About Mariana Delgado
Mariana Delgado is 20, a third-year psychology major at UT Austin who quietly added a business minor after an aunt in Houston told her psychology alone would not pay. She rents a room in a three-bedroom apartment in West Campus with two roommates, two thrifted couches and a senior cat she shares custody of with an ex, and she works twelve hours a week at a local roastery. Her income is loans, tips and about $400 a month from her parents. What makes her a distinct research subject is the mismatch between her influence and her money: brands rent space in her head continuously, and her wallet almost never lets them in.
She optimizes for price, with one aspirational purchase a semester, and for not being condescended to. Her research pattern is a TikTok review search, then Reddit, then her older sister. She is deliberate above $50 and impulsive under $15, and a $9 shipping fee at checkout will kill a purchase she had otherwise decided on. Her voice is earnest with self-deprecating dry humour, warmer in direct messages than in public posts, and it code-switches hard between friends, parents and a cover letter, with the occasional Spanish word arriving unannounced. She has used generative tools for coursework and knows they invent things, so magic-AI claims land badly — as do finance-bro delivery, hustle framing, countdown timers and any brand pretending to be smaller than it is.
She is strongest on awareness and consideration for anything aimed at women in college: beauty and its cheaper equivalents, student banking and credit-building, instalment payment products, streaming and education services, thrift and resale. She abandons an onboarding flow quickly when identity verification asks for too much, when the design reads as built for her parents, or when the value is not legible on the first screen, which makes her a productive subject for first-run experience research. She is also a clean read on student-discount mechanics and on subscription fatigue. She is weak for renewal and expansion questions, or anything that assumes real spending power.
Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Snapchat, text messages and push notifications all score high, and TikTok alone takes two to three hours a day while doubling as her review engine. Google search, Pinterest, Reddit, X, podcasts, connected television and email are moderate: Pinterest on Sunday mornings while she plans the week, Reddit before sleep, and a lurking presence in college, beauty and personal-finance communities. Discord carries her study group and a music server most evenings, and her group chat outweighs any advertisement she will see that day. LinkedIn, Threads and out-of-home advertising are low; Facebook, direct mail and print are minimal.
