EDWARD'S LECTURE NOTES:
More notes at http://tanguay.info/learntracker
C O U R S E
Subsistence Marketplaces
Madhu Viswanathan, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
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C O U R S E L E C T U R E Low Literacy's Effect on Consumer Behavior Notes taken on January 13, 2015 by Edward Tanguay |
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low literacy and consumer behavior
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for those with low literacy it is difficult to:
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locating the product
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when you can't read, it takes a long time just to find the product, so when you find one, you buy it without deciding if it is the best one
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locating the right price
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there are many prices:
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regular price
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sale price
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price per kilogram
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item price for bundled products
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locate correct packages
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you need 150 candles
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there are packs of 10 and 100 and individual candles all with different prices
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computing the price
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if one item costs $1.50, how much do two cost, or twelve?
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what is the price if it is 20% off?
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computing total cost on a shopping trip
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allowing for taxes if necessary
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one is afraid that one won't have enough money for the taxes
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nutrition labels
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how people think in low literacy consumer markets
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concrete reasoning
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reduce their habits to simple rules
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look to see what costs most, what costs less, and get the one that costs less
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low-literate adults display concrete, context-dependent thinking
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people with low literacy have problems with abstractions
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don't see three products and understand that they are related
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often don't think in terms of "tools" but "hammer" and "saw"
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see one product and imagine a concrete use for it in their lives
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interest rates have to be explained in terms of currency units
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"state of health" is an abstraction
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low literate people may see health simply as either "in hospital" and "out of hospital"
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"nutrition" is an abstraction
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pictographic thinking
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they can remember the brand logo and brand name as an image, and then either buy that product again or not
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those with a very low literacy level cannot even read numerals
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but almost all people can tell a higher number from a lower number
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they don't think of how much sugar they need in terms of units of measurements or price per unit
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they think of themselves backing a cake and how much sugar they pour into the bowl
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if you want to understand people living in subsistence and design solutions for them, you have to understand how they think