Thoughts on Consumerism

Thoughts on  "Business Responsibilities Towards Customers Within the Automotive Industry".

I have read this booklet on business responsibilities, and have done some research.  A lot of my information is from stats.govt.nz (I find it funny how there's a sub category on 'Asian peoples')

The introduction mentions that there was a time where the 'buy beware' attitude was practiced by retailers and service providers.   It is great that we live in such a civilized country where we have passed this phase and follow a fair trading act.

Obviously in the bigger picture, we do not have families with an average of 16 children, a working father and a stay-at-home mother.  There are many factors that could have taken affect on this, but a major one would be how financially stable people  are these days.  With two partners per family working on average, this gives them more purchasing power.  As of September 2012, there are currently 2.4M people who are employed.  (Population of New Zealand 4.4M people)

Buyer demand is obviously increasing, with a current of two vehicles per household on average, this plays a huge toll on small automotive repairs and services workshops.

It also mentions extended trading hours being a key factor in the development in consumerism.  With almost all workshops being open six days a week, it is now much easier for people to get their vehicles serviced on their day offs.

Advertising and Media Development is actually getting a lot easier these days.  With technology increasing it is now easy for businesses to create their targets and only send their advertisements to them.  For example,  I received an email from a company selling castor wheels, because one of my blog posts contained the word 'castor'.  Obviously with social networking sites like Facebook, businesses can create free pages and expand their image through mutual people.  This is a completely free way of advertisement and is highly effective. Facebook has recently reached 1billion users.

Consumer behaviour patterns is mostly based on how much money the customer has and how they are feeling.  If a consumer has more money, they have more power to spend it.  This means that in the long run, if consumer behaviour patterns tend to change within periods of thirty days, a business may have a sale every thirty days at the period where it may be suited for consumers to spend their money.

As an automotive tradesman, it is important to have loyal customers that will come back.  Even though it is essential for vehicles to be services and eventually repaired, we need to consider our competition.  one customer bad experience can lead to many consumers creating an image on the company.  This is because people talk and 'bad news spreads like wild fire'.