Beauty and the brand.

A few friends of mine started talking about how brands are trying to manage their identity by defining various consumer targets, which started a whole war of words. When a brand defines itself and its consumer base, there are various sub personas and personalities in it that also compliment the various attributes it tries to target. So the big question was " Does a brand need to stick to demographics as its research into the consumers, or how do you branch out with other resources to sell more of your products, rather even design for those consumers. We start with the assumption that consumers identify what they want, but according to some key new findings on consumer shopping frenzy its the opposite, people sometimes want to go in and find something different and something that their friends or family cant predict. People are not predictable any more, a social order that has altered the perception that a tween would like squishy and translucent materials, true they do but not all is the same with the demographics.

I started to research into this topic a lot more, and the more i read and observe, i notice a lot of overlapping in terms of social interaction. When people are interacting socially or in a group there is an overall consensus on certain aspects, its also the same with high schoolers and college students many who want to be followers than trend setters. That mentality forces them to buy and display what is socially acceptable, others want to go completely opposite and with stuff thats almost rebellious, others look at things comical, some go with intelligence. These perceptions almost directly relate to emotional perceptions like will, anger, laughter, love, desire etc.

This got me looking into the concept " Design & senses" and to understand this, i think i need to research a lot into what stimulates certain senses in the brain, how does behavior influence consumer decisions when they are given a lot of options. The industry we are in does not lack options with products, you can find a whole lot of options, also something i want to research into is role of aesthetics in product differentiation. A lot has been done in this field but something i am very interested is the emotional aspect of aesthetics and how it influences a brand..... More to come as i find some more.