Who Did You Interview?
- My Roommate
Demographics That Might Provide Helpful Context for Their Responses
- Stanford student
- fairly wealthy
- likes convenience
Key Findings from the Interview
The Consumption Cycle
Case Study: My Roommate
Overview: My roommate is very materialistic. She spends most of her money on clothes, makeup and skincare products, room decor, and DoorDash. As a result of her consume, consume, consume lifestyle, she also lives a waste, waste, waste, lifestyle.
Behavior Observations:
Finding: Tiktok, DoorDash and UberEats advertisements, trends that come and go quicker than ever before. Fast fashion keeps up with trends. Nowadays, it doesn’t feel like there is a need to find products, rather the products find you and there are factors that encourage consumption- usually subconsciously.
Purchasing: Everything comes at the click of a button. Retail therapy in a physical space has been replaced with online shopping. You can search for exactly what you want, and with the technology of tap/faceID to pay, there is no time to thoroughly decide whether you need or want to purchase an item. Purchasing has become second nature- especially when you have money at your disposal.
Acquiring: Everything is shipped straight to you. If it doesn’t fit what happens? E.g. my roommate bought 3 pairs of the same jeans from Hollister to try them on. One pair fit her, and the rest ended up in our garbage bin.
Use: As you acquire more products, their use becomes more limited. Think, if you have 7 pairs of socks, you will wear each once a week. But if you own 30 pairs of socks, each will only be worn once a month. And by the end of that month, they’ll probably go out of style and you’ll feel pressure to buy the latest trending sock.
Disposal: Only so much space in a dorm room; landfills are growing. Food becomes spoiled. Makeup products expire.