Week 7 Reading Reflection

One of the things that surprised me in this week's reading was that Daniel Yankelovich asserted that non-demographic traits are MORE likely to influence a buyer's decision-making process, as opposed to their demographic traits. I somewhat disagree, and would amend that there are other factors besides demographics to consider, but that they are still the main component of buying patterns. Let's take buying a motorcycle as an example. Sure, the buyer would need to like the bike and maybe prefer it over other modes of transportation (non-demographic traits), but they would not even consider it if they were not old enough to ride one or have enough money to purchase it (demographic traits). I'd probably ask the author if he still felt this way about product patterns. He made that assertion in 1964, and as things have gotten more expensive I would be interested to see if he believes the focus has shifted to demographic traits. Besides that one section, I followed along with the rest of the reading.