EOC: Week 3: How I buy Stuff

What influences my purchasing decisions is a combination of my personality, my age, and ideal self image. But all of that combined describes my lifestyle and characteristics. I strive to be very individualistic so that I’m perceived as different to everyone else, but not stand out too much that I receive negative attention. On the decision of what clothes to wear, that is probably the one thing most determined by my age and my personality. I like to buy clothes that really catch my eye and also show a grown man’s image. Simultaneously, I try and find items that everyone else is not going to be wearing. Usually when everybody likes a certain thing, instead of attracting me to it, it makes me like it less. Especially these days when everyone likes a certain thing it becomes oversaturated and takes away the quality from the original creation or idea. Then people start to copy and claim the idea as theirs. As a consumer, I like to “protect my identity as an individual, the products I buy and the stores I patronize supports my self image.” (MKTG, Lamb, pg 76).
Earlier I said one of the major decisions about the clothes I wear is based on my age. What I mean by that is, a lot of the trends that people are following or copying, (depends on how you look at it), they are more for the younger people in their late teens to early twenties. For example, a lot of people wear what they call skinny jeans and a small t-shirt, and then they sag their pants. I look at is as I’m too old to be dressing like that, so therefore I’m not going to be looking for those kinds of items when I shop for clothes. I am more of a button up t-shirt kind of guy who wears slim cut pants or some nice and creased dockers.

Week 2 EOC - Me As A Consumer

My demographic that I fall under is African, not African American. My family and I, the exception is my sister, was born in Zimbabwe, Africa. I can’t really speak for other African’s or African American’s, but I take a more of a practical approach to my purchases. I look for the most practical item at the lowest price but get the best results for me. For example, a lot of people have probably watched or heard of shows like MTv Cribs, which showcase famous people’s lifestyle’s and what they own in their homes and often tell you how much they paid for it. Some famous people would show you their cars and say that they paid over 80,000 dollars on their car stero system. How I look at it is, why did you pay that much. Usually you pay that much for power or how loud and powerful you want your system to sound. But then you can’t even use the maximum power that it puts out without getting in trouble by the law. I can pay at the most 4,000 dollars for a system that sounds excellent and I won’t get in trouble by the law.

Another example is in clothing. A lot of people would pay 75 – 100 dollars for their shirt. Basically they are paying for the brand. But the brand is pretty much covered up by another article of clothing that they are wearing. So people won’t even know that you are wearing a name brand unless you tell them and show them that it is whatever brand it is. Me, I’ll get a similar short that looks just as god, pretty much the same quality, but paid 50% less than they did, and look good doing it. That is just a short example of my practical approach to my consumption of products and services.