Consumer Rhetoric Essay

Consumer as real or rhetoric
Introduction:
In this essay I will argue that consumers are in fact rhetoric. I will explore the concept of the consumer and the various affects qualitative and quantitative market research methods have upon this concept through focus groups and Mintel’s surveys. The basic meaning of rhetoric suggests the effective or persuasive use of language when speaking or writing, especially the exploitation of figures of speech. Originally the consumer was perceived as a blank canvas nowadays however, the figure of the modern customer is a very recent invention that originated in the big capitalist enterprise: an active, ever-evolving consumer. Businesses had the idea of ‘segmenting’ the market by sociographic characteristics

positivist or interpretivist view consumers as two completely different things. A positivist is objective to their consumers. They only wish to discover facts and theories which are reliable and credible. Therefore, they are chiefly concerned with quantitative methods of research – numbers, statistics, and trends. For example, 64% of 18-24 year olds watch Television using their smartphones. Whereas, an interpretivist is concerned with why a consumer does this. They are not preoccupied with how many consumers do this, they want to figure out what causes them to do this. Therefore, interpretivist researchers must be participative with the people they are studying. As a result, they use qualitative methods like focus groups to generate findings that are trustworthy and authentic since they look for a 360 degree understanding of the consumer instead of a 1 or 2 dimensional view. Alas, interpretative researchers are not actually closer to the consumer since they are trying to get closer to a social construction i.e. a rhetorical idea of the consumer. As a result of a marketer’s ontology there is a specific social construction/meaning of the consumer that is formed. I will discuss the differences between positivist and interpretivist views of consumers through qualitative and quantitative research methods in the following

This was also greatly evident through Mintel’s infographic of Television trends in the ROI and NI. Mintel’s information is received from a quantitative research method, survey, which consists of just over 1000 participants in the ROI. However, they only pick the best respondents of the survey to complete further surveys. This leads to question are they ideal Irish consumer representatives as they are ‘forced’ to act differently to continuously partake in these surveys. Most interestingly, is that they rely heavily on highlighting the counterfactual headline in their presentations and infographic. A counterfactual headline, which is a form of rhetoric speech, stresses possible alternative information to what has already occurred through the use of language. For example, Mintel stressed that “some 23% of ROI consumers have taken advantage of a discount or special offer available on a social networking site” in their argument for reaching consumers via social networks (Mintel 2015). By stressing 23% and the use of the word some Mintel is obviously manipulating the data. They are not highlighting which consumers (18-24, 55+) are using these special offers but more importantly, they have not addressed what the other 77% of consumers are doing. The possibility that a consumer’s information can be manipulated suggests that they hold a rhetorical position in the market place. They use data from the