i am a consumer essay

English 101

Consumer essay.

Consumer Essay Final

As a consumer in today’s society it is a negative cycle of buying and hoarding items that we don’t need and generally will never use more than once or may never use at all. Consumers in today’s society have no idea how to buy new items and lack the ability to get rid of these items in a useful manor and it has become a growing problem in society. It is a cycle that happens for the average consumer because many are not in any way conservative with the items they do have or with the money they spend on items they don’t need as opposed to using them on something they need critically. Most consumers are not smart consumers and it leads to most of our bad consumption on the daily basis. Based on my experiences as a consumer and being part of a generation that is everything but conservative, I have been able to step out of my shoes as a consumer and observe how others are exactly like me.

Being the epitome of a complicated consumer in contemporary society I am in a viscous cycle of repetitive buying and keeping items or getting rid of items in a useless way that is in no way important to me or to keep because just knowing myself that I have the top brand or the newest “thing” makes me happy and feel like I belong. Throughout my life I never had the chance to buy any of the newest things or get what was popular so I only had items vital to living. However as I got older I realized I could earn money for myself and gradually be able to buy things that other people had and help myself feel like I belong to society. I thought that I had the background and experience to be able to be a smart consumer and get things that I really needed and if I later realized I didn’t need them I would be able to efficiently get rid of them. However, as time went by and I got more responsibility and earned more money I began to fall into the cycle of buying things that were so unnecessary and then once I was done using them, which didn’t take long, I would put them in a drawer and they would sit. When I was in middle school, the Converse Chucks had just come out and everybody got a pair so I decided I need a pair, so I went out and bought a pair I thought I would absolutely love and once I got home I put them on and realized that I completely hated this pair of shoes. There are so many things I could have done to put the shoes to better use, such as taking them back and exchanging them for a different pair, giving them to someone who needed shoes, or even something creative. However I put them in my garage and they sat there until I left for college when I found them and saw that pair of shoes for the first time since I bought them. In society today it is almost as if most of what we consumer is based off of what majority of people like, like we don’t actually have an opinion on the item. We just really fall in love with them because we know the attention we will get once our friends will see them or we will feel closer to being an acceptable part of society’s norms. At least that’s how it is for my generation, there have been countless times that people have an article of clothing and they don’t even know if they like it or not, but because they saw somebody on MTV with it on, it makes them go crazy for it. Many people are conditioned to do this because we learn it at such a young age and after that it all goes to hell and becomes one viscous cycle.

One of the articles we read in class, “The Stranger Exchange” by Rachel Botsman really made me think about contemporary consumers in society today and forced a lot of self reflection upon myself. After reading that article and thinking about doing something so simple as setting up an old newspaper container and having people put items in it and then taking one for themselves is such a genius idea, but takes such little thought or effort. It is such a basic idea but people would never take the time to even give one thought towards it because we, as consumers, are so caught up in our cycle that we don’t realize the creative things we could create and the helpful things we could do with items we no longer use, which tends do a lot more items than we realize. The idea of the stranger exchange, if it could be amplified and used across the country, or even the world, it could help with the useless consuming people do. It might not be able to get rid of consuming for no reason or consuming just to feel a part of something, but it could be such a positive form of recycled consumption. Even building off of this idea because putting a box in the middle of an area and expecting people to exchange things and put their own items into it is a bit of a stretch, but creating ways to help people with buying more sufficiently and being able to get their unused items to people who could use them. As long as there is some form is some form of success we can always build off of those ideas and make them better to get more and better results. Getting rid of items that you don’t use by giving them to people who would not only use these items, but appreciate them in a way that some people can’t. There was a blog I posted earlier and it was an image of an Android phone advertisement and it implied that it didn’t take a genius to both operate the phone and to choose it over an Iphone. This is more of a minuscule example but it is a prime example of why people consume with no motive other than to fit in or have the newest things. It makes you feel like you are smarter and more important than those that don’t own an Android, or own the Iphone and attempts to give a sense of power over those people. This is dangerous because just feeling like you have that power is something that people fiend and crave for their lives, it’s the search for ultimate power and feeling like you are more than the other people or the general consumer. However if you think about this it’s extremely dumb and useless, this is because just cause you have a different phone or a better phone doesn’t give you any power over anybody. It’s a psychological mind state that people keep themselves in to make day to day life better and makes them feel important. This is going to be and has been destructive to consumers around the world because it gives consumers a false identity and false sense of power over any one person.

As a consumer, I am self destructive and destructive to other consumers because it is a self conscious need for power and not wanting to get rid of items that I spent money on even though I have no use for them. I spend money that I barely have on things I don’t really need and it causes a habit for myself to see something, such as shoes, I really want but probably will never wear and it wastes my money when it could be used for bills or food. I believe that a quick way to help people and myself with that could be the stranger exchange because it is a simple way to get rid of an item that you don’t need and possible even pick up an item that you could use. Another way to help people stop consuming so mindlessly is by showing society the happiness they could bring by helping less fortunate people by giving them items that they no longer need or use. This would be hard however because it’s hard to get people to stop and actually think about their consumption in all senses, but I believe it is possible. I have faith in people and I believe that there is still hope to show people that they can help others by consuming with more thought.

Revision History

• Identity as a Consumer
• Advertisement Analysis
• Advertisement Re-Design 
• Photo Essay
• Synthesis (Draft)

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I Shop Therefore I Know That I Am: The Metaphysical Basis of Modern Consumerism

• First Online: 16 November 2021

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• Colin Campbell 4  

Part of the book series: Consumption and Public Life ((CUCO))

This chapter explores possible connections between modern consumerism and the answers to such metaphysical questions, as ‘who am I?’ and ‘what is real?’ Whilst one may imagine, at first glance, that such an apparently mundane activity could not possibly be connected with metaphysical issues, there is an obvious link with the question of identity. However, whilst postmodern thought suggests that consumer behaviour involves a search for identity, what is proposed here is that identity is expressed through the medium of ‘taste’, which is also the means through which consumers discover was is ‘true’ for them, thereby turning ‘the consumer is always right’ into an epistemological principle. Consumption, especially shopping, is also presented as an activity through which individuals ‘discover’ who they ‘really are’, the intensity of the associated emotion providing a crucial guarantee that they are indeed ‘alive’. In this way it is suggested that a fundamentally idealist and emanationist ontology has become the underlying paradigm for the modern consumerist view of the world.

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Campbell, C. (2021). I Shop Therefore I Know That I Am: The Metaphysical Basis of Modern Consumerism. In: Consumption and Consumer Society . Consumption and Public Life. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83681-8_8

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Understanding Consumer Behavior Essay

Introduction.

Understanding consumer behavior is one of the critical elements in the success of a business. Consumers play a significant role in any economic model in determining products that are in demand. According to BBC, since the COVID-19 pandemic, consumer behavior has significantly changed (Latham, 2021).

Many consumers are more conscious of the environmental impact of the products they are consuming. Additionally, due to the economic hardships that the pandemic has caused, consumers are becoming more ethical in making their purchases, with many of them preferring affordable products. According to the article, sustainability has become a significant influence on the choices the consumers (Latham, 2021). The evolved behavior is influencing the consumers to make choices aimed at reducing the length of the supply chains for better outcomes for the environment. For instance, since the pandemic, consumers make most of their purchases locally, especially from small businesses.

One of the primary reasons for this change is attributed to the lockdown period when people spend most of their time with their families and enjoy nature. As a result, they developed a more positive approach towards the environment, thus becoming ethically aware of the environmental impact of some of the products and the need to consume more sustainable products (Latham, 2021). According to The Theory of Individual Behavior topic, consumer behavior is categorized into two elements: consumer opportunities and consumer preferences (Baye & Prince, 2022). Consumer opportunities provide people with choices on goods and services, while consumer preferences are the choices people can afford.

The recent consumer behavior influenced by the pandemic focuses more on consumer preferences than consumer opportunities. Consumers are only purchasing essential goods and reducing expenditure on secondary goods (Baye & Prince, 2022). The uncertainty caused by the pandemic has made people be prepared for emergencies hence the need to be cautious about their expenditure.

Latham, K. (2021). Has coronavirus made us more ethical consumers? . BBC News. Web.

Baye, M., & Prince, J. (2022). Managerial Economics & Business Strategy (10th ed., pp. 104-108). McGraw Hill LLC.

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IvyPanda. (2023, November 19). Understanding Consumer Behavior. https://ivypanda.com/essays/understanding-consumer-behavior-essay-examples/

"Understanding Consumer Behavior." IvyPanda , 19 Nov. 2023, ivypanda.com/essays/understanding-consumer-behavior-essay-examples/.

IvyPanda . (2023) 'Understanding Consumer Behavior'. 19 November.

IvyPanda . 2023. "Understanding Consumer Behavior." November 19, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/understanding-consumer-behavior-essay-examples/.

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