Consciousness and Consumer Behavior

There is an ongoing debate over the degree to which people are conscious of their decisions: whether they are fully rational in everything they do, or completely random and spontaneous.   Unfortunately, the “one extreme or the other” approach serves little purpose – both are true for certain people at certain times.  So the question to consider is the degree to which a given person in a given situation is conscious of their decisions.

This will likely vary from person to person and situation to situation.   Everyone has certain habits in terms of being observant and careful, and a given person may be very deliberate in one decision and very reckless in another.   So there are various levels of consciousness to consider, each of which is based on two factors – the information that was available to the decision and how that information is used in making a choice.

• Godlike Consciousness – This level of consciousness requires omniscience and the ability to employ flawless logic in making a decision.   This is an unattainable ideal, and too often people are assumed to be capable of thinking on this level.
• Heroic Consciousness – Entails a concerted effort to gather as much information as possible and apply highly disciplined logic in making a decision.   It is the best that a mere mortal can do, and far more than people put into the majority of decisions.
• Deliberate Consciousness – Requires a reasonable effort to gather information and apply a methodical process to making a decision, both to the best of his ability.   This is the level of effort put into “very important” decisions that have significant impact on our lives.
• Convenient Consciousness – Decisions made at this level apply a logical process that seems appropriate to the information that is known or easily accessed.   This is a fairly typical behavior for consumers for purchases that have moderate importance due to a cost/benefit that merit taking time to decide.
• Instinctive Consciousness – Involves decisions made on superficial information and non-systemic logic.    These decisions are often said to be made “naturally” and “without thinking too much about it” because the consequences of making a bad decision are perceived to be minor.
• Reflexive Consciousness – Behavior that requires no thought in the moment, but reflects thinking that has been done in the past.  This is employed in decisions to repurchase the same brand from the same vendor – the individual isn’t analyzing the problem and evaluating options, but doing what he did before.
• Spontaneous Consciousness – Decisions that are made “off the cuff” and action that is taken immediately without consideration of the consequences.   It is not accurate to say that this is without thinking, but it involves so little thought that it is assumed to be unconscious or subconscious.
• Reflex Consciousness - Actions that are taken extemporaneously without any thinking at all, and which often referred to as “accidents” when the outcome was damaging or “luck” when it was beneficial.   Dodging a flying object without knowing what it is or whether it will actually strike a person is a reflex action.

Naturally, the categories presented here are subject to argument, and it’s likely that many decisions fall somewhere between two of these categories – a bit more than convenient, a bit less than deliberate – but my intention here was to derive a system that’s more granular than the all-or-nothing approach that often characterizes discussions of consumer decisions.