Decision Making

Sometimes I have a hard time making a decision.  I believe the reason is because I am afraid of making a bad choice and having buyers remorse.  There are many alternatives in the market today and even though I do like having alternatives, it does become overwhelming.

For example, at the start of every ski season I have certain items that I could really use and should buy.  However it is hard for me to buy items online and that is the most cost effective way to do so.  The result is I usually don't buy it.  So because of that I have had the same goggles for 6-7 years and the same snow pants for 6-7 years and lot of handy downs.

It seems that at the beginning of the season and throughout I recognize I have a problem, especially when my bottom gets wet because my pants are no longer water proof and I can't see anything out of my goggles because they are scratched.  I do an information search and then I can never move on to the evaluation of the alternatives.  Sometimes it is easier for me if I have purchase momentum because then I will actually buy something that I need.  If I don't then I probably won't buy it.

New Puppy

This is Tippy, my new puppy.  She is nine weeks old and came from a ranch south of Billings.  Tippy is an American Farm Collie and was named the "drama queen" of the liter.  

As we train her, it reminds me of what we are talking about in class about culture.  We have been enculturating and training her into our family.  Some examples of how we are doing this is we take her for walks around our house.  This gets her used to the smells of our house and also teaches her to stick around.  We also cuddle with her which helps us to bond together.  By bonding she will learn that we are her family and be more likely to listen to us.  If she is bad we lock her outside of our bedroom, which represents shunning her from the pack.  Horses do this as well and when we do it she realizes she has done something wrong and will hopefully not do it again.

This shows that even animals have cultures and that we can enculurate them into our families.  Have a culture helps everyone to get along and to show respect to each other.

Market Research

Right now in market research we have administered surveys and are now entering data into SPSS.  One of the questions on our survey asked if people owned labtops, desktops, cellphone or smartphone, and tablet.  I started to notice that everyone has a labtop and a cell phone.  I have not finished entering all the data but I will keep everyone updated with my findings.

What does this mean for consumer behavior? I think it shows where our future is headed.  If the majority of the students have labtops then why don't we use them more in education.  At work we live on our computers because that is what puts food on our tables and a roof over our heads.  At school, grade and university, we barely touch upon it.

My suggestion is every college student and eventually every student is required to have and or is provided a tablet and access to discounted e-textbooks.  The sooner we use and get comfortable with computers and technology the faster we can give back to our community and world.  Maybe the next facebook will be started by a 15 yr old instead of a 21 year old.  Maybe the next person to make a huge medical advancement will be 21 instead of 30.  We need to push the limit so we don't fall behind and I say this because I'm grown up in this time and feel it.  If we don't teach our children as much as we can we are not going to have the America we know today.