MARKETING MAGAGEMENT ASSINGMENT

SUBMITED BY

S.RAMESHKUMAR

C4T4/03/020

TOPIC (Role of media in influencing consumer behaviour)

As we have all experienced through the past number of years, media has and will continue to alter how groups influence consumer behaviour. In ever increasing numbers, consumers are turning to online sources during the information search phase of their decision making process. This means that the influencers within various media channels can potentially have a significant impact on consumer behaviour without having any contact with the individuals they influence.

If utilized correctly, marketers have an opportunity to develop a significant amount of influence on consumer behaviour through media channels. Alas, all too often marketers run head on into social media without having a solid media strategies and end up run over and kicked to the curb. The results, as you can imagine, are pretty painful to witness.

If they were to start slowly, however, they could build momentum and eventually find themselves at the front of the pack leading the way and exerting their influence on those who followed.

To get to the front of the pack, a marketer must understand the impact of groups on consumer behaviour. There are three reference groups consumers are either part of, or aspire to be part of, that relate to how a marketer should approach social media engagement.

Primary Group: A reference group that an individual has frequent contact with and whom they turn to as a key influencer during a decision making process.

Secondary Group: A reference group that an individual has limited contact with but will turn to as a reference during certain decision making processes.

Aspiration Group: A reference group that an individual has no contact with but has a positive attraction to and often will make a purchase decision based on what they believe the aspiration group would recommend.

A marketer who is engaging in social media needs to understand where they currently fit and where they need to get to have the influence they desire within the different reference groups. They may already be experts in their field, but they're just a new voice to the members of the various groups.

So what can a marketer do to gain influencer status? The following steps can help.

Determine where communities are located:

 Understanding where the products, services, or related conversations that are of interest to a marketer are taking place within social media channels and communities is the key first step. 

Determine which groups/communities are appropriate Aspiration Groups:

 This takes in-depth analysis of the various channels and communities to determine which contain the aspiration groups that have the greatest long-term potential for the marketer. 

A marketer's aspiration groups will vary from how a consumer views an aspiration group. A marketer will aspire to be part of a group that exerts influence and thought leadership on topics related to the marketer's products or services. They likely won't be influenced in the same fashion that a consumer would be influenced by their aspiration group, but instead will aspire to gain expert status within the group and begin to influence the views of the group. 

A marketer will, however, have the chance to absorb the opinions of the group to allow them to hone their marketing message and take into account the needs and desires of the groups. 

Become a new member:

 Once the aspiration groups have been identified, it's time to become a member. With online social media channels it's significantly easier to join an aspiration group. Joining is the easy part; gaining the trust and respect of the group takes time. 

If executed correctly, over time a marketer can become part of a continually increasing number of consumers' secondary reference groups, but being only part of secondary reference groups isn't the desired goal.

Establish yourself as an expert: The ultimate goal is to grow the number of consumers who consider the marketer part of their primary reference group. This is the ultimate prize, but it doesn't come easy. It takes hard work and dedication to build a strong reputation and become a member who consumers turn to as an expert to influence their decision making process.

Before trying to go out and establish themselves as an expert who has a wide network of consumers who consider them to be part of their primary or secondary reference group, a marketer should be aware of two key points.

Always identify who you are and who you represent.

Always understand the dynamics of the groups and communities before trying to participate.

Being transparent will go a long way in helping to prevent a marketer from getting run over and kicked to the curb by the groups or communities, and with hard work and dedication could lead to the desired goal of being an established expert with influence over consumer behaviour.

How media influencing consumer behaviour:We all know that everyone is a product of their environment. Circumstantial life events, influences, and surroundings can further change our behaviour. Media already highly influences our shopping, relationships, and education. But how large of a role does networking through social media play into our lives?Although exceptions exist, research suggests that most social networks primarily support pre-existing social relations. For the most part, Face book is used to maintain existing offline relationships or solidify offline connections, as opposed to meeting new people. These relationships may be weak ties, but typically there is some common offline element among individuals who friend one another, such as a shared class at school. This is one of the chief dimensions that differentiates media from earlier forms of public communication such as newsgroups. Research in this vein has investigated how online interactions interface with offline ones. Face book users engage in “searching” for people with whom they have an offline connection more than they “browse” for complete strangers to meet.While social networks are often designed to be widely accessible, many attract homogeneous populations initially, so it is not uncommon to find groups using sites to segregate themselves by nationality, age, educational level, or other factors that typically segment society, even if that was not the intention of the developers.The link between social networks and social epidemicsI recently stumbled across a book entitled Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives by Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler. The book looks at the relationship between individuals and their networks of people that either directly or indirectly influence their lives. In their account of the pervasive and often bizarre qualities of social networks, the authors explain why obesity is contagious, why the rich get richer, and even how we find and choose our partners.We like to think that we are largely in control of our day-to-day lives, yet most of what we do, from what we eat to who we sleep with, and even the way we feel, is significantly influenced by those around us’ and those around them, and those around them. Our actions can change the behaviours, the beliefs, and even the basic health of people we’ve never met. In a subtle fashion, social networks help spread contagions; create “epidemics” of obesity, smoking and substance abuse, disseminate fads and markets, alter voting patterns, and more.Social networks can harbour a flow of generally undesirable things such as anger and sadness, unhappiness, but good things also flow like happiness, love, altruism, and valuable information. “It is the spread of the good things that vindicates the whole reason we live our lives in networks,” Christakis says. “If I was always violent to you …you would cut the ties to me and the network would

disintegrate. In a deep and fundamental way, networks are connected to goodness, and goodness is required for networks to emerge and spread.”The author suggests that our happiness is connected with the happiness of people three degrees removed from us; whether we’re happy or not depends in part on our friends’ friends’ friends.Christakis’ first paper on obesity was published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2007. If someone on the Framingham study became clinically obese, their friends were 57% more likely also to become obese. A friend of a friend of that obese person was about 20% more likely to become obese, and this was the case even if the weight of the linking friend remained unaltered.A year later came their paper on smoking, which contained similarly arresting ties. If a person began to smoke for the first time, the chances of their friend doing the same increased by 36%.The notion that one’s behaviour and actions can influence connections a step removed is pretty mind boggling to think about. And to add to that, our own behaviour, actions, and habits are likely to be largely more influence and impacted by social media than we ever could have imagined

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