Consumer Behavior

Jordan Jones

September 2, 2013

Observing Darque Tan

On Saturday, August 31st, I observed the lobby, counter, and register of the campus tanning salon - Darque Tan - located on Guadalupe. I chose this place of business for the assignment for a few key reasons. First, I thought I would be able to get several data points. Due to the new school year and the Labor Day Holiday weekend, this was a very busy time of the year for this location. Second, the vast majority of the consumers are students. I wanted to observe spending habits of students, particularly at the beginning of an academic semester, when most have more money at their disposal. Lastly, observing all consumer-salon manager-product interactions at the venue would be relatively easy, since the lobby, counter, and register are all within a few feet of each other. By sitting in the lobby, I had an excellent vantage point of all the action.

METHOD

The salon manager was very active in engaging consumers. Indeed, consumers rarely have an opportunity to casually observe products without the manager making suggestions. So, I devoted my observations to "consumer interactions" - anytime a consumer interacted with the salon manager. As I sat in the lobby and observed these consumer interactions, I focused my attention on answering the following questions:

* Which product or service, if any, did the consumer express interest in at the beginning of the interaction?

* How did the manager react to the initial interest (just sold, suggestive selling, asking about more products, etc.)?

* What was the final sale?

* What were factors in the consumer decision-making process?

When I concluded my observations, I approached the salon manager and asked her a few questions.

OBSERVATION #1 - Most consumers had little knowledge and were confused by plethora of tanning options.

There are five different tanning beds and two sunless "spray tan" beds. Beyond the beds, there are also two different types of accounts. There are four membership accounts that charge a monthly fee and give the consumer access to particular types of beds. There are also cash accounts, which charge for individual tanning sessions based on the amount of the initial deposit. Depending on the level of membership and amount deposited for the cash account, the final price of tanning can vary widely.

I suspect that Darque Tan has all of these options for a few reasons. First, they consider themselves to be a "luxury tanning salon" - part of their value proposition is offering several different types of tanning beds. Second, within the consumer base there is a wide range of tanning frequency. From my observations, the type of tanner ranged from someone who tans several times a week to someone who is tanning for the first time for a special occasion (wedding, party, etc.).

However, the bulk of the "consumer interaction," particularly with new customers, was spent explaining all of the options. The information pitch can last as long as five minutes, and even then many consumers seemed confused and asked several questions. While there is a chart behind the counter that summarizes some of the options, there is otherwise