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Impact of dreams on consumer behavior

Adwaid

1. Concepts:
- What causes dreams?
- What are the types of dreams? And how do they affect your wake life?
- Does a person consciously recall the dream or does it impact the subconscious?
- Does the created impact facilitate buying/consumption behavior?
- Can we influence the content of a person’s dream?

2. Broader research problem:

A study to understand the impact of dreams on consumer behavior and decision making
process.

3. Research Objectives:

- Determine the impact of dream on wake life

(questionnaire: Do you remember your dream? Have you made any decisions based on
your dream? If yes, did it include a purchase? What kind of dream are you most likely to
remember? Have you ever felt your dream is trying to send you a message?)

- Determine how can marketers influence consumer’s dream

(questionnaire: do you dream about content consumed right before sleep? Do you dream
about content consumed multiple times during the day? Do you dream about content with
strong emotions associated? Do you dream about content which has a longer duration?
Have you ever got a solution to a problem you had when you woke up from sleep?)
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Secondary data research

Consumer behavior is the process of a customer selecting, buying, using , disposing of

ideas, goods or services to satisfy their wants or needs. Under the nature of consumer
behavior
1. Various factors influence consumer behavior and
2. It Leads to purchase decisions
talks about buying motive, attitude towards the product and brand perception. These
factors are intangible in nature and are directly in connection with your beliefs and
values. They are very crucial as it drives the ultimate decision. A successful marketer will
be able to place the brand on top of the customer’s mind.
Your subconscious makes up 95% of your mind, also that’s where your beliefs, values
and principles are stored. Emotions of a person are deeply ingrained in their subconscious
mind, and hence anything emotional tends to create a larger and long lasting impact on
you. Individual’s inner emotion drives a purchase decision at the end, emotions play a
major role in this process. Studies show people who damaged their emotional quadrant
were unable to make decisions. Marketers always try to associate an emotion with their
brand and product, it's the emotion they sell when they sell their product, for example
Rolex selling the rich status, or royal enfield selling the sense of belonging to a rugged
biker community.
Our dreams are considered to be messages from our subconscious mind, so if we can
establish a method to send a message back to the subconscious mind through dreams,
marketers will have the opportunity to highly influence the consumer’s decision making
process.
Dreams are creations of our mind with what it absorbs during the wake time, our mind
tries to make sense out of unanswered questions. Mendeleeve’s dream about the periodic
table, an answer to how to arrange the elements, which was computed by his
subconscious mind while dreaming is an example.
Patrick McNamara, Ph.D., in Behavioral Neuroscience, talks about the continuity
hypothesis where the wake life concepts and concerns highly influence the dreams of an
individual. Rather than showing the hidden urge of a person, dreams tend to play with
daily mundane life and bring in characters they interact with on a daily basis.
Jayne Gackenbach, psychology professor at MacEwan University has been conducting
research to understand the impact of different forms of media on an individual's dream.
She has stated how playing video games for a longer duration impacts the content and
quality of the dreams they have. In a recent poll she conducted on a group of 481
university students, on the basis of media consumed before sleep and quality of dream.
Gackenbach observed students who consumed social media and video games had better
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quality of dream compared to the ones who consumed television. Hence proving
interactive media had a larger impact on dreams.
Levying on this marketers should find means to come up with interactive marketing
techniques which consumers would tend to come across before sleeping, this holds a
better chance of consumers dreaming about your brand and hence placing it on top of
their mind when it comes to making purchase decisions.

Literature review

The study on consumer behavior has been going on for a long time now. Marketers have been
able to understand and answer certain questions in this domain, yet there are many grey areas.
Leon G. Schiffman and Joseph Wisenblit (2015) defines Consumer behavior as ‘the study of
consumers’ actions during searching for, purchasing, using, evaluating, and disposing of
products and services that they expect will satisfy their needs. Consumer behavior is considered
to be a vital part of marketing and Kotler and Keller (2011) state that consumer buying behavior
is the study of the ways of buying and disposing of goods, services, ideas or experiences by the
individuals, groups and organizations in order to satisfy their needs and wants.
According to Schiffman, consumer behavior stems from four disciplines: Psychology which
includes: needs, personality, perception, experience and attitude. Sociology which includes:
social groups such as family, co-workers and social class. Anthropology which includes: cultural
values and beliefs and subculture. Communication which includes: means of accessing or
exchanging information, example media channels. And how this leads to consumer decision
making. Ultimately what any business owner wants is a positive consumer decision. Leon G.
Schiffman and Joseph Wisenblit (2015) covers it in three stages: Input stage is mainly concerned
with the marketing efforts made to contact and communicate with the consumers. Processing
stage is what focuses on how consumers make a decision, which is mainly influenced by the
psychological factors (motivation, perception, personality, learning and attitude). Output stage
consists of post-purchase behavior and post-purchase evaluation.
We are focusing on the processing stage or the decision making stage. Aida Azlina Mansor ,
Muhammad Hafiz Abd Rashid & Nor Diyana Mohammed Shobri (2021) points out how
marketers fail to understand the decision making process that takes place in the consumer’s
subconscious mind. As the conscious mind is responsible for 10% of the decision making
process and 90% is controlled by subconscious, failure to captivate this will result in huge loss in
the marketers end. They talk about the emerging method called Neuromarketing which helps
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understand customer’s subconscious behavior towards the marketing elements. Dinko Jukić
(2020) defines Neuromarketing as an application aimed at understanding subconscious
dispositions of consumer behavior. And how it integrates psychology, neurology and marketing.
Nick Lee (2014) studied brain activation in consumers during engagement with stimuli using
Neuromarketing. So the wake life subconscious decision making is being studied, but what about
the factors that impact the subconscious decision making?
In psychology, Hobson (2002) defines dream and dreaming as “a mental processes and activity
that occur during sleep”. While ancient Egyptians compared dreams with transcendental power
and meaning, and used to discuss it with their priest. Dreams have been interpreted in many ways
over the years. The ability of dreams to cause a difference in the wake life cannot be ignored.
Nikolay Petrov and Oliver Robinson (2020) concludes that dream can be interpreted by anyone,
as it is a metaphorical or direct representation of what concerns us emotionally in our waking
life. Schredl & Hoffman, (2003) talked about the continuity hypothesis where it is mentioned
that our waking life is merged into our dream and likewise our dreams are merged or carried into
our waking lives. Anu Valtonen (2015) elaborated on the hitherto unexplored relation between
the world of dreams and consumer culture. The exploratory analysis highlights that the content
of dreams and the way it is conceived are influenced by the practices, values, and symbols
offered by the globalized media and consumer culture.
Studies by Sebastian Lambrecht, Michael Schredl, Josie Henley-Einion, & Mark Blagrove
(2013) shows that a majority of participants indicated that their dreams were affected by their
reading, TV consumption, and daily activities. With the presence of interactive media like social
media and video games, the influence of the media on an individual's subconscious mind has
grown, and users tend to dream about the content more often. Higher emotional interaction also
adds on to it according to Michael Schredl and Anja S. Go¨ ritz (2019). An aspect in which
studies are not yet conducted is using interactive media to influence an individual's dreams,
which would result in a stronger emotional association with the brand and impact consumer
behavior.

References:

1. Anu Valtonen. "We Dream as we Live – Consuming" In Research in Consumer Behavior.

Published online: 08 Mar 2015; 93-110.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/S0885-2111(2011)0000013009
2. Hobson, J. A. (2002). “Dreaming: An Introduction to the Science of Sleep”. New York:
Oxford University Press. ISBN 13:9780192804822
3. Jukić, Dinko. (2019). OPENING PANDORA’S BOX: NEUROMARKETING AND
BRAND IMAGE. 512-524. 10.7441/dokbat.2019.049.
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4. Leon G. Schiffman and Joseph Wisenblit,Palacio-Fierro, A. (2020). “Consumer behavior

process”, in 593 Digital Publisher CEIT, 5(6), 105-116. https://doi.
org/10.33386/593dp.2020.6.360
5. Leon G. Schiffman and Joseph Wisenblit (2015). entitled “Consumer Behavior”, 11th
edition, ISBN 978-0-13-254436-8, published by Pearson Education.
6. Mansor, Aida & Abd Rashid, Muhammad Hafiz & Shobri, Nor. (2021). “A Review on
Consumers Behavior and Decision Making from Neuromarketing Perspectives”.
7. Maryam Iftikhar, Khadeja Tahir, Sobia Falak, and Natalia Shabbir. “Dreams and waking
life connection” in International Journal of Dream Research Volume 13, No. 2 (2020)
8. Michael Schredl and Anja S. Go¨ ritz. “Social Media, Dreaming, and Personality: An
Online Study” In CYBERPSYCHOLOGY, BEHAVIOR, AND SOCIAL
NETWORKING Volume 22, Number 10, 2019 ª Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. DOI:
10.1089/cyber.2019.0385
9. Nikolay Petrov, Oliver Robinson (2020). “Dreams and their relationship with waking
emotion” in the psychologist April 2020 dreams.
10. Schredl M, Hofmann F. Continuity between waking activities and dream activities.
Conscious Cogn. 2003 Jun;12(2):298-308. doi: 10.1016/s1053-8100(02)00072-7. PMID:
12763010.
11. Sebastian Lambrecht , Michael Schredl , Josie Henley-Einion , & Mark Blagrove.
“Self-rated effects of reading, TV viewing and daily activities on dreaming in adolescents
and adults: The UK library study” in International Journal of Dream Research Volume 6,
No. 1 (2013)
12. Suomala, J., L. Palokangas, S. Leminen, M. Westerlund, J. Heinonen, and J. Numminen.
2012. Neuromarketing: Understanding Customers' Subconscious Responses to
Marketing. Technology Innovation Management Review. December 2012: 12–21.

Reference (secondary research):

1. https://management30.com/blog/subconscious-success/
2. https://www.forbes.com/sites/womensmedia/2020/08/03/how-your-subconscious-mind-is
-running-your-life-and-how-to-fix-it/?sh=2501214f6b07
3. https://www.timesnownews.com/health/article/explained-the-psychological-reason-why-p
eople-from-the-past-pop-up-in-your-dreams/611878#:~:text=This%20is%20because%20
dreams%20are,to%20go%2C%20in%20your%20dreams.
4. https://www.psychmechanics.com/problem-solving-in-dreams/
5. https://www.yourarticlelibrary.com/marketing/market-segmentation/consumer-behavior-
meaningdefinition-and-nature-of-consumer-behavior/32301
6. https://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/dreaming-overview
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7. https://www.inc.com/logan-chierotti/harvard-professor-says-95-of-purchasing-decisions-a
re-subconscious.html
8. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/dream-catcher/201409/the-continuity-hypothe
sis-dreams-more-balanced-account
9. https://www.wired.com/story/do-you-dream-in-internet-dont-freak-out/
10. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/284378?c=655635266361