bnoo blog

What are values?  Values are ideas held by individuals or groups about what is desirable, proper, good and bad. What individuals value is strongly influenced by the specific culture in which they happen to live. From Introduction to Sociology, 2007, A. Giddens, Mitchell Duneier & Richard Appelbaum Different cultures have different values; they see different things as desirable. In Papau New Guinea teenage boys of the Iatmul tribe endure thousands of razor cuts intended to create scars that resemble a crocodile’s hide. Males remain ‘boys’ until they go through this procedure regardless of their age. Crocodile skin In western culture this process would seem barbaric to most people. This is because of the culture that most people grew up in and the resulting values they hold. Reflection on VALS test TimeLine events that impact on the values Why study values?   Values are important to study because if we believe our values drive our behaviour, we should co...

Is generational marketing just age marketing or more? Currently the generations are split up as follows: Tweens aged 9-12 Ipod generation/Millennials - current teens Generation Y aged 16-33 Generation X aged 34-44 (also known as Baby busters due to the drop in birth rate following the baby boom)  Baby boomers aged 45-65 The chart shows the birth rate (births/thousand population) in  the US. The baby boom can clearly be seen in the blue line. From:  "Vital Statistics of the United States, 2003, Volume I, Natality",  Other generations include: The post-war generation born 1928-45 The World War 2 generation born 1922-37 Depression era generation born 1912-21 Generation marketing takes into account the age, values , experiences, family life cycle stage, group memberships. It is different from age segmentation  as the each generation will have different experiences and be exposed to different products, technology and ideas which form...

Charity sector in the UK CAF estimate charitable giving in the UK in 2009/10 by individuals to be £12.6 billion with over 56% of adults donating to charitable causes (Charities Aid Foundation, 2010) . This was broken down in giving per donor per month as £12 as the median and £31 as the mean , this shows that high-level donors have a large impact on total giving as evidenced by the skewness , which is “the tendency of deviations from the mean to be larger in one direction than the other”  (Malhotra, 2010: 488) . The recession has had an impact on charitable giving, 2008/9 saw a drop of 11% in total donations compared to 2007/8 as well as a drop in household donations to 54% (NCVO, 2009) , and this shows that although most people are still giving; everyone is giving slightly less. However, a clear rise in giving can be seen, in 2009/10 56% of households donated to charity, the same % as the pre-recession levels in 2007/8 (Charities Aid Foundation, 2008) . The total amount given ...

What is a group? "A social group is  a collection of people who share a common identity and regularly react with each other on a shared the basis of shared expectations concerning behaviour. People who belong to the same social group identify with each other, expect each other to conform to certain ways of thinking and acting, and recognize the boundaries that separate them from other groups".  Giddens, A., Duneier, M. and Appelbaum, R. (2007) Page 140  Introduction to Sociology , 6 th edition, W.W Nortion & Co. This means groups: share a set of norms have role relationships and experience interdependent behaviours A group can be as little as two people e.g. two room-mates. Group types: Aspirational - A group you want to be a part of e.g. Middle-class. Associative - A group you are a part of already e.g. student, sports team. Disassociative - Any group you would not like to join e.g The KKK. Formal gro...

Nostalgia What is nostalgia? In 'Consumer Behaviour: a European perspective ' nostalgia is described as a bittersweet emotion where we view the past with both sadness and longing. References to the 'good old days' are increasingly common, as advertisers call up memories of youth - and hope these feelings will translate to what they are selling today. In class we discussed why nostalgia is so effective as a marketing tool for treats. We decided it was because treats were usually given as a reward or, as the name suggests, a special treat; perhaps for a birthday or day out. As these events were usually happy ones, when they have the same treat in the present day their memory of the original consumption of the treat is recalled and all the emotions that accompany it. Nostalgic memories can be exaggerated because we long for them so much or in some cases we remember them to the extreme of being bad. This is due to events being memorable because they are either gr...

Gender Differences in Buyer Behaviour Gender difference is the topic of today's blog. I'll be discussing what differences they are, if they're important, how they influence buyer behaviour and how they can be applied to marketing as well as commenting on the lecture. In the lesson we were told to make a list throughout the lecture of the differences we could see (my list will be at the end of this blog post). We then discussed different ways to impress a women and came up with a long list including: compliment her, respect her, cuddle her, care for her, buy things for her and go to the ends of the earth for her; we then discussed how to impress a man and came up with 2 things: show up naked and bring food which, although humorous, highlights the fact that men and women are very different. A new Japanese trend of serving sushi on women to provide for the male businessman. We also looked at charity campaigns and discussed how men and women perceive the adverts differe...