Why did you select that product over a competing brand or product?
Over three one-week periods, you will keep a diary of your purchasing activity. Very simply, this will include listing the products, the time, and the location where you made the purchase. You’ll do this on a daily basis over each of the three one-week periods. The effort is to capture specific products and/or brands in your consumer behavior patterns, and to those ends you can ignore most fresh produce (a head of lettuce, unless the brand is known, e.g., Dole bananas). Please do not collect data for 21 disparate days. We’re trying to find patterns in your behavior. The optimum collection period is 21 straight days, but the next best can be three separate seven-day-straight periods.
At the end of each seven-day period (seven consecutive days), you will identify three products you seem to “consume” most regularly or consistently. Thinking back on that week, answer the following questions in your journal for each product:
- Why did you select that product over a competing brand or product?
- Was it convenient, for example, or did you have to go out of your way because of desire? Was it on sale? Was it a perceived quality matter?
- Articulate your satisfaction/dissatisfaction with the product and/or the purchase experience.
