Terry's Chocolate Orange...

Terry's Chocolate Orange? I hear you say? Well yes i did say it this week we learnt about segmentation and how people have been targeted and put into groups by marketeers and companies.

The idea behind my chocolate orange theory is that if you were to crack one open and separate it around a table it would look like all the demographics i.e. age,income and in some cases the size of your shoes as Ruth stated "size does not matter". Enough of that, people are segmenting themselves everyday without even realising it, they do it from when they buy a news paper in the morning to when they buy a sandwich at lunch,these little things put you in the same groups with millions of other people.

If  I were to give you a shopping list from someone you did not know would you be able to tell m about that person? what they did for a job? how old they were? married or single? maybe even if they were swinger? 

This was a task set to us in the lecture the picture beow of the lady depicts what we were lead to perceive the person to be like. We were told to use words to create our image anything you cannot read would possibly be a good thing.

It just goes to show how people are quick to make judgements,and marketeers have used this to full effect y producing different packaging,new advertising techniques all catered to the mass markets or to just certain types of people (Segmentation)

Kotler says " authentic marketing is not the art of selling what you make but knowing what to make. It is the art of identifying and understanding customer needs and creating solutions that deliver satisfaction to the customers"

In the next blog we will begin to discuss how companies are starting to identify and understand the consumer.

What We See Or What We Smell...

The idea of being attracted to something because of the way it looks is often how we make a purchase.


Branding has become a massive part of everyday integral life from the shoes we wear to the coffee blend we drink each morning!! Today i would like to talk about how we use our senses to recognise what we percieve as "cheap or expensive".


Tests were set up the lecture to see how people would react to what they saw,smelt,tasted and touched. My amazing group consisted of Sean, Sam and myself (Sheer Class!) we produced a test on aftershaves which actually had an outcome that we did not see, with the experiment we took three bottles of after shave covered them up with paper and labelled them A,B and C we then asked women only to come and smell them feel the bottles and smell the fragrance to see what they thought of them the questions asked were:

1: Which smelt the nicest?
2: Can you put them in price order by smell?


The results were some what surprising to us,people opted for the cheapest one to be the nicest smelling and the most expensive one o be the worst! Shock horror (Where has all the class gone in society?). The mid ranged priced fragrance was chosen by the group as being the most expensive. Ruth who has impeccable tastes even opted to purchase the Paul Smith scent which was the preferred fragrance for a Christmas present for me!


Marketeers have got it right as far as consumer perception goes they have realised that shocking adverts have got the attention to either create a buzz around them or to create contraversy which in a round about way the term "any publicity is good publicity"


http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=LM9rA4LbOMc


The time old test of Pepsi over Coke,what do you prefer? The link above is from a banned advert from the south americas but it just goes to show that people are willing to get their brands out by any means necassary and that competition is vital to keep companies in business.

Take the poll and tell me if its Coca Cola or Pepsi or that "Gets your taste buds going"

What Do You Feel,See Or Want It To Be?!

When you look at adverts what do you see? What do you feel? Or even what do you want it to be?

This week we can take a certain aspect of the last post and say yet again that everyone is different and how people perceive things that are in their specific environment. 

If i were to say to watch an advert on your television and write down how it makes you feel and what its for,the next time you see the same advert do the same thing but close your eyes and listen to the music. Different answer? Good,if not do it again! If you did get a different answer it shows that our senses can tell our brains to react differently in certain situations.

I have also come to the terrible conclusion that women have a better mind set when it comes to concentrating I suppose its true with what was said in Jurassic Park " God creates man,God creates dinosaurs,God kills dinosaurs,Man creates dinosaurs,dinosaurs eat man and Women inherit the earth"

By this I mean that marketers and advertisers have catered and have seen that women will pay strict instruction to adverts they have noted that women spend larger volumes of cash on products from clothing to paint! Yes! Paint but that comes into my Blog later on.

Adverts are now put on the television at certain times of the day to get the right consumer whether it be a house wife sat at home watching Jeremy Kyle at 10:30 on a Wednesday morning or a business lady from the city watching Coronation Street on a Tuesday, the adverts are tailored to attract the eyes of ladies,the idea of the fact lets pack the background with detail and luxurious colors just seem to send out all the right signals and the marketing is bang on.

Where as the male adverts of this world if i may call them that are what it says on the can (please excuse the pun) but Ronsill the wood staining agent,have it just right it's a very "blokey" add and gets straight to the point, as do car adverts there is no messing about its just what you see is what you get.

( Wilkie, 1994 ) defines perception as "being the process of sensing, selecting and interpreting consumer stimuli in the external world"

This is a great quote as it compacts all the things advertisers are looking for into one sentence,they way in which we perceive people around us in everyday life is not always taken into consideration but we do and that is just a fact,everyone takes first impressions into consideration people say they do not do it but they do,everyone is slightly shallow from the shoes somebody is wearing to the way they do their hair,people are always trying to make that massive first impression of being a somebody!

Now to my point of paint,Paint is something that no man really cares about does he?Lets face it attention to detail is not something that is really in the mind of males when it comes to painting a house...i am sure that "blue" is blue not "aqua marine" please answer the poll question to see if the masses agree or disagree with me on this point.

Smashed Egg!?!

The idea of filling out a picture of an egg with certain facts about ones self seems slightly weird,as we are products of eggs, which are filled with all the things that are intended to help us in life but whilst filling out an egg just look at the things that are not in your gene pool! 

Things like who knew you were going to be a good god parent,uncle or aunt and who would be able to tell you,that you would be able to go traveling around the world on your own or with a group of friends?

The egg made me realise that there are certain things in life like when?where? and who? are questions that do not always have an answer,for example i have been to different places around the world and i like different things compared to people in my lecture group, i may like Cadbury's chocolate whilst a class mate would enjoy the guilty pleasures of a Galaxy bar! Upon reflection i guess that the egg just shows us how different we all really are?! From possessions

to our behaviour and what we want as consumers.

(Russell W Belk) says...

 

"...Its a simple concept, and a basic premise of consumer behaviour. But, it has boggled the minds of the best psychologists, sociologists, consumer behaviorists, advertisers and marketers for half a century at the least. For, as it turns out now, this simple concept is really combination of two others. Not only are we what we are seen to be (the 'me' concept), we are also what is seen to be ours (the 'mine' concept). It seems we, as human beings,create our identities using both these - the 'me' and 'mine' - concepts..."

If you want to fill out your own egg like my lovely one as you can see, then here are some questions for you to get started:

Name?

Age?

Where are you from?

What languages do you speak?

What you do?

Your top 5 friends?

Your hobbies?

Your favourite quote?

Basically just fill it out with facts about you and see what you come up with,if you want to share it with the world post it on here! 

Heres hoping you enjoy filling out your egg and remember:

"Life is not about the amount of breaths you take,it's about the moments that take your breath away"