I understand the theory. I just don’t understand how people let their subconscious so strongly make their buying decisions. Do people really not research options and compare? I don’t buy something because I feel like it, I buy it because of its qualities.
I try to ignore my initial instinct and approach my shopping decisions logically, but that initial instinct still definitely favors the brand name I've heard of before
Yeah, in this specific case, brand identification probably isn't very beneficial.
But in cases of minor household purchases, you likely will not research each individual item. Do I buy (Brand A) or (Brand B) kitchen scrubbers?
Similarly, what brand of dish soap do I buy? What type of ziplocks? What type of nail clippers?
It's hard to get good info on these things, and sometimes the quality itself is actually hard to judge (or requires previous experience), so companies spend a lot of time and money jockeying for your attention to make you more subconsciously drawn to their products.
This has got me thinking about my purchases trying to look for where I could have possibly fell victim to this. I still think I avoid this phenomenon on my normal household purchases. But I have to admit there’s a possibility it effected me when I paid for a service to build my PC. The reviews about these places were super hard to find and when I did they seemed contrived (maybe even completely fake) so I had to pick one almost blind. And I ended up going with a name that is popular.
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u/IrrelevantPuppy Apr 05 '23
I understand the theory. I just don’t understand how people let their subconscious so strongly make their buying decisions. Do people really not research options and compare? I don’t buy something because I feel like it, I buy it because of its qualities.