Consumers Aren't People

Well at least not how marketers view them. “Consumers” are made-up people; they don’t really exist. When marketers speak of consumers, they often view them to be rational, deliberate or impartial. This is often not the case. People are irrational, unintentional and biased. They buy based on emotion, gut-feeling or some other subjective reasoning.

It's not too often you see a person performing a cost-benefit analysis on a pair of shoes before pulling the trigger. Instead, people almost always make an emotional decision first; the rationale is just an added bonus. When was the last time you heard a person say, "These shoes are in my budget, plus I just happen to really like them." It's usually the opposite.

Don't get me wrong, people don't always buy based on emotion first - only when an underlying personal connection exists. Yet marketers do extensive research to determine what people should do, and they call them consumers. But, consumers don’t buy products, people do.