Consumers Are Like Onions – Week One

Walking into class for the first time was definitely quite daunting. The first thing I noticed was that most of the class was made up of loud and rowdy boys! However, once I started talking to everyone, they all seemed extremely lovely and friendly.

During our first week, we were informed about our scary module scheme and even scarier assignment structure. We also purchased our books we would need for the year outside of class from the university bookstore.

Ruth introduced us to our course and explained that consumers can be compared to onions. We all have different layers. We were then set a fun task to draw our version of an onion on a large piece of paper. Ruth then asked us a series of questions regarding our interests, hobbies, social life, family life etc. Our page was then full of information about us along with our onion. Ruth then handed us all another person’s sheet of paper and we were then asked to write on the back, what we thought their personality was like. The student who got mine captured me perfectly I think. Girly, outgoing, likes shopping! J

Our next task was to look at 2 book covers, which both had the titles removed by Ruth. These are shown below.

As you can see, one is a fiery red colour. The images shown here is a city skyline (New York perhaps? Although we don’t know this for sure) and what appears to be a man’s smirk. The second book cover is the complete opposite as the colours used are very plain and monochrome. There appears to be a woman opening a car door with her foot stepping onto the pavement. Her foot is dressed in a fashionable high heeled shoe (This could indicate that she is glamorous/business-like?). Our task was to guess what each of the books was about, with our only clues being what was on the cover.

We had a class discussion about this and we all came to suggestions that the first book cover may be something to do with Wall Street, terrorists or city life. In comparison, the second book suggested that it could be about an independent business woman and/or romance. This task really did require us to judge a book by its cover! Our answers showed that the two book covers were given two different perceptions.

However, it was then revealed that the two books were in fact the exact same story, with both covers just being published at different times. Here, Ruth was reinforcing the fact that everyone sees the world from a different point of view.

My prep outside of the lecture room included purchasing and starting to read our textbooks for the year, in particular, Solomon et al (2010) chapters 1 and 2. From this, I learnt the following.

Consumers’ evaluations and perceptions of different products are affected by their 5 senses. These are sight, smell, hearing, taste and texture. We might be influenced by the shape and/or colour of a package, or more subtle factors, such as the symbolism used in a brand name, in an advert, or in the choice of a model for a magazine cover. “These judgements are affected by – and often reflect – how a society feels that people should define themselves at that point in time.” This can be explained as the study of the processes involved when individuals “select, purchase, use or dispose of products, services, ideas or experiences to satisfy needs and desires.”

As well as this, I researched different blogging websites that I could create my blog on, with blogger.com being the main favourite. We were also required to read through the assignment brief for our first assignment: Perception and Packaging. I read through this thoroughly to gain a helpful understanding of what we required to do for our first assignment for Ruth.

On the whole, my initial thoughts and first impressions of my new course are very positive; I thought that the first lecture was very interesting and fun. I am the type of learner who learns best by doing activities and getting involved rather than reading textbooks and writing things down so I thoroughly enjoyed my first week at university and I am looking forward to what else is ahead.

Please read my next post to see what else I learnt in my first week at university.

Hope to hear back from you.

Erica.