Maslows Hierarchy of Needs - Essay Example

? Consumer behavior - Questions Consumer behavior - Questions Outline: Introduction PART Questions 5 PART 2 Part a and b Work Cited PART 1 1. Maslow’s ‘hierarchy of needs’ is frequently quoted as a useful tool for analyzing consumer behavior. How would you account for its popularity? Where might this theory have strict limitations in attempting to predict and shape markets? Today this theory of motivation, (A H Maslow, 1943 P. 370 -96) has been much in use and thus is gaining fame as a useful tool for analysis consumer attitudes. Government and leaders of the company have become increasingly aware of the people’s needs and understand that at times people would break the rules in place to satisfy them. With the help of Maslow theory marketer’s can judge consumer’s motivations they can identify the generic level of need the consumer product is capable of fulfilling. This would help the marketers better form any of the marketing strategy. Products such as foods and clothes are purchased as they fulfill safety needs; personal care products such as shaving cream, perfume, soap, toothpaste, are bought mainly as they serve social needs. While luxurious products such as expensive clothing, fancy house, jewelry, and cares are bought mainly to serve self-actualizations and ego needs. Though, Maslow's hierarchy does consider relevant from an intuitive standpoint, however, there is little evidence to proof its hierarchical aspect. Today there are evidences to contradict such aspects as explained by this motivation theory. For example, today we find some of the cultures placing social needs ahead of any others. Maslow's hierarchy further has difficulty explaining incidents such as the "starving artist" where a person ignores lower needs to pursuit higher ones. Finally, it cannot be prove that people g up t motivated just to satisfy a single need at a time, except in situations where one finds conflict between needs. Therefore, it fails to predict and shape market well. 2. How influential is gender stereotyping in the popular magazine or the drinks markets in differentiating and expanding the total market? Gender stereotyping makes use of magazines and other advertising mediums to govern and shape people’s perception. How influential they might would depend on the assumptions made about men and women which may or may not be true. It could have been said to predict fairly for a fewer numbers however, it might not be true for the larger part. In short that everyone could confide to the description of gender descriptions as mentioned neatly in various advertising mediums such as magazines and drinks market. Today readers are found to be much sophisticated and are aware that much of the advertising stuff does not portray their sets of beliefs, perceptions, attitudes and likings. Post modern reader would take out several magazines to form a mix up suiting their sets of thinking patterns. For instance, one of the women might select the top and sandals off a photo shoot posted in a magazine but paired it with his favorite pants. So today, readers are conforming to some parts of gender stereotypes exposed to them but have willpower to surpass them if they feel like. So, in this case it would be relevant to conclude that magazines target audience in manner that they could influence majority and hence raise the sales of their products. However, there would be many readers who would know when to absorb and what to buy. 3. Give an example of ‘cultural jamming’ that to your mind works really well in causing consumers to think twice about their attitudes towards a brand or a product. What techniques does this example of ‘cultural jamming’ utilize to make it so effective? Culture jamming is arousing attention in consumers of particular brand to react in an emotional manner. It can be commercial, social or political. If done properly it raises awareness among the people and is effective adding legal way to mend the consumer’s perception. One of the best examples of culture jamming that works real well in causing to think twice about their behavior or attitude towards a particular brand is of the poor McDonald’s Fat Kid. (Adrants 2007, under Culture Jammers Reprise Mc Donald’s Fat Kid For KFC). This displays a fat kid who has been locked in a booth and has a tray full of fattening junk foods. The Kid is there to raise awareness of how all the consumption of junk foods causing the kid to be locked with obesity forever. This kid has been the poster child for obesity discussion over and again and again. This has cause KFC to become victim of the latest culture jamming event. The technique is effective as it uses a colorful to represent and convey its message. The message has wider coverage as it is posted in the very streets of East London. Moreover, it is in picture form rather than boring textual updates. The use of all these factors makes it one of the best cultures jamming technique to raise awareness how fast food is breeding everyone to increasing rates of obesity. 4. What makes ‘celebrity endorsement’ so attractive to marketers? In what ways might the use of celebrities backfire on marketers; and how might they combat such setbacks? A celebrity endorsement is any celebrity endorsing particular brands for its promotion. Celebrity endorsement is valued by marketers as it causes instant Brand Awareness and brand recall. Approval of a brand by any celebrity creates a sense of trust for that brand in the target audience. People tend to conjoint the personalities of the celebrity and brand there forth increasing the recall value. A celebrity’s preference for any brand sends a persuasive message for ensured attention and higher PR coverage. Last but the least celebrity endorsement can rejuvenate a stagnant brand. Backfire Multi branding by a single celebrity would dilute his novelty this would result in overexposure. Celebrity’s image would get distorted in this way. The bigger problems arise when a single celebrity endorses one brand and in reality uses another brand. This mismatch would create for the brand maker. Combat It is true that celebrity endorsement creates brand value however as the size of brand increases the level of value created by celebrities decreases potentially tempering the negative effects of celebrities endorsement. Therefore, there is little marketers should do to combat negative effects. As new ads become sighted audience would generally forget the previous ads. 5. How humor is typically used to engage consumers with a brand? What cautions should marketers bear in mind when employing humor as a marketing tool? With more and more products there has been increasing need to speed up attention to ones brand. Humor has been used with many brands to remedy this problem. Over a period of time humor is considered as one of the best techniques to attain glued attention from customers. Humor is a just the physiological reaction to fear. (Vonnegut 2007)The principle with which humor works is emotionally touching the human psychic forcing the viewers to entertain and better recall the brand. Brands must make sure that humor should not lessen the equity interlinked with a brand. According to some researches it is seen that humorous ads are recalled better, easily and faster promoting consistent happiness in the clientele. Finally humor captures attentions and improves recalling, however if not crafted well can also backfire. It is important that only relevant humor is placed in the advertisement unnecessary and absurd humor will only portray a negative brand image. Moreover, over exaggeration in humor would only let people remember the joke but not the message. If humor targets certain groups then it would upset certain individuals and ultimately the brand equity would erode. While humor is good campaign but constructing such ads one should not lost sight of brands core values. PART 2 a) What research methods would you employ in researching changes in public attitudes and perception towards a product over several decades of consumption? Market research is the understanding and evaluating the market situation of any product or service. There are several research methods that can be used to study consumer’s preferences or attitudes towards a product or service. Research Method 1 The simple and the best way to start any research, is with the use of simple survey. This applies to all types of researches and could open the gate for much information. Survey is the usual way and usual tool of research if proper procedures are followed more reliable conclusions can be drawn regarding the market situations. The technique that would cover much wider analysis in itself concise and to the point is the use of questionnaire. Once all the questionnaires are filled then all one need to do is a proper sample analysis. For more accurate results wider sample size could be drawn. There are three of these surveys: 1. One to one personal surveys – These are typically done in busier ports such as malls. The advantage is that they are quick and provide instant feedback. 2. Telephonic survey – less costly than general post mail but cheaper than one to one. However, the limitation is that people are getting increasingly aversive to such calls. 3. Online survey – These are effective and cover large number of people but still they generate minimum number of response. Research Method 2 Another effective manner to grab more data is an interview. Detailed personal interviews provide better qualitative research and reliable conclusive data to draw decisions upon. These are usually opened ended and are recorded. Even though these might not be very reliable statistically they are an excellent insight in to customer’s preferences and attitudes. One can conclude about many new products or services. Therefore, this method forms part of qualitative research. Research Method 3 Observation is one more type of research methodology in use. At times what people say and what they really does are drastically different. Therefore, observing plays vital role in bridging this gap. The processes include observing the potential or existing customers action and recording such. This is one of the clear picture methodologies that would provide insights into consumer’s habits and shopping patterns. Research Method 4 Market research methods require another method called focus groups. This falls in the quantitative research method. In focus groups one moderator use a series of scripted questions or topics with the objective to initiate a sort of discussion among group members. Minimum three groups are required to produce credible results. For this activity to effectively work observatories and videotaping facilities would be require. Research Method 5 This is one of the most practical methods to follow. Keep some selective products in few stores and study patterns of consumer response in real life buying and selling. This is a huge signal for what alterations and improvements are required in the product or the service. For accurate results, it is best to use two or three methods at the same time for a single product or service study. This would take business behavior to what is the actual consumer behavior or preference. b) How might your research findings be utilized to inform the shaping of markets for the current and future generations? Drawing upon theory, examples from the consumer marketplace and also from reflection on personal experience. Marketing is the profession that deals with consumers most directly. Marketers take hints from consumers before effecting an actual decision. This would cover all types of issues such as product development, marketing strategy or the pricing plan. As, marketing has its grounds tied in the marketplace, the consumer behavior has a direct impact on the marketing strategy in use by any company. Therefore, the research findings carried out using research methodologies would help the marketer understand the gap between the business behavior and the consumer preferences. Thus, a proper understanding would help boost the overall effectiveness of one’s business. Sales Since sales personal can approach and communicate well with customers. Individual companies craft the sales strategies based on research findings this would help shape salesmen behavior in response to different consumers’ preferences. For instance, some customers are absolutely turned off by hard sell tactics, while others may be susceptible to them. Or some customers prefer sales people walking them through the purchase decisions, while others preferring to be left alone. If properly dealt this would help boost profit margins. Advertising The best advertising technique to shape any market is one which gets the people talking about the product or service that is it causes better recall. Every detail of advertisements is put in place to attract the company's target customers in some way. The advertisers would create messages based on studied reactions in such target audience to induce them to react in a similar way the company wants. A careful study in the target audience would help understand what kind of ads would have more convincing power. For instance, certain consumer groups are influenced by celebrity endorsements, so such target markets are targeted with such methodologies. Meaningful beauty products website trades heavily with the image of Cindy Crawford, who is a beautiful woman. (Meaningful Beauty Review) Promotions This area of price promotions is greatly influenced by consumer behavior and psychology. Marketers do plan promotional strategies relying on statistical models that make use of a range of factors into account. For instance, marketers take in to account the exact amount of price discounts which would work best in the current market situation. Discounts are proven to be best way to attract larger customer. Larger discounts works well than smaller discounts as consumers are proven to make more use of these. Marketers also take into consideration the way in which such discounts can be redeemed, whether as mail-in rebates, store-wide price markdowns, coupons or other mechanisms. This is because consumers take different promotional ways in different ways and prefer certain methods more than others. Last however not the least; marketers consider the manner in which they advertise these promotional materials to consumers, who react differently to different medium of receptive or channels. Mail-in rebates is an ideal example of any consumer behavior's shaping the companies promotional strategy. For instance the more valuable as it is, the more is the probability of consumers mailing it in. If a company otherwise offers a relatively small mail-in rebate, many of the customers will not redeem it, though the rebate motivated them to buy. Product Development The most important phase in any industry is the product development. A product cannot be developed in a vacuum, as today such product would have no value with the customers. Marketers’ extensive research (using above research methodologies) serve as the mechanism to target consumers wants. This would help determine what kind of products and services are underrepresented or are missing before starting to develop those products or new ideas. Marketers utilize the understanding consumers receptive who buy products that can provide them qualitative service at reduce prices. Therefore, the focus of any marketing strategy is to use those production lines that provide best quality products at affordable cost. All the above methods would help better shaping up of the markets for the current and future generations. Work Cited 1. Adrants (2007), ‘Culture Jammers Reprise Mcdonalds Fat Kid for KFC ‘ from http://www.adrants.com/2007/05/culture-jammers-reprise-mcdonalds-fat.php 2. A.H. Maslow, A Theory of Human Motivation, Psychological Review 50(4) (1943):370-96. 3. Crm4insurance (2007) Maslow's Hierarchy of Human Needs - Consumer Behavior -1 from http://crm4insurance.blogspot.com/2007/12/maslows-hierarchy-of-human-needs_07.html 4. Gender stereotyping from http://www.utdallas.edu/~kprager/stereoty.htm 5. Kurt Vonnegut (1922 - 2007), A Man without a Country from http://www.quotationspage.com/ 6. Marketing Research: An Applied Orientation 2006 (5th Edition) by Naresh Malhotra. ISBN 0132221179 7. Meaning beauty Products, Meaningful Beauty Review from http://www.thewrinklereport.com/meaningful-beauty-review 8. Research Findings from http://ear.findingavoice.org/dealing/5-0.html 9. Types of Surveys from http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/survtype.php 10. What is gender stereotyping from http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_gender_stereotyping Read More