people) can talk about a product, service, company, or idea and get people to latch on to that thing. Company's are becoming increasingly aware of this phenomenon and jumping on the band wagon to sway consumers in their direction.



Blog (noun): to spew uncontrollably from one's brain...

Technology has blessed us today with many useful tools but one of the most significant uses that I have found for technology (and not just because it is required for this class) is blogging. Blogging has become so popular that people can actually create an entire career around simply writing a diary of different topics!

But blogging is no longer only used to convey feelings or to communicate with others about a certain topic; it has become a way for people to learn more about a topic, to research a product, service, or idea, etc. Blogging has begun to influence consumers by continuously informing them about topics from people that have experienced things first hand!

Youtube...You never know what you will find

Back in the old days (about ten years ago...) when you wanted to learn how to braid your hair, learn how to fly fish, or even watch a music video you would have to either figure it out yourself or wait for cable T.V. to play a program on that particular topic. Now, all you have to do is go to a little website we like to call Youtube; its a magical site that will show you pretty much anything you want to see. You can watch, post, and share videos all from this one website; pretty incredible, right?



Youtube has had a tremendous effect on every one's daily lives; if you ever forget how to do something or want to learn something new, you will most likely be able to find a video on Youtube that will teach you how to do it. This website has not only had an incredible effect on learning new things but also on how companies advertise. The newest wave of social advertising is making short movies (like commercials) and posting them to Youtube; this usually reduces clutter and make customers feel more involved with a product since its not just a 30 second commercial that runs twice a day, its a short story that customers can relate to. This change has begun to impact the way that consumers behave when deciding to purchase something. Consumers want to feel a connection to a product and Youtube has begun to create that connection for companies to their consumers.

The one and only, World Wide Web!

Do you ever wonder how in the world we ever survived without this beautiful thing we call the internet? It was so much more difficult to communicate, find what you were looking for, purchase  products, etc.; heck, without the internet, the only person that would be able to read what I'm writing at this very moment would be me...
Can you believe just a few short years ago (even in my lifetime!) this amazing invention was just a twinkling in many young inventor's eye's (and remember dial-up; what a nightmare!). It's hard to imagine what life would be like if the internet had never been invented. Luckily we don't have to!

Like I said before, the internet has completely changed the way that we go about our every day lives; especially when it comes to how we behave as consumers. We would not be able to see (or in many people's case, buy) half of the things we see today; the internet is a hot bed for marketing clutter and consumer mahem! Without the internet, we (as consumers) would be stuck in a slump of having to look through magazine after magazine to find our clothes, rather than just 'googling' it. I think that the internet has had the greatest impact on consumer behavior to date; it has not only changed how and when we see things, it has changed how we trade and desire products. 

No Smartphone for This Girl!

I know that it may be hard to believe, but you can still by non-"smartphones"! I am living proof! I am one of the (very) few people that have not given in to the smartphone craze; I am currently using a state of the art Nokia flip phone...

So, maybe it doesn't look exactly like this one but it is a fairly simple piece of machinery. I can call on it, text, and even take pictures!



But lately, I have been thinking about this difference that technological advances has created between myself and most of my friends (i.e. smart vs dumb phone). While my phone is only a connection between those people that I know and me, my friends' phones are a connection between them and anything you can possible imagine.

Like the commercial says, "There are over a half of a million apps and counting"; this allows smartphone users to do anything and stay connected to anything they could imagine. These apps not only let smartphone users stay connected to the outside world, it also lets companies connect to these smartphone users. This incredible innovation in technology has (yet again) started a new trend with marketers to avoid clutter, yet still get their brand and product to their target market and the world in general. 

Pinterest: The adult way to create an imaginary world....

Recently, ALL (and when I say all, I mean all!) of my friends have been using a new "Internet" verb; pinning (and for those of you that don't know what this word is referring to, it has nothing to do with real needles or pins). So, while I like to be the rebel and not give in to every trendy new thing out there on our all consuming world wide web, I finally caved in and began exploring Pinterest, to see what all of the fuss was about.

It turns out that it is every girls (and some boys) fantasy world played out in pictures! The body every girl wishes to one day have, the best looking and most creative food, inspirational and funny quotes, everything you could ever need to plan a wedding, and so much more! I was amazed!

And while I, myself, still do not have a Pinterest account (so that I do not get seriously addicted) I have visited the site a number of times since my first encounter. This immediate addiction got me thinking, people see the things on this website as aspirational and fantasies, what if a company was able to get their product up on this type of website (in a good light). This website has persuaded many people I know, as well as around the world in general, to begin using the products displayed, and making the food, etc. already; what if marketers could use this website to persuade consumer behavior in their favor?

Apple: Cult vs Convenient

Well, since we discussed cult products in class on Wednesday (concerning the wiki presentations), I thought it appropriate to take on a monster of a topic; Apple.

Apple began simply with a computer; they have no branched into what seems like everyone's everyday lives (if you have not heard of Apple, you HAVE to live under a rock). It seems everywhere you go, you can see some kind of Apple product being used, from IPod to IPad laptops; they are everywhere. So how did Apple go from a small computer company to an industry icon in just a few short years.

Well, other than having their CEO be the iconic Steve Jobs, they had a business strategy that was the first of its kind; making all of Apple's products compatible to one another. So my question is: does this business strategy make consumers feel taken care of or manipulated?



On one hand, having all of your technological products compatible with one another is very convenient; on the other hand, if you have one product does that mean that you HAVE to purchase every other Apple product so you can stay completely connected and up to date with everything that goes on around us?

Facebook: Is it really your choice?

So, even though I am technically not creating these posts in chronological order (in the order that they were invented), I wanted to begin my blog by discussing the effects that Facebook has had on consumer behavior and our everyday lives. This decision is based solely on the fact that Facebook is forcing us to go through a major change with our pages by making us change our entire format to Timeline (can you tell that I am not happy about it?).
As we all know, Facebook is a website that was created to keep people connected to not only their friends but also to the rest of the world. Facebook is said to let you express yourself; your opinions, likes/dislikes, friends, interests, your location (which in my opinion, is kind of creepy), your relationship status (f.b.o.= facebook official), and pretty much anything else you want people to see (and some things that you don't want people to see). Facebook makes it seem like you are the one in control, you can look at things that you want to look at and avoid things that you want to avoid; why, then, are we being forced to conform to something that we may dislike? Since we are having to go through this change on what has come to be our social life-line, I have begun thinking more in depth about what else is out of our control as consumers using Facebook.

When you log on to Facebook, it brings you to your homepage with status updates and if you look closely, you will see advertisements strategically placed on the left hand side of your screen, right below birthdays and events. Coincidence? I think not! While I am not saying that Facebook is controlling our every thought with these advertisements, I am saying that they are trying to influence our consumer behavior for the clients that they are advertising for. They do this by using our Facebook to find our interests and strategically place ads that match our personality best. So, even though we may not realize it on a daily basis, this website that we all love and rely on so much is just like every other business; at the end of the day, they are trying to make money, and the way that Facebook makes money (since you do not have to pay to have a Facebook page) is to help other business get their word out in the world, and hopefully influence consumers to purchase that company's product or service.
In this day and age, strategic ways for influencing consumer behavior is all around us and (as I have been and will be stating with all of my blog posts) most of this increase can be credited to the technological advances that we (as consumers) have been experiencing in the past decade or so.
Until next time!

By the Way: Technology Scares the Bejeezus Out of Me!

So to kick things off, I thought I would first introduce myself and why I have chosen to analyze consumers on the topic of technological advances; my primary reason for choosing this topic is because I am one of the least tech saavy people that I know. I run when I see an IPad, I cringe when someone talks about Twitter, and IPhones, forget it!
                                  
                                   (This is what I think of when I think "high-tech")
I think this fear began at a young age; my family got our first home computer (remember the ones that weighed like 100 pounds, just the screen!) when I was around 8 years old, and while I enjoyed playing School House Rock and Sabrina  Teenage Witch games and recording songs on the microphone with friends, even then it scared me. By the way the three things that I just listed above were about the only three things that I was able to sufficiently accomplish on that beast of a screen. Then came the Internet; while this new search engine proved useful for school projects and talking to friends (AIM), it also proved very tedious and slow. This was were my frustration for technology first set in. Do you remember the days when we would have to re-boot our computer, wait ten minutes, then log on to our dial up connection, wait another ten minutes, then finally we were able to type something into AskJeeves and we would have to wait another ten minutes; I get frustrated when my computer takes 30 seconds logging me on to the Internet these days!

Fast forward to present day: now a days we have a machine to do pretty much anything for us, from giving us automated directions, to calculating any mathematical equation we can think of; although many of these things were only created a few short years ago, it seems that these machines have begun to take over our world. Technology is in our everyday lives; even as I am writing this right now, I am using a computer, on the Internet and blogging (can you believe it)!!! Me, a tech idiot, and even I have broke down and begun using the things that I once feared. Technology is not only in our everyday lives, but it also influences much of what we do, how we do things, and the steps we take to get there. Technology is ever evolving and consumers just can't help but want to stay up to date with these advances; that is why technology is such a hot topic with consumers these days, and that is why I chose to analyze consumer behavior when it comes to technology.

Well until next time!