Consumer Identity In Marketing

One of the important concepts in marketing is consumer identity and how it effects decision making. This is because one way people make a statement about their lifestyle and identity is through the decisions about what products they buy.

Take pancake mix for example. Recently, I was at a store and saw pancake mix in a rustic looking box with a grizzly bear on it. It was clearly a rugged outdoors themed box for a seemingly hearty pancake mix (or flapjacks as the box said).  I will admit, I am a fan of a lot of the Discovery Channel style programming about wilderness survival and people who work in the far north and I like to think of myself as someone who could go up north and live like they did in the old gold mining days. Because the ingredients did seem natural and hearty (100% whole grain for one thing) and I was interested in the overall theme, I got them.

Now, this product image appealed to me. But what about someone who likes to think of themselves as something of an amateur French chef? A product with French themes on the packaging, highlighting that it can be used to make crepes would probably catch the eye of this consumer more than one which conjures up images of a mountain man making pancakes at dawn over a campfire.

In the case of the mix I bought, I might not have ever noticed the very same pancake mix had it not appealed to me through its packaging. I would not say the packaging alone made the sale but it caught my attention. I was made aware of the product for the first time and liked the ingredients, so I bought it. That is just one example of why appealing to different consumer identities through effective marketing is important and in this case ended in a sale.