Online Shopping, An Introverts Heaven

Have you ever bought something online? Do you by chance remember your first purchase? I never would have thought then that the invention of online shopping would evolve to what it has today.  I love that I can order anything I want from groceries to clothes without ever leaving my home.
In essence, online shopping is not only convenient, and time-saving but it is also an introvert's heaven.

Marketers are always analyzing our behaviors and attitudes as consumers to know how to persuade and manipulate us into buying their products. While eBay was the first platform to begin selling, Amazon had a different strategy and it quickly took over the market.

Amazon has been very successful at marketing to introverts with the way they implemented online shopping. Amazon has capitalized on their target audience by expanding their services. At first, they only sold products, and they offered prime membership which gave you free shipping. Shortly after, they started offering movies like Netflix and music like Pandora. Now they have the option to order groceries and have them delivered to your door within a few hours. Another great option I love from them is their subscribe and save, for items that you use on a regular basis.

Online shopping has made life so much easier. With technology at our fingertips and the convenience of not having to deal with crowds, introverts can now spend more time in their happy place.

Marketing Through Our Perceptions

Have you ever seen the photo above? What is the first thing you see? A young lady looking away or an older lady? It may depend on the perception on how you view yourself. For some, it may be easier to see a younger woman looking away while for others it may take some time to see. Have you ever really sat down to think just how much our perceptions play into our actions, thoughts and emotions? Have you ever realized that these are the things that research marketers focus on in order to adequately market to us as consumers?

There are 3 Stages that Marketers use to target our Perception. 

   1. Exposure   2. Attention   3. Interpretation

By targeting our emotions and selling us on an experience, rather than just a product, marketers are more likely to be successful at getting their message across to us the consumers, which often times works better. People enjoy being sold on a feeling, an emotion or an experience rather than just a product itself. Think about it! Have you thought about the slogans that marketers use lately to target an audience such as the ever popular

 "Hungry? Grab a Snicker. You're not you when you are hungry." 

When we are sold on a feeling rather than a product itself, it plays into our senses as human beings and it is what makes marketing more successful. Tying marketing into our perceptions through exposure to a product, getting our attention through different platforms and engaging our interpretations.

The Beauty Industry & How It Influences Our Self Esteem

The beauty industry has a major influence on our society, especially female consumers. Starting from a very young age, we are surrounded by images of beautiful women everywhere we turn, from magazines, billboards, television and online. Everywhere we turn, we are surrounded by an ideal of "beauty" and "perfection" especially now with the use of social media platforms.

With social media being such a prevalent medium at our disposal these days, marketers of the beauty industry now have the ability to impact consumers at an even younger age now. Have you recently stopped to pay attention to what the new generation is being exposed to on a regular basis now? I can honestly say that what our youth are exposed to nowadays is vastly different than what I was exposed to when I was growing up in the nineties and I still found myself comparing what I saw in the mirror to what I saw in the magazines and on television.

If you were a young girl who found yourself comparing herself to the beautiful girls in the magazines and never feeling like you were pretty enough, skinny enough, tall enough, can you only imagine growing up in today's social media craze? A simple five minute Instagram scroll nowadays can leave any teenage girl feeling inadequate when she is comparing herself to celebrities that have gone under the knife to look the way that they do. Or perhaps have had the help of Photoshop or a pound of makeup.

Today's billion-dollar beauty empire industry thrives on selling consumers the products that will make them feel better about themselves. They are selling us on our own selfish needs, wants and tendencies. With social media and society being the way that it is today, this world is the most narcissistic it has ever been which is what is driving the beauty industry forward.

In order for us to want to buy something, we have it tied to a feeling, which in this case it's our self-esteem. We want to feel good about ourselves but in reality, we don't need anything outside of ourselves to feel good. What do you think of the way the billion-dollar beauty industry manipulates our self-esteem?




Just for fun...

Take a look at these links I found.


The Perfect Body According to Men and Women:
http://time.com/65901/how-men-and-women-differ-when-drawing-up-the-perfect-body/


What Barbie Would Look Like in Real Life:
https://www.babble.com/beauty/what-would-barbie-look-like-in-real-life-a-new-study-in-comparison-by-artist-nickolay-lamm/