Consumer Behaviour - Symbolic Meaning of Sports Themed Pub - Essay Example

Consumer Behavior Table of Contents Introduction 3 Discussion 3 Conclusion 8 References 10 Introduction Consumer behavior can be considered as an important aspect in the field of marketing. Consumer behavior can be considered as the study of behavior, attitudes, motivations and nature of the people or consumers during the purchase of the products. It is true that global business environment is changing drastically. Several leading organizations are trying to gain potential competitive advantages over their competitors by adopting and implementing unique strategies in business operation process. Consumer behavior is a key aspect that drives an organization to adopt and implement strategies accordingly. It is highly important for the organization to examine and understand the nature of consumer behavior so that the organizations can offer products and services considering the needs of target customers. Flagship brand stores are gaining huge popularity in the world due to growing demand for this shopping culture and behavior. Now-a-days, the concept of flagship brand store is changing significantly. Currently, retailers are refining the concept of the flagship brand stores to the themed retail flagship brand stores. This strategy helps people to do shopping with sheer entertainment. This essay will try to discuss about a sports themed pub situated in Central London. In addition to this, the essay will also analyze the symbolic meaning of sports themed pub. Discussion London can be considered as one of the happening places in the United Kingdom. Moreover, people of this area love to watch different sporting events. Cricket and English Premier League are the popular sporting events in the United Kingdom. People of UK love to spend their leisure time by watching these sporting events and they also love to spend their valuable time behind this. There have been significant upsurge of economic expansion of sports in Western culture (Barker, 2012, p.7). These sporting events have extensive opportunities to stimulate far-reaching, capability building and environmental awareness for economic, social and environmental growth. The concept of opening sports themed bar has been developed by contacting the local chamber of commerce. The marital status, income level, gender and age of customers within the locality also have been considered in this concept development process. One of the improved popular venues by marketers for building consumer relationship is the flagship themed brand store (Cheverton, 2006, p.77). Furthermore, it is believed that retail market has become more fragmented and diverse than that of giving consumers overloaded products and substitutes. Strategically it has been proved that retailers attract these consumers by turning their focus on retail atmospherics by creating striking and notable consumer involvement and experience. The sports themed pub in central London is viewed to be as perfect place for people to pass their free time. The symbolic meaning of sports themed pub is entertainment. People choose these sports themed pub to express their feelings. The prime purpose of sports theme pub is to make customer happy in their dining and get together parties. Additionally, it includes pleasure atmosphere, good service, menu selection and enjoyment to reach objectives of complete assessment in dining experience (Henry, 2008, p.29). Some of the famous sports themed pubs in central London are Albion, Carlsberg Sports Bar, The Old Red Lion Theater Pub, Riley’s Sports Bar Haymarket, Jetlag Sports Bar and The Dugout. Riley’s Sports Bar Haymarket is regarded as the largest sports bar in London. The symbolic meaning of sports bar is communicating a widespread emotional combination of situations, such as participation and joy and locally between the local audiences (Jobber, 2012, p.195). The particular audiences are viewed to be customers, who love sports and want to see them live on television. More specifically, themed pub is regarded as the self-presentation of the place with unique narrative and normative meaning. Moreover, this detailed environment inside theme based pub is based on social and cultural norms of people. London is viewed as pivotal venue for sports extravaganza. It is the capital city of England and has several professional teams in every area of sports. London has also hosted several international tournaments, such as summer Olympics for three times, Aviva Premiership Rugby tournament and English premier League. Football is regarded as the most popular sport in London. English premier League is considered as primary football completion of the country. This resembles the fact that people in London loves to spend their leisure time watching football in sports themed bar. The narrative characteristics of sports themed pub in London is verisimilitude. The symbolism of themed pub rejoices the natural and primitive aspect in humanity and sports. According to J. Levy, Dennis W. Rook, symbols are considered as key portion of the specific characteristics and individualities of consumers. Symbolic meaning is viewed to be primary ways to establish the vast impression of a space. The essence and key aspect of a culture is represented by symbols (Kozinets, Sherry, DeBerry-Spence, Duhacheck, Nuttavuthist and Storm, 2002, p.20). In today’s world, suburban and metropolitan spaces have effectively developed with several themed pub that efficiently commercialized culture and combined contemporary with the entertainment means. Moreover, these sports themed pubs are described as spaces for people to mingle and work as containers for human communications. The themed material forms implemented in the pub acts as symbols to convey message to people (Kapferer, 2008, p.62). These become primary source of involvement of people to engage them rather them attracting them within the themed environments. Over the period of time, there has been radical alteration on way people tried to spend their leisure time and eating out. The sports themed pub in London has been one of the popular strategies implemented by the owners to differentiate them from other competitors. It is known to all that, London is viewed to be as trendy and sports loving place. People love to spend their time outside by absorbing the esthetic experience of the themed pub with sports. Themed pub takes priority over the general concept pub and influences people by food, architecture and total feel about the internal environment (Knapp, 2000, p.87). The symbolic meaning of sports themed pub is the combination of infinity, achievement and eternity. Additionally, it also conveys a grasping and simultaneous striving of achievement oriented activity of human beings. The architecture is imbued by effective link with the marketing strategies and universal emotions. Sports themed pub uses the concept of circularity and concept of effective use of architecture (Burrow, 2011, p.37). There is no shortage of sports lover in central London. Some of the popular sports in London are football, cricket, tennis and rugby. The love of sports is one of the primary reasons that markets opt to construct sports themed pub in London (Kotler and Lee, 2008, p.31). The largest sports bar in London is Riley’s Sports Bar Haymarket. These sports themed pub provide ultimate location for sports lovers, such as football and cricket with added extras line ping pong and pool tables. Maple leaf is Canadian Sports themed bar located near central London. The symbolic meaning of Maple leaf is to provide information to people that there are sports beyond soccer. The primary purpose of the bar is to provide live telecast of sports beyond football. Some of the sports fans of the London can watch Canadian ice hockey and American Football League on three big screens. This resembles the fact that Maple leaf tries to provide symbolic image about love of sports beyond football. Jetlag Sports Bar in London has more executive viewing options than any other pub in the area. This pub allows people to see football matches from most of the European leagues around the globe (Kotler and Pfoertsch, 2006, p.91). The symbolic meaning of Jetlag Sports Bar is an executive viewing options for people with nice cinema screen and great comfort. This experiential retail environment provides symbolic meaning of exclusive, enjoyable and comfortable environment. The sense of relief and pleasure is fully attained by people in London by watching football and other sporting events in big screen with quality food and drinks. Therefore, it is vital for themed pub to attract the attention of consumers by attractive symbolic meaning. The symbolic importance of sports themed pub is that it provides description about the environment and type of establishments (McDonnell and Moir, 2013, p.73). The tactics implemented by the sports themed pub and restaurants is to pip in crown noise, instituted sport atmospherics, installation of arena-type lightning and providing interactive activities to create entertaining and attractive patrons. These are some of the primary symbolic representations of sports themed pub that provide descriptive analysis about the importance of symbolic meaning. These symbolic meanings are viewed to be effective part for experiential retail environment like sports themed pub. The use of smooth finishes, lavish décor and minutest of attention in themed based pub is vital for presenting better experience to watch sports on large screens. It is true that, people in London are fond of spending their time by watching sports on large screens especially in pubs. The experience of consumers is regarded as vital constituent for successful retail environment (Pride and Ferrell, 2011, p.52). The richness of themed environment pub and bar for people are primarily intended to cause people linger lengthier and attract customers. The symbolic meanings are provided through outdoor and indoor environment, which is crucial and important for sports themed pub. This symbolic meaning tries to present the nature and habit of people. Furthermore, this can benefit retail environment to understand the mood and habit of people in central London (Solomon and Barmossy, 2002, p.31). The love of sports in London cannot be denied. This is primary reason behind opening of several sports themed pub in London. Symbols have become pivotal part for consumer as individual identities. The importance of symbols is significant for success of a business. Therefore, it is critical to notify that symbols are affective for sports pub. Symbols can sometimes provide local and universal meanings. These symbolic meaning of themed pub in London is vital for pub differentiation (Wilson, 2015, p.1). It is researched from VisitBritain that, themed pub is vital in United Kingdom for tourism. As we know that, London has several top football clubs like Chelsea, Arsenal, Tottenham Hotspur, West Ham and Crystal Palace. There are also some top rugby clubs in London, such as London Broncos and London Skolars. These clubs make people all over the world to visit and stay in nearby hotels on live match day. Some of the people, who do not had opportunity to visit top clubs in London, decides to visit sports themed pub. According to VisitBritain research, 45 percentages of the tourists who visit United Kingdom tend to visit once to a sports themed pub. There has been long history of London as center entertaining nightlife activities (Zarrela, 2010, p.62). The enduring aspects of societies of London are clubs, public houses and sports themed bars. There have been rapid upsurge of growing rate of visiting high street pubs and bars in London. Symbols can be considered as potential communication tools for consumers to attract consumers. People in London are fond of watching football and rugby matches in themed pub (Wright, 2006, p.19). The symbolic significance plays vivid role in describing the popularity of sports themed pub and its existence. Conclusion This can be concluded that sports themed pub located in central London creates several symbolic meanings. The taste and passion of people in the locality is observed as critical to starting any brand store or themed restaurant or pub. It is also believed that richness of symbolic meaning can help to drive success to many flagship and themed store and pub by focusing on the culture of communities and local customs. Self-concept is enhanced by communication of symbolic meaning of experiential retail environment. The experiential retail environment selected in this essay is a sports themed pub in Central London. When a sport pub is established, it is vital to evaluate the symbolic meaning presented to the consumers. Moreover, this process of evaluation is solely based on preference of the consumers. The symbolic meaning of pub can affect the consumer behavior. The symbolic meaning of sports is social interaction and free time. Sports pub in London provides people opportunity to spend their time by watching their favorite sports. Football is regarded as the popular sports played and viewed by people in central London. Most of the pub and bar are themed on football. This is primarily due to the priority of people in the community. Therefore, it can be reported that symbolic meaning is vital for themed based pub to be successful and gain attraction of consumers. References Barker, N., 2012. Integrated marketing communications. New York: McGraw-Hill. Burrow, J., 2011. Marketing. Stamford: Cengage Learning. Cheverton, P., 2006. Understanding Brand. London: Kogan Page. Henry, A., 2008. Understanding Strategic Management. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jobber, D., 2012. Principles and Practice of Marketing. New York: McGraw-Hill Education. Kapferer, J., 2008. The new strategic Brand Management. London: Kogan Page. Knapp, E., 2000. The Brand Mindset. New York: McGraw Hill. Kotler, P., and Lee, N., 2008. Social marketing: Influencing behaviours for good. London: Sage Publications. Kotler, P., and Pfoertsch, W., 2006. B2B Brand Management. Berlin: Springer. Kozinets, R., Sherry, J., DeBerry-Spence, B., Duhacheck, A., Nuttavuthist, K., Storm, D., 2002. “Themed flagship brand stores in the new millennium: Theory, practice, prospects”. Journal of Retailing, 78(1), pp. 17-29. McDonnell, I., and Moir, M., 2013. Events sponsorship. London: Sage. Pride, W., and Ferrell, O., 2011. Marketing. Stamford: Cengage Learning. Solomon, M. R., and Bamossy, G. J., 2002. Consumer behaviour: A European perspective. London: Sage Publications. Wilson, T., 2015. Globalization, differentiation and drinking cultures, an anthropological perspective. [Online]. Available at: < http://aof.revues.org/261#tocto2n1>. [Accessed on February 24, 2015]. Wright, R., 2006. Consumer Behaviour. Stamford: Cengage Learning. Zarrela, D., 2010. The Social Media Marketing Book. Toronto: OReilly Media, Inc. Read More