I hereby admit honestly: I am a crazy shopper. I love shopping and every time I’m surrounded by dresses, shoes, jewelries, foods…, only one thing pop out of my mind: What are you waiting for? Let’s start shopping! I believe that I’m not alone– girls are with me.

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However, by announcing “I am a crazy shopper” doesn’t mean my brain doesn’t belong to me any more or is controlled by the sellers totally and buy everything I love without even care or consider about anything . No, definitely it is not this way of crazy. Actually I’m a passionate (crazy) while rational customer. I know what I want before going into the shopping center; I have clear picture of the particular product I’m looking for; I listen to salesperson’s words but I have my own standard to follow; I bargain with the retailer for a reasonable price; I walk in several shops to get a general information of the stuff I want to buy and make comparison among them before deciding which one I’ll buy… All in all, I’m a rather rational customer. (To avoid potential criticism and obey the scientific discipline that nothing is absolutely one way, I supplement that the circumstances above are the majority cases.) One of my friends once gave me high compliment after I took a blouse at 50% of its original price by bargaining, yet herself is in fact not a “clever” shopper. She just wanders with me aimlessly; it’s pretty easy for sellers to talk her into buying something though originally she didn’t want to; she almost doesn’t bargain when shopping… (I start help her after noticing these traits of her.) These distinct contrast between our shopping behaviors make me think: based on my good understanding of her, she is a very peaceful girl– never get angry, seldom disagree with others and always tend to obey other people. So I hypothesize that the compliant shopping behavior may has a correlation with her personality.

Fortunately, some scientists help me substantiate my hypothesis and reach to some further conclusions. The study method is through depth interviews which sought to answer two questions: “What do consumers experience when they go shopping?” and “What do shopping experiences mean to consumers?” The interviews totaled over 30 hours of conversation, resulting in more than 300 pages of single-spaced text. (view study) In summary, researchers reach the conclusion that “Shopping is both an emotive experience and an expressive communicative act. Shopping defines, reflects, and expresses the self, the relationship with others, and the world. The ability or inability to master the power of shopping can contribute positively or negatively to self-worth.” In other words, shopping can reflect and test what type of people ourselves are and how we relate with other people and the surroundings.

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Almost my every blog goes through the similar process as we discussed in class (expect “imaginary data and indirectly- relevant data”): from “anecdotal observations” to “good experiments + good field observations”, thus from “weak inference” to “strong inference”. It’s cool to think that we are actually implementing science frequently by ourselves.

Hope you are a rational shopper and let’s enjoy shopping!

citation come from: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148296315003537