Consumer Behavior
2. What is the basic difference between a fad, a fashion, a classic, and a trend? Provide example of each. A fashion refers to a style that is accepted by a large group of people at a given time such as skinny jeans. Some styles become classics, which are styles that become acceptable and in good taste anytime and place such as the classic black dress. A fad is a short lived fashion that suddenly becomes popular and quickly disappears; generally it only affects a specific group of the population such as low rise jeans wore by juniors.
A trend is a general direction or movement as a style begins to be accepted such as the revival of high-waist jeans made from a light denim which also were worn in the 60-70s. 11. State some differences between the positivist and interpretivist approaches to consumer research. For each type of inquiry give examples of product dimensions what would be more usefully explored using that type of research over the other.
Positivist assume the nature of reality is objective, tangible, and single, while the interprevisit believe that nature of reality is socially constructed and multiple, this should be used with products that are socially minded and include interactions based on technology such as social networking. Positivist have a goal of prediction which is good when trying to create trend reports and in the process of product development, while interpretivist goal is of understanding, this would be most useful when analyzing behavior toward products already on the market. . What is the difference between an enacted norm and a crescive norm? Identify the set of crescive norms operating when a man and a woman in your culture go out for dinner on a first date. What would they wear? An enacted norm are explicitly decided upon while crescive norms are embedded in a culture and are only discovered through interaction with other members’ of the culture.
When a young man and woman go out on a first date, if they are both from the same culture then they are following crescive norms, because they are both following the norms which are accepted within their given culture. If they are both from completely different cultures, then they would be operating on enacted norms. What they would wear would be determined based upon what is accepted in their culture as appropriate wear for the occasion. 3. Read the Article “ Body Ritual Among the Nacirema” and discuss what is going on.
