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Deadline for flight purchase: 11/11/14

Motivation

Recently I have found myself more motivated in multiple areas of my life. I have been getting up early, eating better, and trying to stay more active. While thinking about what to blog about, the chapter on motivation really stood out. I began to wonder what had caused my sudden increase in motivation and how I could continue to keep this motivation.

Motivation is the processes that lead people to behave as they do. With this in mind I began to search for a state of tension that I was trying to reduce or eliminate. Pretty quickly I came up with multiple reasons and was astonished at how they had changed multiple aspects of my consumption drastically. As I begin to realize some of my goals they quickly change to keep me interested and active. I seem to have a strong drive and have been continually improving.

As I reread more of the chapter to get a better understanding of why I was doing what I was doing I began to see just how strong these seemingly small changes had impacted my daily life. I am doing different things, have a new schedule, I generally walk to school instead of bike, something I have been doing for about 7 years! My drive has changed so much and so have my habits. It is important to understand where your motivation comes from to keep growing. If I did not know the source, my motivation would not be as strong and would not have the same effect on me. From a marketing standpoint it is important that motivation changes. People will consume different products because they change even if it was part of their daily routine before.

 

Conditioning

Like most people, I prefer to think that I have not been conditioned; however, this is just not the case. Since the day we were born we have been trained to respond certain ways to certain events. Like Pavlov’s dog, we all get hungry when we smell our favorite food even when we know we’re not going to have it. How does this happen to such “evolved” creatures? It’s quite simple. Our memory creates relationships between past experiences and future expectations. If it did not do this, we would have trouble with several simple aspects of everyday life.

                So now that we understand we are conditioned, how far does it go? All you have to do is go to any restaurant on a crowded day and watch a table that is receiving lousy service. At the end of the day, they will leave a tip just like everyone else even though they may have received horrendous service. It is just what we do. We leave tips after we eat, not because the service was fantastic but because we have been conditioned to leave one. The more often we experience this the more likely we are to do it again, which is why we have developed “standard tips”, usually a percentage of the bill.

                One interesting phenomenon related to conditioning is stimulus generalization, or when similar stimuli elicit conditioned responses. Pavlov noticed sometimes jingling keys would cause the dogs to start salivating the same as the bell did. This is called the Halo effect and contributes too many odd responses to situations. I personally have found myself doing this when saying goodbye to customers in a store. I generally say “Thanks for coming in have a great day” or something similar and have caught myself expecting them to say “you too” and started to respond to that before they even finish saying what they are saying which is not always “you too”. I find it odd that I anticipate everyone to say the same thing even though they have all been conditioned different and likely have different programmed responses to someone they do not know thanking them.

                Conditioning is a peculiar subject that explains much more about people than we realize on the surface. The more we watch, the more we see.

Below is an image of a tip calculator by Google that has a default setting of 15% which is exactly the average tip I leave and am willing to bet many of you do as well. Why you may ask: you have been conditioned

Rain

The smell of rain has always been one of my favorite things in the whole world. There is something about it that brings back memories and immediately changes my mood. I have always wondered what caused this sensation. After reading about perception I began to realize what may cause some of these extreme reactions to such an ordinary stimulus. In the book “Consumer Behavior”, it says smells can invoke memories or relieve stress. This seems to be exactly what the smell of rain does for me. I began to wonder how this may impact my consumption. At first I tried to think of only things that smelled like rain, which I still have yet to find. I soon realized it had such a strong influence on me that I actually consume things that remind me of rain even if they have nothing to do with it. This was a very interesting insight for me and I discovered that much of my consumption has hidden meanings behind it and may take some effort to trace back the steps to the source of influence. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGMeKtbKdYM

Mountain Biking

As the season finally begins to change I begin to see the number of bikers in town beginning to increase. Bozeman is full of cycling enthusiasts and many of them are eagerly awaiting the overdue season. Many riders may even decide it’s time to upgrade to a new bike. Today there are almost unlimited options in the world of bicycles. One of the first questions you will likely be asked after entering a shop is mountain or road. This is usually one of the easier decisions as most people already had some idea of what kind of riding they want to do. The next few steps are where most people end up uncertain. There are hundreds of bike manufacturers in America and each of them has a lineup of bikes for several different purposes. Take Specialized for example, they have 4 full suspension bikes that are designed for the average male mountain biker. Most quality bikes these days are made in either aluminum or carbon depending on how much someone is willing to spend. Add to this different componentry and the recent trends in different wheel size and each bike can have several variations. Luckily for consumers, these different variations come in at a number of different price ranges. We may admire the full carbon frame with top of the line components, but we are usually not willing to pay $10,000 for a bike. Each company offers a similar lineup of products and with all the possibilities it seems impossible to make sure you make the right choice.

After working in a bike shop and riding several models from multiple brands I can honestly say it does not matter very much. If you’re out there to have fun, then the brand of your bike should have a minimal effect on the enjoyment of the sport assuming you purchased the bike with the right amount of suspension for the intended riding. Most companies offer similar products with the same componentry. The real difference is often in the suspension design. They will all have several reasons why their design is superior but in the end they all perform fairly similar and it is difficult for most riders to tell. So how do you make a choice out of all this? I believe it is simple. Find the bike you are looking for and several bikes from the competitors that are very similar and see who will give you the best price. If you are not convinced on this method as most racers who have some sort of sponsorship. The reason they ride the bikes they do is many times because they were given the best deal on the bike.

In terms of mountain biking, upgrading a bike is easy. Find a price you are willing to pay, find a few bikes in that price range that have what you’re looking for, then compare and see which one comes out with the best components for the least amount of money. These are simply a few tips to help guide you in the search for your perfect bike and are not rules for purchasing. I hope you find them helpful!

Smashability

One concept of Consumer Behavior that immediately caught my attention was smashability. The degree to which a product can be destroyed and still recognized amazes me. I personally have experienced this several times. For example, you may be walking on the street and you see something red off to the side of the road. As you look at it you see some gold figure and immediately think of McDonald's. People know what it looks like so well you could do almost anything to it and still recognize it.

It seems the more smashable a brand is the more brand value it has and the more people recognize it. Coca-Cola is said to be the most valuable brand in the world and just the name is worth millions. Brands such as this are incredibly easy to recognize even when they are torn to pieces. Products that are less smashable such as old shoes where the logo has fallen off do not have the same value. They can be destroyed and most people will not easily recognize them.

This concept can really help a brand. If they are successful at creating a smashable brand they have to be very well known and everyone has to know what it looks like to be able to recognize it. Marketers try to create smashable brands to develop stronger relationships with their customers and create a new stronger value in their products.

 

Crest Toothpaste.

It seems odd to me that most people stick with the same brand even though there are several other alternatives that could be just as good if not better. I have experienced this myself as well. For some reason every time I go to buy new toothpaste I always pick out Crest. The flavor may change, but I always find myself buying crest toothpaste. I began to wonder what it was about crest that caught my attention and why I always purchased it. I began to think about why exactly I bought it over the competition. After not too long I realized it was the toothpaste I grew up with. My mom used to always buy Crest for me as a child and it seemed familiar and reminds me of my childhood. I have developed a strong relationship with the brand and because of it will always buy it.

While sorting through the various flavors of toothpaste, I have often wondered which the best is for me. Eventually I usually end up thinking they are all fairly similar and must work because they are all on the shelves. It is amazing how much trust I put in P&G just because of their reputation.  My preference of crest seems to follow Zipf’s law. I do not always use crest, but every chance I have it is what I use. Somehow over my life I have become completely brand loyal to Crest. I always use their toothpastes and have even ordered some from Amazon to try a different flavor I could not find in a store. What started out as brushing my teeth has turned into a long lasting relationship.  

Relationships with products.

I have always found it interesting that some people have garages full of stuff they never use. People develop relationships with these products and convince themselves they will wind up using them again in the future. After watching how people interact with the things they purchase I have come to a few conclusions.

First, people tend to believe they are more like their actual self than their ideal self. Most people I studied surrounded themselves with items they thought would impress other more than having any practical use for themselves. Once they created this this ideal self by surrounding themselves with items they were forced to interact with these items. This is where it becomes interesting. Many people start out using the items a lot and very quickly fade to using them rarely or never.  One person described many of their products as “completely unnecessary and over the top but something everyone thinks is awesome”. This person is focused on their looking-glass self. They have created a link between what others think of them and what they think of themselves through the products they consume. In reality, many of these products are overkill or unused.

Second, People have a very hard time letting go of many objects. They have created sentimental value in these products and somehow link the products to their memories. In selling or giving away the products, it is almost as if they are giving the memories up with them. It amazes me how much less stuff people would have in their homes if they would just get rid of the old and unused things they have. They have no use for them but they hold on just in case they need it one day. Many consumers attempt to get away from this habit of hoarding by going through divestment rituals, or taking steps to gradually distance oneself from something in preparation to separate from it. I personally have experienced this in the process of selling things I used to treasure. Recently I prepared to sell my Slalom longboard by gradually convincing myself I no longer had a need for it and could better use the money instead of letting it lose its value sitting on a shelf.

Last, consumers make choices based on prevalent information but could make much better choices if they spent the time to research the options. However, as “Predictably Irrational” by Dan Ariely states, sometimes we waste time debating between two equal alternatives. For me, these are the most difficult choices. Two perfectly even alternatives can seem like a great thing, you have not one option that works but two! This would be the case if I didn't spend hours researching the pros and cons of each alternative and in the process of deciding which to spend my money on end up wasting my time just figuring out how to spend money. That time could have easily been used making more money which in the end may have made the choice easier. Choices are everywhere and the less time we waste on meaningless choices, the better off we will be.

Products play a huge role in our lives. We live with them, around them, and sometimes for them. As we face choices that define who we are we may not realize how much of our lives are defined by our consumption choices. There is so much more to people products the meets the eye. Next time you’re at someone’s house take a look in their room and try to guess why they purchased the things they did. Was it a need, something to impress themselves, something to impress others, or something different altogether?  

"A pictures worth a thousand word"

Photography has always been something that caught my eye. Like most people, I am drawn to all the pretty pictures I see in magazines, on Facebook, and countless other places. I have always believed there was something about photography that related to me in a deeper way. When I entered high school I bought my first real camera. It was a Kodak point and shoot with 400mm zoom and I loved it! I began taking pictures of anything and everything. I soon learned how to edit photos using some basic software and began to mold the photos to my perception of what I had seen. Cameras do not know what the scene actually looks like, so they use the resources they have to make a guess. Using the manual mode is the best way to control how your camera sees the world. Everyone has heard the phrase “Pictures don’t lie”, well, that’s not true at all. As everyone knows with Photoshop you can do nearly anything to a picture. Photography is not objective. It is subjective. Many people will claim this is all a recent development because of Digital Photography. Again, WRONG! This picture of a tree is from 1969 and was taken with a film camera. Jerry Uelsmann was a photographic genius and is still producing one of a kind prints from negatives to this day. 

Untitled, 1969

Homage to Man Ray, 1997

Paul Caponigro 1964

The picture of an apple is perhaps one of my favorites and was taken in 1964 by Paul Caponigro. Most photographers try to create something that is aesthetically pleasing even if it distorts reality. Photography can try to capture reality but no matter how hard we try it will always be subjective. As a photography student I experimented with darkroom printing techniques and began to understand that this is not at all a recent development of digital photography. Dodging and burning are old techniques that are used to control the amount of light that hits a specific part of the emulsion and can control light/dark areas.

Next time you look at that beautiful $3000 print in some gallery just remember this: Every photograph is the photographer’s depiction of his own memory, not the truth. For me, many of my photographs are not even supposed to capture reality. I try to create a new world through my photographs. I do not care what others think of my photographs, I just try to create something beautiful that reminds me of a place I have been but shows me the things I may have missed.

Every time I look at an advertisement photo I now try to imagine what the photographer did to achieve the photograph. Photographs capture our emotions, and that is why they sell. You may have a perfect print but if it doesn't speak to us at a deeper level it will never sell. I am curious to see where photography is headed in the coming decades. It has constantly been progressing and will continue to do so and find new ways to capture our attention. Photography plays a huge role in advertising and as photography changes, so will advertising.

The following photograph has obviously been heavily edited. Following it are the steps I took to get it there.

The ocean.

As I return from a wonderful few days in San Diego California I can’t help but wish I was still there. There is something about the cool ocean breeze, the warm sunshine, and the sunlight dancing in the reflection of the ocean. I visit San Diego about once every year, and for some reason I always find myself wishing I was there longer. There is just something about the sights and the smells that reminds me of my childhood vacations. Each time I return I have an almost identical sunburn within the first two days, the taste of saltwater in my mouth, and a longing to be by the ocean. There is something special that keeps me coming back and I am not completely sure why. I always spend a majority of my vacations in the ocean either swimming, boogey boarding, kayaking, surfing, playing Frisbee, or anything else I can think of doing. Even now as I write about it I can almost smell the salt on the breeze. I know if I try to find why the ocean draws me back I will not find it. It has become something more than a memory for me. This connection influences many decisions I have made and many decisions I will make. It is but one of many mysteries of my life which I may never solve. I believe every person has a similar passion and weather they know it or not, it is a fundamental part of who they are and who they will become. They silently guide us through life and shape our decisions. In the end, it is but a dream. 

Free?!

After reading Predictably Irrational, I have become fascinated with the concept of FREE. I often find myself being caught by the trap and was very interested in the possible reasons I can’t help but take nearly every free thing I lay my eyes on. I realize I am not alone in this practice but it still fascinates me how much impact something free really does have. I have seen people wait in lines for hours for “Free” things. There is something special about getting something and giving nothing in return. We are so used to having to pay for everything that when we see a small gadget that we will never use with a free sign we simply have to have it. All these free things pile up somewhere in a closet and eventually we throw them away without ever using almost all of them. Most of us even recognize this before we take it but in the end we wind up with the free things anyway. Is all this stuff truly free? At the last career fair I decided at the beginning to only take one specific item. I was not there to get free things to fill up a shelf in my closet; I was there to try to find an internship. So while I was walking around looking for employers that caught my attention, I found the item I was after. As a photographer I am constantly transferring photos from one computer to another and again to another. During this process many of my flash drives have managed to vanish into thin air. Add to that the others that have somehow managed to stop working, and I find myself replacing them more than I should be. For some reason over the past few semesters the number of companies with free flash drives at their booths has greatly increased. At the end of the spring career fair I found myself with 5 new flash drives! I could have purchased 5 of them of similar quality and size for probably less than $5, but because they were free I feel I gained more value than I would have if I had paid for them. I often wonder how much benefit comes from me taking a flash drive with some random company’s logo on it. The career fair is supposed to attract people looking for opportunities, not for trinkets. It seems odd that the companies have to spend money on these little items to give away at a booth when they have lines several people long begging to get a chance to interview with them. Take Boeing for example, they hire from MSU every year, have a strong reputation in the community, are very well known, and still give away free things. I wonder how many people have ended up finding a job because they saw something cool on a table and went to grab it and ended up starting a conversation with the person at the booth. In the future I plan to create some sort of experiment to test this thought. Free things are never free for everyone. 

Does cost=quality? fishing reels

The first time I looked at all the shiny reels in the case at Troutfitters two things caught my attention. The quality of these reels seemed to be much higher than the $25 one I had previously purchased. I took a few out to play with and immediately was impressed with how smooth they spun. The perfect clicks they made sounded like precision. I was so amazed at the difference in visual quality I hardly noticed what the employee was saying about sealed drag systems and durability. The next thing I noticed was the price. $300 for a reel! That’s ridiculous, who would pay that much. Well as it turns out two years later, I did. I purchased a Ross evolution lt to pair with my Winston boron IIt. The difference the reel makes was immediately noticeable not in the ability to catch fish, but in the balance of the rod. I noticed it felt better in my hand; the whole thing seemed to be lighter and hardly felt like I was holding anything. I didn't plan to use this reel for catching huge 20lb salmon or anything, just the average 10-16 inch trout in some of the small rivers and streams in Montana. While in California over the summer I had the opportunity to try to catch some salmon. For this I purchased a new setup from Cabelas. The reel cost about $80. With this reel and its non-sealed drag system I managed to hook 9 salmon ranging from about 10-20lbs. I didn't land a single one not because I wasn't using a $300 reel with a more powerful waterproof drag system, but because even on this reel the drag system was stronger than the line I was using. With the drag fully engaged the fish would simply snap the line. Over the days of salmon fishing I managed to hold a king on the line for about an hour and the reel survived flowing down rapids being completely submerged and much more abuse than I imagined I would put it through. In the end I did not even clean it and it still worked perfectly. Recently I found a company that has the benefits of a $300 reel but costs only $150. I immediately jumped on this deal and found myself with a new Allen Trout II reel. Immediately I noticed a weight difference between it and the Ross, however, it balanced the rod perfectly so the lighter reel would have been worse in this case. After a few months of fishing all I can conclude is that it preforms just as well as the $300 reel for half the price! It still has the flashy color options, lifetime warranty, and fully sealed drag system. The difference is in the reputation. Allen is a small company trying to build its name while Ross is in nearly every fly shop. So when it comes to buying a new reel, price has little to do with quality. Many of today’s reels have tons of excess stopping power which you will never use. There are so many reel options out there today it is easy to find an affordable reel that will balance your rod and perform well for the rest of your life. They may not be in the fly shops around town, but someday they will be. The choice is yours, either wait for them, buy them online, or spend around double the price for similar quality. 

Troutfitters Photo Contest

I have always wanted to enter the Troutfiters photo contest, but never got around to staging photos with  my Troutfitters gear. I just looked at the 2013 winners photos and something caught my attention. Many of these photos look very staged with the gear just as I was thinking of doing. These are not pictures of people fishing, they are an attempt to win a prize by putting the logo in a photograph. it seems there are a large number of people who enter these contests and only a few win. I wonder how much effort people put in to try to win one of the main prizes. The consumers seem to have more than a normal relationship with the company. They look forward to the contest each year and plan out their photos to try to win the contest. While thinking of ways to win the contest myself I couldn't help but notice the same things. I have tried to stage a few photos with my hat and now i always take one of my Troutfitters hats fishing just in case a great opportunity comes up.  it seems the contest has actually made me a more loyal customer. At first I thought it was a simple way to get pictures to use in advertisements, but now I realize it may be more than that. It is a way to connect with customers and gain their loyalty. The prizes they give away are no small trinkets, they are things such as an $800 rod, $500 rod/line combos, $300 waders and others. These prizes have created followers as they are pretty much the same each year. I too, admit to being one of these followers waiting for the perfect opportunity to win one of these amazing prizes.