Why Do We Buy - Cognitive Biases - An Interview with a phone buyer

Interview:

Item purchased: Sansumg Galaxy S5 phone

• What research preceded the purchase?

“I compared specs side-by-side to the Iphone 6 to see how the specific features stacked up to each other.  I also wanted to look at pictures of the two phones to see their relative size and weight.  It was important to me to feel like I was getting the best phone for the price I wanted.  I also wanted a phone that was cool, trendy and small.”

• How does the consumer use the product?

“I use my phone every day, for everything, I am on it all the time and I need to have the best phone possible to keep pace with my work.”

• What type of relationship does the consumer have with the product?  (i.e. emotional, practical.)

“I would say my phone knows more about me than my girlfriend, I would acquaint my relationship to my phone like that of a mother and son.”

• What things have gone wrong or been surprisingly good?

“I would have to say that so far I am pleased with my phone, however, I do notice that the overall hardware quality is not as good as the Iphone 6.”

• Is the consumer satisfied or unsatisfied?

“I am very satisfied, having a new phone is like having a new way to connect with people and they get better every year.”

 

In our fast-paced world we inevitably encounter multiple forms of cognitive process as an after effect of being able to process tremendous amounts of information.  For example, errors in memory can affect how someone might think about a particular event. This in turn influences how someone may think about an associated event, which can lead to cognitive bias. Cognitive biases can cause us to make fast and incorrect judgments, decisions, and interpretations of information.

            When evaluating the new phone my interviewee used a metaphor or representative based bias by using another commensurate phone to compare it to. In Jansson-Boyd, (2010) a cognitive metaphor or representativeness is understanding of one idea, in terms of another or in this case one phone in terms of another.  Also, Iphones are considered the best phones on the market so in order to create a benchmark, my interviewee used the Iphone to establish the relative value of the Sansumg phone. 

I also found that my interviewee used predictive heuristics when deciding to purchase his phone.  While there was a ton of data on the internet, including reviews and tech break-downs of the two phones In question my interviewee only considered what he saw in the specs – which are generally written by marketing staff.  Jansson-Boyd (2010) says that “Typically consumers only consider a small part of all the information available to them about a specific product or service and not all the information is attended to and processed, (Jansson0boyd, 2010, P.132).  This may have led to his slight dissatisfaction with his choice. 

            Another factor at play in my interviewee’s decision making process was cognitive dissonance.  My interviewee described wanting to have the best phone but not pay as much for it.  This is a great example where we have conflicting internal desires (Jansson-Boyd, 2010) and the result was that my interviewee bought a phone that was good, but not as expensive as the Iphone.  He has noticed that the quality is not quite that of the Iphone, so he did pay less, but did he get the best phone?

 

 

            Another type of bias that I noticed was the bandwagon approach or consensus approach.  Jansson-Boyd (2010) say that the consensus bias is the credence we give to others peoples decisions.  In this case my interviewee wanted a phone that was “trendy,” which based on my own experience, it is.  So he gave a lot of credence to what other people were buying and overruled his previous experience as Iphones being better. 

What surprised me the most was how much data is left on the table when people make decisions.  Most people would like to think that we are always making the best consumer decisions based on un-biased empirical data but this is just untrue.  It seems we more often make emotional rather than reason based decisions. 

 By Ari Benjamin Morguelan

References:

Jansson-Boyd, Cathrine. (2010). Consumer Psychology. New York, New York: McGraw Hill