Friday, 19 February 2010

Values











Each person has a different set of values compared to other individuals. Their own set values may be in a different order or place, or they might not have that value at all. Values can come from a number of things; a person's upbringing, groups that they are a part of, environment, adverts, etc. It is thought that values are at the foot of all of a person's behaviour, be it towards others, economically or morally.


According to Kahle, there are 9 main values nearly everyone has:


Self respect


Excitment


Being well liked


Fun and enjoyment


Self fulfilment


Sense of accomplishment


Warm relationships with others


Security


Sense of belonging




These are usually the same for everyone, everyone will have most of these in their top values for life.



Events in a person's life can have major or minor effects on their lifestyle values. If a person has a large change in their life, it is likely to have an affect on the way they see different things. Historical timelines are a good way of looking at the changes of values in society as a whole, event such as terrorist attacks and wars change the way society views others and products.



A personal timeline is a good way to look back and see what may have affected their own life.















This is my personal timeline. It doesn't consist of many events as not much has happened. Probably the biggest event is my parents divorce, it didnt affect my values that much as i was so young when it happened, but since then it has made me think about things but not so much my values of life. Getting back in touch with my family was a big step as i think it made my personality change but not so much my values.




There are many theories for the values of people. The laddering theory is a main one.


The laddering theory believes that people have 'terminal values' which they use different strategic steps to get to. Products become ways to achieve these terminal values, as they can usually help to get through to the value. Products can also be the reason for the wanting of the terminal value, e.g. putting on weight, using something out of fashion. The end states are usually one or two of the values from Kahles list of values.


Marketers can use this technique to get people to buy their product. Researchers help to find the company's strategic position within the market so they can aim their product at the right people who, could in the end, use the product for their terminal value. Weight Watchers is a great example of this.








Sometimes, people try to press their values onto others. For example, the Government expresses all their values through law and the state. By doing this, all people know about their values and some feels that they should have these values and uphold these as it is what the Government believe. Therefore these values are not the values of the individual.
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Groups

A group is a set of people, usually 3 or more, who share the same norms. The members of the group must be able to communicate freely, and develop interdependant roles within the group.

People form groups for different reasons, some of the main being survival and acceptance. It is known that people feel more comfortable if they feel accepted in society, all of which is easier to do in groups. Groups fulfil a persons needs and wants. As Maslow states in his hierarchy of needs, a 'sense of belonging' is within the pyramid as it is vital to a persons lifestyle.


There are different types of groups, friendship groups, work groups, etc. All groups, however, affect the socialisation and behaviour of the people in the group.


For each individual, there are 8 types of group they can be associated with:




Nealry every person has these types of groups to refer to, because the people in their lives fall into different catergories.


Personally these are the people who fall into which group for me:


Reference - Celebrities

Acquired - University groups

Aspirational - Some of the groups i'd turned down

Disassociation - Chavs

Contrived - Working groups

Associative - Working class society

Peer - Friends

Ascribed - Working class society







Each group has different values and norms to other groups. Work groups have different criteria for people to have compared to friendship groups as they value different things from people's characters. Something which is deemed acceptable in one group may be seen as something totally out of order in another. People who want to fit in copy or show the same sort of behaviour that the rest of the people in the group do. This is the same for buying behaviour, as they all buy the same items, or same sort of items when it comes to clothing and shoes. Some people do it subconciously as they are so used to doing it they now do it naturally as they dont want to be kicked out of a group or thought badly of within the group.


This makes it easier for advertisers to market towards the segment they are looking at. By using peoples weaknesses in wanting to belong, advertisers use people of the market in their adverts to show the type of people who are using the products. This makes sure that people buy the product as their sense of belonging is strong.


This advert shows a person using an i-Phone, and that they are on Facebook. This indicates that it is a popular person who is using the product as they have many friends on Facebook. This may try and persuade people who dont perceive themselves as popular to buy the product because they might think they would get more friends by having a product such as this.




Marketers also use figures in the public eye to support their product. This usually is a reference type of group as it is someone which people wish they could be.




The Pepsi advert shows many footballers, all of which are seen as the top of their profession. These are the types of people which young boys wish they could be when they grow up, and as the footballers are seen to support Pepsi, they are typically more likely to drink Pepsi instead of another soft drink of the same type.
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Gender



Men and women are different. Near enough every aspect of them are different to the other gender. Each gender perceives different things in different ways, this is due to the brain and its functions. Men are believed to think with the left side of the brain, this is the logical side which makes men good at pratical things, map reading, logical thinking and numbers. Women think with the opposite side of the brain, the right side. This is the side which is more creative, emotional, makes people better at communication and holistic thinking. This makes women better at remembering things, communicating with people and being in touch with their feelings.








According to Amber Hensley, there are 10 main differences in mens and womens brains.


1. Human relationships - women communicate more effectively then men, finding a solution which would work for the group rather then just individuals.


2. Hemispheres of the brain - men tend to think better using only the left hemisphere of the brain, whereas women tend to use both sides of the brain to think better.


3. Mathamatical ability - the ability to process maths using the IPL (Inferior-parietal lobule) in the brain is larger in mens brains than in womens, which explains why on the whole, men tend to do better with mathamatical problems.


4. Reaction to stress - men have a 'fight or flight' reaction to these situations, whereas women are calmer and have a 'tend and befriend' type of strategy.


5. Language - the sections responsible for language are found to be larger in women then men, this means that women are better at language based activites compared to men.


6. Emotions - women have a larger deep limbic system which allows them to be more in touch with their feelings, express them more easily and bond with others better.


7. Brain size - mens brains tend to be 11 - 12% bigger then womens, however research shows that this has nothing to do with intelligence, only the physical difference in men and women.


8. Pain - men and women perceive pain differently. In the different genders, different amygdala's are activated, this is the part of the brain which gets activated during pain. In men, its the right amygdala which controls internal functions and in women its the left amygdala which controls external functions.

9. Spatital abilites - men typically have better spatital abilities, which allows them to mentally represent a shape and its dynamics.


10. Susceptibility to disorders - each gender is suscepitable to different disorders in different ways. Men are more likely to get a language disorder, such as dyslexia, whereas women are more likely to get an emotional disorder, such as depression.



The differences in men and women make it harder for advertisers to aim a product at men and women. Schiebe and Condry (1984) found that advertisers put different things into adverts to aim them at a particular gender. He found that women's adverts stress youth and beauty to entice them to buy a particular product.




Most make up, hair and beauty products use young looking, beautiful models to promote their products as it entices women to buy the products because some women believe they could look that pretty and young.

Schiebe and Condry found that for men's adverts, advertisers used a symbol of physical strength and props which make the men value ambition. This advert has used a famous male, which symbolises strength through his physique and status of a well-known actor.




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Enterprise Week


During Enterprise Week, there were activities to participate in and to go and see. They were designed to get people involved and encourage future and business thinking as well as teamwork. The sorts of things which were run were Apprentice Challenge, 24 hour challenge, My great business idea, as well as talks from past graduates and people in the industry.


I took part in the Apprentice Challenge, didn't get very far but the team had fun. The only challenge we did was selling doughnuts. This was a hilarious day, competeing with the other 12 groups trying to sell our doughnuts over their's. Maybe the reason behind us losing was our positioning in Wycombe, we chose a spot outside the Bucks art place, which we thought would be quite clever as its by something our uni uses, however there were quite a few other groups around the same area and everyone kept saying 'we've just brought some from round the corner' which was a de-motivator but the team kept going and had a great day working together.


Other things i did was helping out with the Q&A sessions with graduates who have got a job in the industry now and with the people high up in the industry.

The graduate session was great as they were super friendly and answered everything we had to ask them on the tour of the gateway. Their answers during the session with everyone else were also very valuable as they know what its like to be in our position.


The second panel was the industry panel. This consisted of:

Sue Elms - Millwood Brown

Sue Ullerman - Mediacom

George Hudson - Burston Marsteller

Rick Haslam - RAPP

Matthew Chapman - Billets


These people have great experience in the indusrty, and it was great to have them at the uni and hear them giving their ideas and opinions on issues that are facing the industry. They all said that they embraced digital technology in the 21st century and thought it was great to have a new way to get their message across to their target audience. This is because of social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook. However, they did state that were too many 'digital immigrants' rather then 'digital natives' in the industry who didnt understand the digital community like digital natives do, as it's second nature to them and they don't have to adopt any technology and be trained on how to use it.

The answers given to the questions were truely valuable and they have mentioned what it is to work in the industry and what you need to survive.
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Saturday, 14 November 2009

What is our Personality???

Me...
Barney Grumble... See's the best in people, and likely to bring out the best in people too. Puts a lot of effort into making things work between people. What a nice personality!!! This personality test is said to be the most reliable of all tests. It's called the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. This test is a measure of our dominant preferences for taking in information and giving decisions. The end result is given in scales, at each end of the scale is a part to personalitys. Theres Extrovert--Introvert, Sensing--Intuition, Thinking--Feeling, Judging--Perceiving. The results that are given are the first letters of each of the scales which you are, for example, for Barney its ENFP.



Personality...

'The totality of qualities and traits, asof character or behaviour, that are peculiar to a specific person'. Dictionary.com. Our personality's are all specific to us. They can be affected by our life experiences, Upbringing (including family and birth order), Friends and relationships we have, the Environment and some people say our Genetics also play a major part in our personality.
Birth order is also said to affect a persons personality, this means that the persons personality is influenced before birth. First borns, middle children, youngest, only children and twins are all said to have different personality traits compared to the other children in the family. As a youngest child, I am suppose to be a risk taker, an idealist, hard working, have a good sense of humor, immature, sensitive, secretive and attention seeking. Youngest children are meant to be the easiest to define as there is mainly one type of personality.

Family also fits in with Horney's nature/nurture theory. Horney believes that a persons personality is a byproduct of how they are socialised early in their life. When a childs need for security is met, they can then grow to their full potential. Other theorists who have studied the nature/nurture process, for example Adler, mostly claim that it is the nurture side of the individuals life which affects their personality most.


Self Concept...


Self concept is the way an individual sees themself. Lewis (1990). Self image, ideal self and self esteem all fall into the self concept label. Self image is the way that a person perceives themselves, ideal self is usually the way the person wants to be and self esteem is the overall evaluation of how the person sees their own worth. Self concept may not be reality, in their own eyes someone may perceive themselves as ugly and a failure but they may actually be attractive and successful, or the other way round.






Goffman (1959) saw self concept as a reflection of the roles people play in their lives, for example, wife, brother, friend. He also saw the experiences these roles give, have a major role in peoples concept of themselves and products.


Products also have an affect on the self concept of people. Products of different worth can make people feel good about buying the products or not good good enough as they cannot afford them, for example, someone who cannot afford Gucci may feel like they are not as pretty as someone who can afford to buy Gucci clothes.


A person's personality ultimately lies with their self concept of themself, as someone who see's themself as unworthy would probably not have an outgoing personality like someone who is comfortable with themselves would.
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Thursday, 29 October 2009

Perception Tests

In Fridays lecture, we did various experiments of perception, mainly taste testing. The experiments were fun, we got to eat chocolate and cookies and drink coke which was nice in the lecture. The experiments also got us thinking about our assignment on perception and what we're going to do for the test.

The tests showed that perception of branding plays a huge part when we buy products, especially when it comes to products like Tesco Value. Most ofthe tests showed that our class enjoyed the middle value brand compared to some of the others which surprised a few people.
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Thursday, 22 October 2009

Decision Making Processes

The decision process is roughly the same between everybody. Everyone goes through the same processes, from deciding to buy something to just a normal everyday decision.


When someone buys something, there are many processes they go through to decide and buy the product they do. Kotler's decision making process is said to be one of the main processes a person goes through when they buy something.


1. Need recognition - when the person realises they need something

2. Information search - searching about the product

3. Evaluation of Alternatives - search for similar products and compare the two

4. Purchase Decision - make a decision on which product to buy

5. Post-purchase Behaviour - how the person acts and uses after they have brought the product

This model isn't exactly the most reliable. There are many factors which have to be considered first before it can really be established if the process is true. The involvement, be it high or low, is the main issue that proves this model to be true or false. The product itself also affects the process, if the product is a normal, everyday item which the person buys everyday, the decision process isn't a major happening in the mind. However, if the product is something like an item of clothing or something bigger and more expensive such as a car, the decision making process is present in the mind as it is a lot of money to spend on something which is wrong for them.



We also did perceptual mapping. This is where products are plotted on a graph to see customers or potential customers perceptions of a certain type of product, eg chocolates. Perceptual maps act like a selector and interpretor of peoples perceptions of products and services. It shows the manufacturer where their product is about in the market and their competitors.




Laurent and Kapferer (1985) measured the involvement a person gets when they buy a product. They decided that there was not one single component of involvement which is used more then others. They devised a profile of five components which are involved in the involvment of purchasing a product. They called this the 'Involvment Profile'


1. Personal interest the consumer has in the product, personal meaning and importance play an impact in this.

2. Risk importance, the negative effects associated with the product if it is a poor choice.

3. Probability of making a bad purchase.

4. Pleasure value associated with the product.

5. 'Sign' value that comes with the product, how closely the product is linked with the consumer.


Measuring the involvement a consumer has with products allows maufacturers to capture the diverse reasons for the purchase of their product. However, they do not completely know why their product is brought, which is why the perceptual maps are the biggest help to them.

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