Developing a Marketing Strategy

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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