Chapter 10: Buying and Disposing

Winter 2007

Situational Effects

Time Antecedents: prior to purchase

– Motivation – Mood– Temporal

Shopping Motives

Efficiency Social Experiences Sharing of common interests Interpersonal attraction Exercise status and authority Thrill of the chase

Situational Influences

Physical Surroundings: Atmospherics

• The servicescape provides a visual metaphor for an organization's total offering. It acts as a package, similar to a product's package, by conveying a total image and suggesting the potential usage and relative quality of the service

Dimensions of the Servicescape

ambient conditions: temperature, lighting, noise, etc.

spatial layout and functionality signs symbols and artifacts

Situational Influences

Social Surroundings• Purchase Pal• Co-consumers: the other patrons

Purchase Situation: The Buying Impulse

Unplanned Purchases

In-Store Triggers– External Shopping List? Suggestion Effect

or reminder effect– Planned product category– Planned impulse: Oh Boy! There’s a Sale!

THE BUYING IMPULSE

A sudden, often powerful and persistent urge to buy something immediately. The impulse to buy is hedonically complex and may stimulate emotional conflict. It is prone to occur with diminished regard for its consequence.

Spontaneous Urges to Buy

“I saw the ice cream and immediately wanted some”

Power and Compulsion

“It becomes an obsession. I start looking for ways to get it. Somehow I feel I can’t wait.”

“For me it is a totally mind filling experience. I could only think of one thing and that was where I was going to put it when I got home.”

Excitement and Stimulation

“It is a surge of energy.”

Synchronicity

“It felt like something that you had been looking for for a long time had appeared before your eyes, and if you don’t buy it now you won’t have another chance. It is just the right time and place.”

Product Animation: The Fantastic Forces “I was just standing in the grocery store

checkout line and the candy bar was there staring at me.”

“The pants were shrieking ‘BUY ME’.”

Hedonic Elements: Feeling Good and Bad “The feeling I get when I suddenly have

the urge to buy something is PANIC! I have to rush to the checkout stand before I change my mind!”

Conflict: Good vs. Bad and Control vs. Indulgence “It feels like a disease when you get it,

because you can’t stop or control it.”

Disregard for Consequences

“To hell with everything else. I want it and I’m going to get it.”

“You know you shouldn’t buy it, but it doesn’t matter.”

Disposition: Consumer Behavior and Divorce

Separation Liminality Reincorporation

Separation: Balanced Disposition

When we decided to get divorced we went home and we got a piece of paper out, and we just took turns and said, okay, here's the things, and we just took turns with who wanted what. And we went down the list and if there was something neither of us wanted, we sold it.

I kept the stuff in the kitchen, of course. Jim kept the things that were special to him. We were really not interested in each others' things. He had books from having been to graduate school and the stuff from his mom, who had died in the last several years. I had my books from college. (Kara)

Generous Disposition: The gift that Sunders

I got one car, she got two cars. I took all the bills. She took all the property, except for my personal possessions, my tools. I talked to my lawyer, and it was gonna be a long, drawn-out battle. And rather than do that, I just wanted to make a clean separation of it. It was the easiest way. (Jack)

"She bought all this shit. People like her really thrive on getting a blue-light special." Ben

Generous Disposition: The gift that Sunders

I ended up taking all the bills from the kids, and from Susie. I continued to pay for Susie's braces after we were divorced; I paid for-- I could go on with a list, but that's not really important-- I paid for a lot of the bills. I still, even today, support Susie beyond my child support and what the law does because my children are important to me and if Susie is doing good, my kids are doing good. (Michael)

Negative Disposition: Chattel as Battlefield

He probably had a dozen guns, and I imagine they were worth a few thousand dollars. One was a major expense for us, and I said, "Hey look, if you don't want to fight for it, just pay me for it right now." So he did, cause it meant a lot to him. It didn't mean crap to me. Out of spite, maybe, if he wouldn't have paid me, I might have fought for some of them just because they were a royal pain in the ass while we were married. I mean he was hanging pistols from our bedpost, but we had a toddler; I wasn't going to let him do that, you

know, so we had fights over guns.

When he came in planning to take the things we had decided were his, that was a bad day. You know, pull the drawer out, dump everything out, and take half of what's in there-- half the kitchen towels, four of the forks, four of the knives-- then, just leave the pile laying there. I mean, it was like he was raping the whole house. And there was this one stupid little bookshelf. It was old, it was ugly, it was pitted, it belonged in somebody's attic, you know? He started taking it, and I lost it, I mean talk about an overreaction, "Mark needs that for his books when he grows up." I mean, you could get five books on this thing. It was stupid. And that's when I called the police. I said, "You're not taking that!" That's bizarre behavior. 'Cause that thing didn't mean anything to me. But there was nothing else to fight over. (Dodge)

About the only thing that I miss-- and it's funny because it was the first thing in the settlement stuff that she said she wanted-- was our two cats. I mean, she didn't even like cats, but she staked out very quickly that she wanted to keep them. It's often crossed my mind that she may have thought, well, that may be some means to maintain contact... that I would want to come by and see my ex-pets. Bill

Shared Symbols: Sacred and the Profane

I: How about gifts that he gave you? B: He made a beautiful oak jewelry box, which I have

since given to Sylvia. I: Tell me about that...when did you give it to Sylvia? B: I moved out in February. I gave it to her the end of

March. I didn't want it. And I didn't want to throw it away. And I didn't want to give it away. Its just a very nice box that her dad has made, and she's entitled to anything that he has made for me. She can have it. I don't want to be reminded of him. I don't want to have sentimental attachment to anything that he has given me.

The Consumer in Transition

You don't realize how quickly all the symbols that you have of a relationship can be voided and wiped out. I mean, literally in one day you can have your mail changed, rent a post office box, stop joint accounts, send out a letter to all your credit cards, and you go from being from this nice middle class whatever, to living out of a post office box. It bothered me. There's this sense of being... kind of like uprooted, the absence of any connectedness. I had this massive sense of being thrown out of whatever good

standing was.

Anticipatory Activities

He told me [he wanted a divorce] in August of '87, but he'd been mentioning for a couple of years that he wanted me to go back to school. I don't know how long he had been planning this. If you really look into it, he probably had an ulterior motive, to support myself so he wouldn't have to pay me alimony forever. But I think he knew that I wouldn't be happy living on alimony forever.

Situational Grouping

I was alone. There was just no one...I mean, I didn't have any pets. I didn't have a cat; I didn't have dog to pat. And so the sense of touch for me was something that... it was just a huge void. So, at that time, I started going once a week to the beauty shop, and I told my beauty operator, "I am here specifically for the scalp massage. To try to replace some of that touch. Um, because I'm just not getting it anywhere else." I knew my beauty operator really well.

Personal Stability Zone

There was one night or two when I still had keys to the house. It was in the winter and very cold -- and my wife usually worked late, and was gone most of the evening getting her school stuff -- and I would sit down in the basement and sit by the wood stove and read books or watch television or just sit around.

Antistucture and Experimentation

I kind of went through a rebel period. I was kind of loose, you know, as far as sex went, for awhile. And, ahh, it's not like I screwed the whole nation or anything-- I could count on both hands or less, how many different men I've had sex with. It's like I went through it partly because I thought it was unfair that men have all these sexual experiences before they get married and I hadn't.

I remember thinking on New Year's of 1986, "this year I'm going to have an affair." I didn't know with who. I began to flirt like a fiend. Any girl who smiled back was worth a lunch to see if there was a possibility.

I went out and bought this new blue dress. When I put it on I wondered who... you know, there is developing within me a whole new person and I'm calling her my gypsy. The gypsy part of me. And I think that's my sexual identity and my claiming who I am as a woman. When I put on the new dress, let me tell you! It's V-necked, periwinkle. And, I've never worn -- I mean it's not the deepest V in the world, but it's deep, it's a V -- It's the deepest I've ever worn. And the skirt is full, and flowing, and it twirls nicely when you dance. It was very interesting, the physician that I danced with on Saturday night said to me, "You're really a free spirit." And I think, you know, I'm sure, 5 years ago nobody would have said that to me.

Identity Work and The Road To Autonomy

I went through a period, from the time we separated for about a year and a half, of trying to prove to myself that I was attractive and desirable and intelligent. I wasn't overweight really; I was in pretty good shape. I certainly wasn't fat. When I look back at those pictures I see I wasn't fat. But when we separated, I really felt as though I was huge and undesirable and just not very attractive. I dieted some. I mostly sat around and felt sorry for myself. When I went to Florida I got serious about jogging, and I was always on the beach. I lived in a bathing suit, so I was very physical-self oriented, you know. I thought scuba diving was a good physical thing to be doing, and um, I like to put challenges up for myself. Scuba diving was a big one for me; it was something I had always wanted to do.

R: Yeah, we stopped in Champaign-Urbana. And his family has been real nice to me. I can go down there and visit them anytime. The nieces and nephews still introduce me as their aunt. They haven't divorced me. So we went to Chicago and stayed with Vincent's cousins for a few days and Vincent wanted to go to Chicago and his dad won't go to the city on a vacation. We went to Chicago and we had a ball. Then we stopped at my brother's in Illinois and we were gone 2 weeks. First time since 1966 that I had checked into a motel. Cause I took a trip to New York before we were married and ever since then (my husband) always did all the checking in, I never even went in the office.

Sense of Autonomy

This time I get to choose, so I want to spend my money differently. I won't buy radar detectors. I won't buy a CB radio, and I won't buy air compressors. You know I don't have to worry about that kind of thing. I bought myself a freshwater pearl necklace. I wanted one for a long time, but things like that I wouldn't really go out and buy myself, and I don't know why, other than he was the wage earner. (Rose)

I: So you got separated after three months?W: Yah, because, well I found out that I was pregnant right after we got married and, and when I found out that... Well, He um, he was physically abusive and um...I: Mmhmm.W: And it got so bad that I had to leave.I: O.K.W: And so..um, that was it.I: You moved to friends or...?W: I moved, I moved into my own apartment.I: O.K.W: And, (baby talk) I moved into a shelter one night.I: O.K.W: But after that night I, I my um, I moved into my own apartment and the church helped me. They gave me all my furniture, brand new from the Goodwill.