Generational Marketing

Today's lecture was about Generational marketing. The process of generational marketing consists of product development, CRM, communication and marketing. These factors are important in generational marketing as it recognises generations as "archetypes". The method of marketing towards a specific generation impacts on the way companies sell their products and services to the public. Each generation has its own characteristics, this enables the marketing target to categorize generations due to the way they act and speak. Marketers tend to market a specific generation as that generation impacts on the way marketers promote and sell their products to them.
Marketers tend to find it easier to reach out to this generation as this generation tends to see advertising as an entertainment purpose, therefore they tend pay attention to adverts that appeal to them. Marketers need to meet their customers needs and wants, therefore in order for them to be successful they need to let their customers know that they understand their values and their needs and wants.

The approach of generational marketing consists of four generation categorizes which are:

1) Boomers- people in the age range of 49-66 years old. These people are moving in to midlife and in to the early stages of elder hood, therefore this generation consists of people with experience of values and religion.

2) GenXers- people in the age range of 28-48 years old. These people are moving out of young adulthood and moving in to midlife, therefore this generation consists of people with experience of liberty, honor and survival.

3)Millennials known as Generation Y- people in the age range of 7-27 years old. These people are becoming young adults, therefore this generation consists of people with experience of community and technology.

4) Homeland Gen- people in the age range of 0-6 years old. These people are just arriving in the new generation, this generation relates to the Silent Gen as they both have similar traits. This generation consists of people with experience of due process and expertise.

In today's world I believe the generation which is most recognised is baby boomers and Millennials. The reason for this is due to the latest technology and trends followed by the people in these generations.
In order for businesses to promote their products to specific generations they will have to meet their customers needs and wants and attract their attention in order for the customers to recognise the products. Generational marketing impacts on social values and individuals lifestyles, therefore this influences on products and services.

The life cycle impacts on the generational marketing, as every generation passes through the same life cycle from childhood to old age. The marketing sector needs to understand that every generation fits in within the society, therefore the marketers need to build their brand loyalty in order to keep their regular and gain new customers.



Age sub-cultures is an important factor in generational marketing as well. Age sub-culture is about how a person's age impacts on his/her identity and often on spending patterns. Marketers tend to refer to generation's as potential marketers, therefore age cohorts are important, as they are groups of people of similar age who share similar experiences. This makes it easier for marketers to target a specific generation with similarities.
Teenagers are considered as Millennials, therefore marketing will impact them if their is high brand loyalty involved. This generations products and services will differ from Boomers as their the marketing that will impact them will be trendy products and stylish clothing, as they tend to keep up to date with the latest trends. This advert represents generation Y:



I will now be discussing one generation in more detail. I have chosen to discuss about Baby busters (Generation X):

This generation includes consumers within the age range of 19 to 29 year old. There is a majority of people in this age group. This generation is in the middle generation as these individuals are moving into adulthood. Therefore according to today's economic downfall they are mostly going to be affected as people in this age group want to get good jobs in order to make a secure future for themselves. This generation has already been affected by the economic downfall in the 1990's. Baby busters include individuals who are also in the education sector as many people may be studying in order to achieve a degree within this age group. Many people in this group tend to stay up to date with the latest technology and fashion, therefore as these two sectors are large within the marketing industry it is easier for fashion marketers to find their consumers for certain products.
People in this group tend to have minimum to low income as many of them do not work, are in education or live at home. However, in this group busters tend to spend mostly on products such as alcohol and cigarettes. As these products come into their social life are a regular usage by them.

Groups and Peers

Groups

A group is formed by two or more individuals who tend to share a set of norms and have role relationships. Groups tend to influence the society in many ways such as the socialisation process influences individuals on the basis of what they learn and how they tend to behave. Groups can reflect brand names such as Burberry, CK, or Chanel. Groups impact on brand names because a particular group of people would purchase their products not all as Chanel is seen as a expensive brand people in the higher society will be able to purchase their products than the lower class individuals.

There are various different types of groups for example:

* Acquired- joined or moved into, relates to educational,work or scouts
* Aspirational- like to belong to, relates to fashionistas
* Peers- people of equal standing, relates to school or students
* Ascribed- born into, relates to family, gender, social class

Many brands aim at specific target groups of audience, for example cars such as Mercedes aim to sell their product to people in the higher class group rather than middle class people as their cars are represented as luxury and expensive products. Below is an advert of Mercedes car.

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Solomon (2000), states that a product model looks at public/private necessities and public/private luxeries.
Public necessities represent influences on a weak product and strong brand, for example cars and wrist watches.
Private necessities represent influences on weak product and weak brand, for example floor lamps and refridgeators.
Public luxeries represent influences on a strong product and brand, for example golf clubs and yacht.
Private luxeries represent influences on a strong product and weak brand, for example TV game and icemaker.

The need of groups:

The theory of Social Comparison Theory impacts on the need of groups as looks at the behaviour of individuals in order to provide a guide and to reassure their self evaluation. Changingminds.org (http://changingminds.org/explanations/theories/social_comparison.htm) (2010), states that this theory it enables individuals to learn their own abilities and attitudes by comparing themselves with other people and
their opinions. People like to compare themselves with individuals who they think they should have similarities with, therefore they are selective to about whom they use as a benchmark.

Group norms and pressures:

Groups main influence represents the certain expectations of individuals behaviour, for example following rules and regulations. This can affect individuals in many ways, for example they have the pressure of indentification, counter conformity and compliance.
Groups can pressure individuals becuase can influence them in many ways such as degree of support from others and importance of memebership.

Marketing:

Commercial marketing impacts on groups as it creates peer pressure therefore this links to advertising. These sort of advertisments impact people in various ways and send a message across to the audience, for example alcohol ads and cigarette ads. Below a examples are given:

Alcohol advert:

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Smoking Advert:

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Values

In today's lecture we learnt about what values are and how they influence individuals. The term 'Value' has been given many definitions throughout the years. Some of the definitions given to this term are (AskOxford.com)(values) principles or standards of behaviour. Another definition is given by (Dictionary.com)the ideals,customs, institutions, etc., of a society toward which the people of the group have an affective regard. These values may be positive, as cleanliness, freedom, or education, or negative, as cruelty,crime, or blasphemy. Definitions to the term 'Value' given by(Wilkie)is, he stated that “Values are our ideas about what is desirable”.

Values tend to motivate people, therefore the theory that represents different values is Kahle's List of values (1983). This theory represents various values that impact on people such as self respect, being well respected,self-fulfilment,security and sense of belonging. These values reflect people in many ways as they impact on peoples life style, for example people may purchase a certain product in order to satisfy their needs. Values encourage people to achieve their aims or objectives that they have set.
Kahle's List of Values (1983) includes:

1. Self respect
2. Excitement
3. Well respected
4. Self fulfilment
5. Sense of accomplishment
6. Warm relationship with others
7. Security
8. Fun & Enjoyment
9. Sense of belonging

Values tend to influence individuals socially and culture wise also. The reason for this is because people are affected by these factors within the society and they tend to follow and gain values from what they learn either from their parents or the people that are close to them. Referring back to Kahle's List of values, these value refer to positive and negative factors that may affect individuals for example self respect and fun and enjoyment.


Activity:

In lecture we carried out an activity which related to Kahle's list of values. Students had to state which of Kahle's list of values was most important to them and which vlaues we would like to have in the future. The results varied as most people preferred warm relationships with others and fun and enjoyment.

Another activity was carried out in which we had to show how people perceive us. We were given different animals which we had to put in order of what appealed to us first and so on. The order I put the animals in was dog, lion, parrot and elephant. Each animal had different meanings which impacted on how people would percieve me. The first selected animal was the one that percived me, as I had chosen the dog first that meant that I was friendly, faithful, loyal, protective, hard working and loving. I can relate to this as I am a friendly person and loving towards the people
I am close to.



The second picture meant how we would like to be perceived by others. I had chosen the lion, therefore this meant that I was dominant, leading and independent. I do slightly agree with this as I do like to be independent and make my own decisions with certain situations, however I am not leading or dominant.



The third picture meant how how we would like to be perceived by others in the future. I had chosen parrot, therefore this meant that we want people to see us as fun, lively and popular. I do not agree with this as I am not a loud person and I do not want to be perceived as loud and lively as that does not relate to my personality.




The last picture meant how we actually want to be, without the influence of others. I had chosen the elephant, therefore this meant that I would like people to perceive me as calm, wise and strong. I agree with this as I this can relate to the way I am.




Time lines:

Time lines represent different stages of an individuals life or events that took place throughout a period of time. Time lines shows events surrounding people within the society, these events impact on all the individuals within the society as it becomes an social thing. This time line reflects my own life in which certain events took place.

Key Events:

The date of Diana's death in 1997
Tony Blair prime minister in 1997
World trade center attacks in 2001
London terrorist bombing in 2005

Laddering techniques:

Laddering techniques allow individuals to identify the relation between functional product attributes and desired end states. Individuals have specific terminal values for example self respect. Laddering has many stages that impact on it, such as concrete attributes, abstract attributes, functional consequences, psychological consequences, instrumental values, and terminal values. The laddering technique can be used with certain products such as shoes, as individuals will understand and know what they are looking for therefore it will be easier for them to find it. The laddering technique helps marketers also as it can help them with their positioning strategy in order to launch a new product in the market. This will make it easier for the marketers to achieve their aims regarding the product.

Overall, I have carried out a values survey, which reflects on values, attitudes and lifestyle survey. The results show that I am a thinker. Thinkers are motivated by ideals, they are mature, satisfied, comfortable and reflective who value order, knowledge and responsibility. They tend to be well educated and actively seek out information in the decision making process.

Gender

The topic of 'Gender' was discussed in the last lesson. The definition of 'Gender' is whether being the sex of a male or female. Gender is determined socially, the reason for this is because each society emphasizes particular roles that each sex should play.
Men and Women are known for playing different roles in the society for example women have the role of producing children.

Difference between men and women:

There are many characteristic differences between men and women. These are thinking wise, human relationships, emotions, reactions to stress and languages.

The website Mastersofhealthcare.com (http://www.mastersofhealthcare.com/blog/2009/10-big-differences-between-mens-and-womens-brains/)explains the ten differences between men and women. I will be explaining some of the differences below:

* Human Relationships- Women tend to communicate more effectively than men. This is because women tend to look at the issues such as focus on how to create solutions that works for different situations, they talk through issues, emotions are involved, the tone women talk in with other people, women tend to show more empathy as men are more task oriented. Men tend to have more difficulties when it comes to understanding emotions, however women are more emotional than men and understand emotions more.

*Reaction to stress- Women approach this issue with the attitude of "tend and befriend". Men approach this issue with the attitude of "fight or flight". The reason for this is because women take care of the situation carefully and tend to be more stronger emotionally and do not lose their temper in a stressful situation, they "tend" to look after their children in a stressful time and "befriend" strong relationships with people. Reaction to stress occurs according to the difference of hormones in men and women.

*Right and Left brain- Research has shown that men are more left brain thinking and women are equal on both sides of brain thinking. Men are usually stronger with left brain activities and tend to approach problem solving from a task oriented perspective. Women tend to solve problems more creatively and they are more aware of their feelings and other people's feelings when communicating with others.



In today's lecture we started off by discussing how to impress women. In order to impress women small suprises make a difference for example some of the things people came up in the class were buying her flowers, gifts, love her, kiss her, listen to her and support her.



To women small detailed things matter for example a man would have to support his wife by telling and showing her how much he cares for. These are simple things that women expect from a man to do in order for him to impress her, if these things are not done for a women she will feel neglected and not loved which will leave to complications and misunderstandings.

We also discussed about how to impress a man. In order to impress men it is not too difficult as men tend to get impressed by women who take care of them by giving them food and looking after their needs.

An activity took place in class, in which a picture was shown to the students of a room with filled with different things. The aim of this activity was to look at the picture for a few mintues and then remember the items that were placed in the room. The results of this activity showed that women remembered more intimate things such as pictures and flowers and men tend to remember the bigger items such as funiture.

Gender Differences:

There are many differences between men and women, for example women tend to remember more intimate details and memory's such as the first word their child said.
Gender differences impact on advertising also in various ways, for example many of the adverts established target a certain gender group men or women. Usually adverts aimed at women target stressed beauty and youth, as for men their adverts target valued ambition and physical strength.

Solomon 1999, states that in advertising that the societies assumption about men and womens role are communicated according to the behaviour that are stressed for each gender. According to different products the adverts are made differently as they aim to target a specific gender, therefore women would be interested in adverts such as clothes and make up as men will be interested in adverts such as cars.

Women's shampoo advert:

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This advert target audience are women. Women's ads are more detailed as shown above, mainly they are toiletry or make up ads which women can relate to.

Men's Lynx advert:

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The above advert targets men. Men's adverts usually target a single product such as shown above the advert targets the Lynx product. Men tend to think in a more macro way, therefore they need to be shown a bigger picture in order to understand the advert, it is important for the advert to be less complex and to the point.

Enterprise Week

The Enterprise Week was very beneficial and interesting to all students. There was a variety of events that were available regarding after graduation jobs.
The event that I personally found interesting was the Question Time Industry Panel.

In this event 5 members represented different agencies. The first member was Sue Elms, she was a executive vice president of the global media of Millward Brown. The second member was Sue Unerman, chief strategy officer of Mediacom. The third member was George Hutchinson, chair and managing director public affairs of Burson-Marsteller. The fourth member was Rik Haslam, group creative architect of WWV Rapp and lastly the fifth member was Matthew Chapman, international service and systems innovation director of Billetts.

The main discussion that took place in the event was about how communication has developed throughout the years. One of the main points that was discussed was how broadband developed throughout the years. Research showed that 81% of marketers stated that they use mobile marketing online as they find that easier to use, the advance technology has helped the business industry to grow. Sue Unerman, stated that businesses can lose up to £10,000 on Internet adverts if they do not send out a clear message to their audience. Also, David (a 3rd year student) stated that "three thousand nine million searches of adverts appear on Google".

Another topic that was discussed by the panelists was 'Brands'. The panel stated that customers value the price of the brand and the value of the brand adds quality to customers lives. For example, Cadbury adds value to the society's lives by being adventurous and it also adds joy.
The concept of brand is changing, as consumers tend to contribute to brands by talking about the brand in the 21st century, for example these days whatever Google tends to say the consumers believe it, before this never used to happen, this indicates that if someone typed in Google search "what are the top ten companies in Britain?" the companies Google states, there is a high probability the public will believe.

Political factors about products were discussed. It was stated that products have to live up to their own power in order the product to sell. Advertising communication was mentioned, as in integration marketing communication all brands are given a voice as consumers should understand what each brand delivers and the message it sends out. Controlling brand seems to be less in control of the environment as it's all about shaping a brand in people's minds as it will allow the consumers to remember the brand.

Overall, I thought the panelists discussed good topics as they related to my assignments and the discussions discussed in the event helped me understand the topics more in depth for example the topic on 'Brands'.

Each of the companies above have their own webistes and blogs, which you can go on and discover further information about the agencies. The links of each agency is given below:



Website: http://www.millwardbrown.com/Sites/millwardbrown/

Blog: http://www.mb-blog.com/



Website: http://www.mediacomtmb.com/



Website: http://www.burson-marsteller.com/default.aspx

Blog: http://www.burson-marsteller.com/Innovation_and_insights/blogs_and_podcasts/BM_Blog/default.aspx



Website: http://uk.rapp.com/home/



Website: http://www.ebiquity.com/uk/billetts/

Perception Experiment

Perception Experiments:

There are many perception experiments which can be carried out. Before carrying out the perception experiment it is important to identify what is going to affect the consumer's perception, for example the five senses which are:

*Sight
*Smell
*Sound
*Taste
*Touch

In class we carried out a perception experiment, which included the groups to test their tastes by eating chocolate/cookies or drinking Coca-Cola.
It was vital that we tested prodcuts which had a similar taste for example Coke and Pepsi. Both products have similar tastes, however they are two different labels.

Results of the Experiment:

Group one, decided to test taste three different branded chocolates. The chocolates were tested by the rest of the class members, they had no knowledge about what brand chocolate they were tasting. With the chocolate experiment the findings concluded to what chocolate tasted better. The students results lead to the most expensive branded chocolate being the better taste wise than the other two. The reason for this is becuase the expensive brand was more indulging taste wise.

Personality & Self- Concept Theory

Factors influencing behaviour of Personality & Self-concept

Personality:

The main factors that influence buyers behaviour are: Taken from Kotler et al

Cultural >> Social >> Personal >> Psycological

Culture >> Reference >> Age & Life cycle >> Motivation
Groups stage Perception
Occupation
Subculture >> Family >> Economic >> Learning Beliefs & Attitudes
circumstances
Lifestyle
Social Class >> Roles & Status >> Personality & Self-concept >>

There are many traits to personality. This includes different characteristics of individuals for example shy, quiet, outgoing and confident.

Theories on Personality:

Hollander's research into Personality

Hollander's research has established four aspects which help define personality.
The aspects are:

*The External aspect- This illustrates how a person interacts with other people

*The Internal aspect- This is a combination of people's values and attitudes

*The Dynamic aspect- This is when people face new situations and how they behave, for example social adjustments

*The Consistent aspect- People's characteristic style

Cattell's Trait Theory of Personality:

This theory looks at the different personality attitudes people have. It illustrates the negative attitudes to the positive. Examples are given below:

Reserved >>>> Outgoing

Less intelligent >>>> More intelligent

Relaxed >>>> Tensed

Serious >>>> Happy-go-lucky

Horney (1945) Theory:

This theory has established that personality develops from the level of anxiety for example felt as being a dependant child. This can lead to turning away from others e.g. isolation, indifference, Detached and going towards others e.g. affection, affiliation, compliant.

Self-concept:

Self concept influences the person's perception of the world around it.

Self concept does not have to reflect reality,for example, a person who is regarded by others as successful may percieve as being a failure.

Solomon 1999, states that self concept represents a belief that a peron holds about his/her attributes, therefore this impacts on how he/she evaluates those qualities. Self concept impacts on indivduals because it is what they think about themselves for example a regular teenager who not believe she is perfect due to the influence of celebrities, teenagers tend to believe a size 0 will help them fit in within the society, this fact influences on the an individuals self concept. Social aspects impact on the younger generation more as they tend to follow the trend. Self concept makes individuals believe what they would like to become and how this will impact on them, therefore the important factors that are involved in this are:

*Self image
*Self esteem
*Ideal self

Self image



Self image impacts people becuase this is how they tend to see themselves, in which they judge the positive and negative attributes about themselves.

These three factors impact on individuals in different ways depending on person to person as everyone is affected by these factors a positive or negative way.

Researchers on Self-concept:

Mead (1934)- states that self concept is formed directly from social experience, the reaction from others and the social & cultural values which are internalised.

Goffman (1959)- states that self-concept is reflected as a social role experience e.g.daughter and wife.

William James (1890)- states that self concept differentiates from social comparisons e.g. family and peers.

Self-concept relates to three main factors which are Self-image, Self-esteem and Ideal-self.

Self image represents the kind of person who we think we are, this involves body image & personality traits.
Ideal self represents the kind of person we would like to be e.g.a successful person
Self esteem represents whether we accept or approve of the our self image that we present to others.