With the winter fast approaching and the warm weather behind us, many people are starting to yearn for that hot sun and beach breeze of the summer. While cranking up the heat in your apartment and having a baby pool doesn’t quite make the cut as far as faking the experience, a growing trend is beginning to fake other parts of the past time. I am of course referring to the growing fascination with fake tanning, more specifically spray tanning.
Fake tan is the fastest-growing area of cosmetics with new brands coming out every other day. Whether it’s Jergens gradual tan builder, any of the L’Oreal sublime bronze lotions, tanning towelettes or Mystic tanning at a salon the consumer trend seems to be towards the most natural fake tan for the cheapest price. The mentality being: why spend hundreds of dollars on a vacation when you can tan at home for $10.99 a bottle or in a booth for $30! It is shocking how many girls on campus you can obviously tell have had fake tans gone wrong. The orange skin or streaked application of a color that is obviously not natural leaves me to wonder as a consumer… What were they thinking! There are many students who have successfully navigated the consumer jungle of tanning products and so I decided to see what the draw was to it.
As a curious consumer I couldn’t help but try it out and see what all the fuss was about. I researched and decided that I would splurge for the mystic tan considering I would be sporting the ‘Fan’ (Fake – Tan) for a few days before it wore off and was skeptical about how it would look. First and foremost the process of getting a spray tan is not trivial. It takes quite a while and involves a fair amount of planning. Not only can you not shower or get wet for four hours but you are also covered with the actual die for that period of time. This creates the challenge of wearing something that wont give you marks in the tan and also wont be ruined from the brown die. The weather is also crucial because when they say you can't get wet this include rain.. I've had visions of leaving behind an orange trail and having my face appear to be dripping off. It’s cold and dark in the booth and the mist has a less than ideal odor. If you can get past those things there are still the very crucial instructions that you must follow or else risk the infamous Ross debacle from friends (see below).
Overall I was pretty happy with the result. I looked freshly bronzed while not orange and the tan was even without any streaks. I could see why people went through the uncomfortable process to get the tan. However it brought up in my mind what consumers will do for a desired result. As we see on Black Friday every year consumers will go to crazy lengths to get something that has a high intrinsic value. While I was happy with the outcome, as consumers are happy with the half price TV they get after waiting 6 hours in the rain, I was surprised that I had not heard about the annoyances of getting a spray tan. Don't get me wrong its safe to say I would probably go and get another one but it really is a testament to consumer habit of putting up with uncomfortable things in order to get what we want. Inconveniences aside we as consumers will do what we have to get what we want.
Emily Kieczykowski is a Senior BEM major with a concentration in marketing and a minor in Psychology at Wake Forest University
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