groups
DESCRIPTION
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Groups
Reference Groups
• Reference group: an actual or imaginary individual/group conceived of having significant relevance upon an individual’s evaluations, aspirations, or behavior
• Influences consumers in three ways:
• Informational
• Utilitarian
• Value-expressive
When Reference Groups Are Important
• Social power: capacity to alter the actions of others
Referent power Information power
Legitimate power Expert power
Reward power Coercive power
Types of Reference Groups
Any external influence that provides social clues can be a reference group
• Cultural figure
• Parents
• Large, formal organization
• Small and informal groups• Exert a more powerful influence on
individual consumers• A part of our day-to-day lives: normative
influence
Brand Communities and Consumer Tribes
• A group of consumers who share a set of social relationships based upon usage or interest in a product
• Consumer tribes share emotions, moral beliefs, styles of life, and affiliated product
• Brandfests celebrated by community
Membership versus Aspirational Reference Groups
• Membership reference groups
• People the consumer actually knows
• Advertisers use “ordinary people”
• Aspirational reference groups
• People the consumer doesn’t know but admire
• Advertisers use celebrity spokespeople
Factors Predicting Reference Group Membership
Propinquity
Mere exposure
Group cohesiveness
Positive versus Negative Reference Groups
• Avoidance groups: motivation to distance oneself from other people/groups
• Antibrand communities: coalesce around a celebrity, store, or brand—but in this case they’re united by their disdain for it
Consumers Do It in Groups
• Deindividuation: individual identities become submerged within a group
• Social loafing: people don’t devote as much to a task when their contribution is part of a larger group
• Risky shift: group members show a greater willingness to consider riskier alternatives following group discussion than if members made their own decisions
Factors Influencing Conformity
• Cultural pressures
• Fear of deviance
• Commitment
• Group characteristics
• unanimity
• size
• expertise
• Susceptibility to interpersonal influence
Opinion Leadership
• Opinion leaders influence others’ attitudes and behaviors
• Experts
• Unbiased evaluation
• Socially active
• Similar to the consumer
• Among the first to buy
Opinion Leaders
• Is there a generalized opinion leader whose recommendations we seek for all types of purchases?
• Experts may be monomorphic or polymorphic
Figure 10.1 Old and New Social Networks
The Market Maven
Market maven: actively involved in transmitting marketplace information of all types
• Just into shopping and aware of what’s happening in the marketplace
• Overall knowledge of how and where to get products
The Surrogate Consumer
• Surrogate consumer: a marketing intermediary hired to provide input into purchase decisions
• Interior decorators, stockbrokers, professional shoppers, college consultants
• Consumer relinquishes control over decision-making functions
• Marketers should not overlook influence of surrogates!
How Do We Find Opinion Leaders?
• The self-designating method
• Simply ask individuals whether they consider themselves to be opinion leaders
• Easy to apply to large group of potential opinion leaders
• Inflation or unawareness of own importance/influence
• Key informant method
• Key informants identify opinion leaders
Word-of-Mouth Communication
WOM is product information transmitted by individuals to individuals
• More reliable form of marketing
• Social pressure to conform
• Influences two-thirds of all sales
• We rely upon WOM in later stages of product adoption
• Powerful when we are unfamiliar with product category
BzzAgent
Negative WOM and Power of Rumors
• We weigh negative WOM more heavily than we do positive comments!
• Negative WOM is easy to spread, especially online
• Determined detractors
• Information/rumor distortion
• There are 3 themes to complaint Web sites
• Injustice
• Identity
• Agency
Figure 10.3The Transmission of Misinformation
Cutting-Edge WOM Influences
Social Networking
Crowd Power
Guerilla Marketing
Viral Marketing
Virtual Worlds: The Next Digital Frontier
Chapter Summary
• People with social power influence our behavior as consumers.
• We are motivated to buy things that are consistent with those in our reference groups.
• WOM communication about products, especially from opinion leaders, may be more influential than information from marketers.
• Web 2.0 accelerates the speed of delivery and the power of WOM communication.