In my Ecology class last week, we spent a couple class periods discussing animal behavior in nature. As we delved into topics regarding animals and the interactions they have in their environments, one thing was clear: consumer behavior does not just exist in supermarkets. In fact, many animals in nature make the same routine decisions we humans do when making everyday “shopping decisions.”
When we head out to the supermarket to pick up groceries, a lot of our decisions are influenced by the purchases we have made in the past. This can relate back to the “loyalty loop” in the McKinsey Decision Making Model. From experience, I know to reach for that distinguishable red bottle of Coca-Cola and avoid the dark blue bottle of Pepsi. I don’t consciously think, “I don’t really enjoy drinking Pepsi. I prefer Coca-Cola.” As consumers, our past experiences lead us to make decisions every day without consciously recognizing every single action we take.
Animals do the same thing in nature. When selecting what to eat for dinner, animals act in ways very similar to us. They know from past experience what they like, and this learned knowledge leads them to make these unconscious decisions. Take, for example, a snake searching for a frog dinner. A frog can have many distinct color patterns that warn potential predators – in nature, this is called aposematic coloration. Snakes will associate these colors with unpleasant experiences, and they will avoid eating those frogs. When doing his evening “grocery shopping,” a snake will learn what prey to select, just based on the color patterns. In a similar way, these same snakes will learn to choose the army green frogs just based on past experience.
In many ways, this relates to classical conditioning and Pavlov’s dogs. Pavlov showed this very clearly in his experiment with classical conditioning and dogs. When the dogs learned to associate a bell with dinner time, their mouths began to salivate. This experiment can relate in many ways to humans and their shopping behavior. Whenever we have a good experience with a product, we subconsciously begin to recognize its packaging, and we find ourselves reaching out to those products on the shelves. Take a look around Dollar Tree, and you’ll find lots of generic products that may seem like the “real thing.” The fact is, the manufacturers of these knockoff products know the tricks – package that bottle of detergent using the same colors and font as Dawn, and people will be duped.
To sum it all up – regardless of whether we are in a supermarket or nature, packaging matters to both animals and humans alike. The next time you’re in a supermarket, know that the snake out by your pond is subconsciously making the same purchasing decisions that you are.
- Tom Looney
Interesting post! The comment about the generic brands trying to mimic the real brands stuck out to me as particularly interesting. I never thought about that before, but you're right- generic brands DO look like their brand-name counterparts. Relating that to Pavlov and evolutionary/ecological behaviors makes total sense to me. Would consumers even LOOK at generic products if they had their own "identity" or do they need to copy other brands to even get noticed? It would be an interesting experiment. THanks! Erin
ReplyDeletePackaging matters to both animals and humans like your post says. I think that there might be a distinction in why it matters to each though. Pavlov's dogs exhibit how all animals alike can learn to associate one stimulus with another. Which is essentially what we do when we make consumer decisions. But it's interesting how animals only make choices based on what they learned because it helps them survive. We follow many other motivations. We might buy the Coke because we saw at some point an elite person of society drinking Coke, and a neural connection formed that Coke=status.
ReplyDelete