Difficulty of Choice
Every day we face the problem of choice: which dress or suit to put on, what to order for lunch, where to spend time with your friends or even which yoghurt to buy. Sometimes it is not an easy thing to choose something as nowadays there is such a wide choice of goods and services provided that it is easy to get lost. Skillful managers do their best to make their products the most attractive on the market and to make you buy them. They create eye-catching packages, attention-grabbing adverts; organize different promos and other types of special offers to attract as many customers as possible in order to increase their sales and income of the company. Of course, to some extent brand image and brand name matter when you have to decide, which car to buy or in which bank to open an account. So, in the era when marketing rules the world and our lives are flooded with advertising the consumer is often at a loss.
Sometimes we don't even realize that this or that product was imposed by the advertising campaign, slogans or fashion. Very often we wear or eat not what we really want, but what is said to be cool, trendy, organic or natural without even checking if it is true or not.
When you enter a supermarket or a luxurious boutique you start a fascinating journey along the rows with multicolored, attractive goods, and hangers with fashionable designer clothes, that lure you and seem to be crying: “Take me! Buy me!” And here you have to either resist the temptation or give in and buy something.
There are different consumer behavior models. Some of them just follow their desires and emotions. Others totally trust adverts or word-of-mouth. But there are also people who first check different options, weigh all pros and cons and only then make up their minds. It is important for them to know if the product is good value for money, durable and reliable, fashionable and stylish, well-made or low-quality, expensive or inexpensive. Some people buy things that emphasize their status as in their social circle nobody wears cheap goods or faulty products.
So, a great task is set for the companies. It consists in building a strong and trustworthy brand image that represents a list of associations, pictures and emotions connected with the brand in the consumer's mind. They have to build brand awareness that is to make everybody speak about their products and goods. And the most difficult thing is to build brand loyalty in other words to form a customers' devotion to their brand. They have to create and launch the products that will be attractive for the consumers and will be easily sold without using additional tools of advertising and promotion. If the product is not so good, they will have to convince the people of the contrary, which requires special knowledge, skills, and talent.
So, when going shopping we must always be cautious not to swallow the bait of skillful marketers and not to buy useless, low-quality things that we have never needed, or the goods that don't meet our expectations.
