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Consumer Behaviour

Notes mastering many aspects of a technological product such as Excel, most also experience
frustration at being unable to fully utilise the capabilities of many such technologies.
5. Fulfils/Creates desires: It fulfils desires while developing or increasing awareness of
other desires. The acquisition of a computer meets needs for faster and better word
processing but generates desires for printers, zip drives, and additional software.

6. Assimilation/Isolation: It can facilitate human interaction and isolation. Television
can be used for interactive activities such as Super Bowl parties and shared
experiences such as watching "Dawson's Creek." It also leads to solitary viewing and
a lack of family discussion and interaction. The Internet both facilitates
communication and restricts it.

7. Engaging/Disengaging: It encourages involvement, flow, and activity while
discouraging the same things. Many technologies such as television and computers
remove people from direct experience and involvement while simultaneously
involving them in more passive or abstract experience.

Individuals differ in the extent to which they experience these paradoxes and in the degree
to which such paradoxes produce anxiety and frustration. However, everyone experiences
them to some extent and they arouse both positive and negative emotions in all of us.

Those individuals who find such paradoxes stressful adopt four categories of strategies for
avoiding or minimising them:
1. Pre-acquisition avoidance strategies: These include ignoring information about
new technologies and refusing or delaying the acquisition of new technological
products.

2. Pre-acquisition confrontative strategies: Using someone else's technology product
temporarily; using buying heuristics such as buying a familiar, widely known brand
or a basic, less sophisticated model; engaging in extensive pre-purchase learning
and extended decision making; and buying extended warranties or maintenance
contracts are examples.
3. Consumption avoidance strategies: After acquiring the new technology (often as a
gift or in response to peer pressure) one may still ignore it, abandon it, not repair or
maintain it, or use it only under restricted circumstances (the VCR is used for showing
rental movies but not for recording movies).
4. Consumption confrontative strategies: Accommodation (changing one's behaviours
to meet the requirements of the new technology); partnering (developing an
attachment to the technology), and mastering (thoroughly learning the technology)
are common strategies.
Consumers are aware of technology paradoxes and pursue a variety of strategies to cope
with them. They are not passive recipients of technology and do not automatically assume
that new technologies are net positive benefits.
Question

What are the implications for the diffusion of technological innovations?
Source: “Paradoxes of Technology: Consumer Cognisance, Emotions, and Coping Strategies,” Journal of Consumer Research, September
1998.

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