Thursday, October 28, 2010

Social Bookmarking Soulmate

On the quest to finding my social bookmarking soul mate, I searched on the Delicious website. There was no one out there that could relate to my interests. After finding someone that had tagged an article I found interesting, I went to their page of tags. Although they had tagged my article, the rest of their topics were completely unrelated to mine. After a few hours of searching, I took a different approach and decided to search specific tags that brought interesting sites to my attention. Upon doing so, I was much more satisfied with the results.


I typed in consumer behavior and psychology and received a wide variety of sites that related perfectly to my topic. I had succeeded in finding my “tag key word soul mate.” I scrolled down and nearly every article was relevant to potential research in the field of consumer behavior. By doing this, I was exposed to other tags that would make it even easier to find sites of interest. Tags that were grouped with the ones I typed in included: marketing, decision making, emotion, persuasion and branding.


One article that was tagged with the following key words: consumerism, choice, consumer behavior and psychology, I found very useful. Forty-nine other delicious users tagged this article-Six Psychological Reasons Consumer Culture is Unsatisfying It interestingly explored the trend of consumers leaning towards experiential purchases over material items. People now find greater satisfaction with experience based purchases because they are often difficult to compare. The article further explored that material objects are more likely to be re-evaluated as being necessary. After a few days with the product, the consumer might choose to return it. The study concluded that there is less opportunity for re-evaluation and buyer’s remorse with an experiential purchase. (When you pay thousands of dollars for a vacation, you are kind of forced to enjoy it, or else your money is wasted). Another reason was brought to light that I’m sure many people can relate to. As soon as you purchase the latest gadget – a new or cheaper model is brought to the market. This is sure to create customer dissatisfaction and annoyance. (I know this has happened to me on several occasions)


Another article, Consumer Behavior: the Psychology of Marketing had 459 tags (content was actually written by a USC Marshall professor, Fight On!). That article was one that I stumbled on to when I was looking for my social bookmarking soul mate. I explored the users that had tagged that article and I discovered that most of their interests were not similar to mine. To get back to the point, this article was very useful in that it covered all aspects of the psychology behind consumer purchases.


Although I failed in finding a bookmarking soul mate, I did find another useful site to help me participate in research: Delicious.com My readers will definitely be able to find useful AND interesting information relating to consumer behavior. Typing in a couple of relevant key words provides a gateway into an amazing database of resources. The best part is, users have already ranked the usefulness of the site/page, and the researcher (you and me) can gage this by the numbers of times it’s been book-marked. Research has never been easier. Now, the only hard part is actually taking the time to READ through the resources!

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