Investigation of consumers' hedonic and utilitarian consumption behaviors on toothpaste consumption

The concept of consumption has always existed since the beginning of existance of human being. In simplest terms consumption can be described as meeting the wants and needs of people. Technological developments of today's world, advances in the transport and communication sector, parallel to these, globalization of the world and becoming a single market has ensured a number of changes on the consumption activity and allowed customers and consumers to develop different view points. Depending on these changes and developments, consumption transformed into an activity which creates pleasure, happiness and excitement in the consumers instead of simply meeting the wants and needs. In other words, depending on these changes and developments the terms of hedonic and utilitarian consumption started to come to the fore in the recent years. The current study aims to investigate hedonic and utilitarian consumptions of toothpaste consumers. The study is carried out in the Milas district of Muğla province by collecting data through surveys. Face-to-face survey method was preferred in data collection, and a total of 375 people were participated in the study. Independent samples t test and one way analysis of variance (ANOVA) were preferred for the analysis of data. The result suggests that female consumers are more inclined to send messages through their choice of tooth paste compared to male consumers. Moreover it has been observed that female consumers lose emotional responses that they are experiencing during the purchase faster than male consumers. It has been concluded that they have more controlled and target-oriented structures about toothpaste. In addition, it has been concluded that single consumers are affected more by the toothpaste ads, campaigns and discounts compared to married consumers and they are more inclined to experience emotions such as excitement during toothpaste purchase. Key words: Hedonic consumption, utilitarian consumption, toothpaste.