My Persona

I was born in New York City in 1989. My parents are immigrants from Taiwan. They were married in their early twenties there before moving to New York City for my father’s doctorate degree. He received his Ph.D. in Material Science from Columbia University. He accepted a job at Motorola in Austin, Texas, where we moved to when I was about three years old. I grew up in a suburban, middle-class home in Austin until I moved to Japan at age twelve and lived there for two years. After that, I moved to San Jose, California and lived there for one year, my first year of high school. I spent the rest of my high school years in Austin, where we moved back to. I have experienced going to a wide range of high schools with different demographics. I have experienced a Japanese school, an ethnic Asian majority high school in California, and an overwhelmingly White high school in Austin. I like to think I have a more culturally and experientially diverse background than most people.

I am now 21 years old. While I did work minimum-wage type jobs at Randall’s grocery store and Blockbuster Video in my high school years, I currently have no income. I am instead focusing on being a full-time student. However, I do work internship-type jobs during the summer break which usually pay about minimum-wage or slightly more.

I am currently in my fourth year of college at the University of Texas at Austin. I am an undergraduate majoring in English and Marketing at the McCombs School of Business. I am preparing to enter law school soon after graduation. I am currently renting a house with my friends in North Campus.

Like other personalities my age, you could describe mine as curious, ambitious, yet still generally uncertain. I tend to spend money sparingly. As a consumer, my desires align with many of the “Realities of Today’s Consumers” PowerPoint slide: Desire for value, uniqueness, and convenience. I make strong efforts to search for the best value in the product I purchase. For example, I often search for coupons for restaurants online. I am also concerned with feeling and appearing unique (in a marketer’s words…it sounds funny coming from me). For example I spend money regularly on buying vinyl records to listen to, although this hobby is mostly because I like the sound better, rather than because I want to seem unique. Convenience plays an important role as well. For instance, I will choose restaurants that are close in proximity to my house. Mostly I spend money on restaurants and hobbies. A good amount of my money is spent on my girlfriend of one and a half years, who is also a student at the university.

I don’t consider myself especially active physically, but I do make an effort to visit the gym to play basketball and do some weight training when I have free time. Like many other students, my primary mode of transportation around campus is the bicycle. My most significant hobbies and interests are in music, film, books, web surfing, and the news. My less prominent hobbies are activities like television, live music, and the outdoors.

Like I mentioned, I primarily engage with music through vinyl but I also download digital music very frequently. I have a pair of high end (but still excellent value!) headphones because audio fidelity is important to me. I will mostly buy music at local record shops or conventions, but occasionally online. Also, I primarily discover new music through cutting edge music blogs but also older publications, as well as online recommendations. I will sometimes go see movies at theaters, but only for movies I know are on some level respected or worth seeing (based on word of mouth or critic reviews). Otherwise I will use the Netflix Instant View option (value!) or rent more obscure titles at local video rental stores (uniqueness!).

I have noticed that I am most strongly marketed towards when I engage in certain activities. Most significantly, when I use the internet. As a principle of the “Customer Economy” mentioned in an Impact of Insights slide, new technologies are resulting in customers having and demanding access to more information. I take part in this idea by regularly reading certain sites for information. Austinist, a site covering local news, is one I visit frequently for my need to be constantly consuming information. The site is filled with advertisements targeting the local population, but also the young and hip crowd with disposable incomes. The same idea goes for the music blogs and national news sites that I read.

I think that, in terms of characteristics that I share with most of my peers (or generation?), I enjoy engaging in a kind of consumerism that is more intense than older generations. There seems to be more of an emphasis on owning the trendiest material goods and finding the most high-paying jobs to do so.

I hope this offers some value for a marketer out there!