Jamie Han is an expectant mother who is awaiting the arrival of a baby boy sometime in the early part of September. She works at the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore as a Patent Examiner and is highly educated with a PhD in Chemistry and a few years of work experience as a research scientist with a multinational company. She is a quintessential brand girl who endorses high end brands which can be visibly seen through her love affair with handbags with brands such as Chanel, Louis Vuitton, etc. With a life changing event around the corner, her preference for brands is bound to change as she becomes thriftier towards everyday purchases but highly sensitive towards quality especially with those products that touches her precious baby boy. Whether her love affair with brands remains after the baby is born remains to be seen, but as of now, it seems intact which can be seen with a bright glowing smile on her face when she mentions her Chanel limited edition that put her back $4000. In addition to being an avid brand lover that meets her external image needs, she is also an avid dog lover and spends a considerable time at the dog shelter tending to street dogs and performing volunteer work to save dogs from human abuse. A quick look at her facebook page will point to a very caring personality with more than 50% of her posts about saving street dogs.

 

With regards to her travel needs, she is more worried about leisure travel rather than everyday work travel. Her imagery of travel is restricted more towards travelling abroad where her major concerns include flight delays, and getting to the hotel safely. The fear of travel bags being stolen or damaged is not high on her priority of worries as she believes that insurance will cover for all her damages. Perhaps, a lack of a bad experience is not making her think of bags being damage as one of her top worries. However, she did suffer a bad experience during one of her travels to Europe when one of her Crossing bags broke and she had the bad experience of lugging her luggage all around the streets of Vienna. Her choice set of brands that come to mind when she thinks of travel bags are Samsonite and Crossing. With Crossing giving her a bad experience, her choice set reduced to Samsonite only which is her current preferred brand.

 

With regards to her brand associations, she doesn’t have any particular brand relationship with everyday use brands such as toiletries as she goes by sale and is a constant switcher. However, if perceived quality is one of her concern, she is very loyal to the brands. This can be seen through her love affair with brands such as L’Oreal for her make-up and Louis Vuitton for her handbag. She has been using both these brands for more than 8 years and she swears by their quality and doesn’t mind paying more for the quality she believes she is getting. Another particular aspect about brand associations is about her behavior towards brands when it comes to her dog. According to her, canned food is the worst food that you can feed to a dog and she only feeds canned when there is absolutely no other option available. In her eyes, home cooked food is more wholesome than any other food available in the market.

 

To conclude, Jamie is a person who doesn’t mind spending more on stuff that she believes has a perceived higher quality and that accentuates her external image such as her handbag and her make-up. She also doesn’t mind going the extra mile to make sure that she feeds quality and wholesome food to her dog who is very close to her. Thus, according to the Susan Fournier model, Jamie fits perfectly in the committed partnerships relationship form. 

 

 

Summary of Diary

A typical day in the life of Jamie begins with her constantly thinking about the baby that she is going to give birth. Travel is the least of her concerns as all her time is spent on thinking about her family’s financial situation and how will she cope with her baby’s needs. Thus a typical day is spent looking at baby stuff such as diapers, baby powder, baby prams, baby clothes, etc. As most of the time she is hungry, as expected from an expectant mother, her worries are more about the nutrition that she intakes and makes a conscious effort to make sure that she is not eating the wrong stuff. The only time she thinks of Samsonite as a brand is when she is shopping for baby ware and she chanced upon the brand at a shopping mall and was intrigued with the colourful collection at Samsonite. Her previous encounters with Samsonite had made her imagery of the brand as a purely functional and durable luggage brand but very low on style and very drab on colour. The colours in the new Samsonite-RED line came to her as a pleasant surprise as she thought that she would have more variety to choose from. However, when probed, Samsonite would not be in her choice set when she is looking at brands that are in the high-fashion industry. As she is very conscious about her external image when it comes to handbags, her mind associated handbags and fashion to only those brands that satisfy her strict criteria of fashion and value for money through perceived quality. Thus, it can be said that for this customer of handbag and consumer of high fashion, her imagery of Samsonite was not changed at all when she was exposed to the new line of Samsonite.