Developing a Marketing Strategy

In today's lecture we discussed about the topic social class. Social class is defined as a division in the society made up of persons possessing certain common social characteristics, which are taken to qualify them in certain things such as equal status relations with one another, for intimate, and for which restrict their interaction with members of other social class.
Solomon (2006) states that all societies can be divided into haves and have-nots, the reason for this is because social equality tends to be widely held value throughout Europe, this means that some people seem to be more equal than others.

Mysite.verizon.com, shows a table of different social class people. People are socially recognised by these positions, for example middle class people are seen as people with a reasonable income who can run their households comfortably. A comparison will be shown between the turn of the century and today's social class.

At the turn of the century:

* Tiny Upper Class
* Middle Class
* Majority Working and Lower Classes

Today:

* Upper
* Upper Middle
* Middle Middle
* Lower Middle
* Working Class
* Upper Lower Class
* Poverty Class

Below is a video, which shows the differences between each class and how people are treated in each social class.

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In all societies where classes exist, every class is seen by the following factors:

* Personal or household income or wealth
* Net worth includes the ownership of land, property, means of production
* Occupation
* Education and qualifications
* Family background

People who can attain a position of power in a society often tend to adopt a distinctive lifestyle, this is because they want to emphasize their prestige in order to rank themselves within the powerful class. Each has its own stylistic traits, which is referred to cultural capital. This is important as one's wealth is in determining class status, the higher levels involve the following factors:

* Costume and grooming
* Manners and refinement
* Political standing, government, social clubs and honorary titles
* Reputation of honor or disgrace
* Language,this is an distinction between the elaborate code. This is seen as a criterion for "upper class", and the restricted code is associated with "lower class".

Below each picture shows the difference between a lower and upper class people's dressing style.


Lower class people


Upper class people


Income and social class:

Consumers in a social class are determined by a complex set of variables which includes income, family background and occupation. In this environment the status symbols express one's position in the society, therefore "haves and have-nots" together express "how long have you had".
In today's modern society incomes are starting to rise, the reason for this is because women have started to work also and there has become a rising number of educates and college graduates. Income does tend to matter to different social class people as upper class people will be able to purchase expensive products as they have the money to do so, however working class or middle class people will not be able to make expensive purchases as they do not have the money to do so.


Social class and consumption:

Social class is a better indicator of purchases as that has a symbolic aspect, however it is low to moderate prices, for example liqueurs and cosmetics. Income tends to be a better indicator of purchase behaviour for non-symbolic, high expenditure products such as fridge freezers and televisions. Both social class and income data are needed in order to predict behaviour with expensive and symbolic products, for example cars and homes.

Below are shown two advertisements which target middle class people and upper class people.

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Upper class

This advertisement is aimed at upper class people as it is a Harrods advert. The music in the background and the visual effects of the advert give a very high quality and standard outlook, which tends to make it look posh and expensive.

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Middle class

This advert is aimed at middle class people as it Yorkshire pudding advert. The music in the background and the visual effects of the advert give a homely day to day outlook, which gives a middle class impression to the audience.