Dymphna Boholt on Consumer Psychology

Dymphna Boholt, has decided that today is the day to look at in a very broad manner, the market conditions that are affecting consumer psychology. First lets see what wikipedia has to say about the concept of market psychology.

Consumer Psychology is the study of how people buy, what they buy, when they buy and why they buy. It blends elements from psychology, sociology, sociopsychology, anthropology and economics. It attempts to understand the buyer decision processes/buyer decision making process, both individually and in groups. It studies characteristics of individual consumers such as demographics, psychographics, and behavioural variables in an attempt to understand people's wants. It also tries to assess influences on the consumer from groups such as family, friends, reference groups, and society in general.

Okay that was the heavy duty, semi-academic version, that I just grabbed from wikipedia. Check out another perspective on consumer behavior

For our purposes, lets just take a look at some headlines in the major newspapers, and examine what they tell us about consumer behaviour or consumer psychology, if you may. Queensland's biggest and indeed only old school paper the Courier Mail, has a headline screaming "

Developers pull the pin on southeast Queensland projects"

Building deferrals have slumped and development applications to the Brisbane City Council have decreased significantly since August. So there you go, when property developers stop building that means people are not spending. When those tradies who would normally work on those sites are out of work, thier families have to cut back on discretionary spending, The flow on effect into other areas of the economy are immense.

Then you have bigger corporations within society, that are actually laying off staff, giving them pink slips.

Jobs to go as Commonwealth Bank slashes costs.

The dynamic there is slighly more different, here a bank is actually cutting staff, for resons of improving its bottom line. That is the bank is not broke, however for reasons of increased profitability, human beings are being given the silver bullet.

In concluding, Dymphna Boholt could go on, however, the only conclusion, one can draw from this is the very real fact that, consumers, are not going to be spending, and that, there is nothing that goverments at both state and federal level can do. Once the general public feels that that times are tough and they see people getting fired, Thats pretty much the end of the matter.
We friends are in for a rough ride.