Jared M. Lawandales

Fullsail University Internet Consumer Behavior Assignment: Influences on Decision-Making

Instructions: Consider a recent purchase you made and describe how your purchase decision was impacted.

The most recent purchase that comes to mind was my recent commitment to make a major new purchase, and attend Full Sail for 54,000 dollars. Not only was this a two-year commitment but also, upon graduation, it will represent about 54,000 dollars of debt. I have signed the largest loan documents thus far in my life, and consequently made the largest commitment thus far in my life. All in all, this decision should represent about ten years of debt and at least twenty-five months of late nights and virtually no sleep. This is a decision that, in reality, has taken me ten years to make. Since the graduation of high school, I have been tossing around the idea of attending college, although, the idea has only been in my constant thought processes for about two years now. This decision involved input from many people, websites, reviews, and other such informational resources. I would definitely consider this a major new decision.

For an external influence, situation was the most pervasive. The situation I’m in currently is one where I am supposed to be responsible for the operations and marketing when concerning my company, Down By The River, llc. The problem with that is, while I have years of food and retail management, I know nothing about marketing. So, my situation demands that something be done. We have done some advertising on Google, Facebook, and Craigslist, as well as, tried the “door to door” approach with the local businesses. While we have done well enough to stay alive and grow, we could do much better. I had a previous company that went out of business due to the fact that we opened with no overhead, and relied entirely on word of mouth for business. While the service provided was one of the best in the county, I had no idea how to let my potential clients know this. For Down By The River, our efforts have paid off for now, but it will not be enough to take us into the future.

The most significant internal influence would be knowledge, or a lack thereof. I consider life a quest for knowledge. Knowledge is power, and therefore one with knowledge has the power to do whatever they put their mind to. As such, the opportunity to gain new knowledge from a reputable school has played a big part in my decision to attend Full Sail. I also believe that my current shortcomings are due directly to a lack of understanding. As I mentioned above, marketing is something that is completely foreign to me. My experience has always been with clients who walk into my establishment, they may not know exactly what they want, but generally they came in with the intent to buy. I have never commercially promoted anything in my life, nor have I been responsible for how those clients actually got to my store. From this lack of knowledge, grows the necessity to gain said knowledge.

My biggest marketing influence was the product. Being a native Central Floridian, I have heard the praises of Full Sail for several years. I know a few people who have attended, as well as graduated from Full Sail, and all were very happy. I was first interested in the Web Design degree, but after speaking with the people in admissions, I decided the Internet Marketing degree suited my needs much better. With courses like Fundamentals of Web Design and Principles of Flash, as well as, Search Engine Optimization and Social Media Optimization, I was sure to get the basis for web design, in addition to a plethora of new marketing techniques. This appeared to be the best of both worlds, and with my business partner enrolling in the Web Design degree we will be able to intelligently attack both sides of our industry.