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, 6th edition, W.W Nortion & Co.
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 group - A group with structure and organisation, usually to achieve a goal e.g Work
In-formal - A group without structure, but working towards the same purpose e.g A hobby club
Peers - An informal group of who share a similar status and usually roughly the same age e.g students
Groups influence the socialisation process: they influence what we learn, how we behave and our values.
Group norms, acceptance and pressure
Norms are rules people are expected to observe; they represent the dos and don'ts of social life e.g piercing ears (Introduction to Sociology, 2007, Page 56-7).
Individuals in groups can react to this pressure in the following ways:
When in a group there is a pressure to accept the norms and conform with the group.
Group pressure can cause people to conform even when they know or think the rest of the group is wrong. This can be seen in the atrocities that happened at Auschwitz and more recently in the student protests. A famous experiment which shows the pressure of conformity is the Asch experiement shown below:
Opinion leaders
An opinion leader is someone who is frequently able to influence others' attitudes or behaviours. They are able to do this because they are known to be knowledgeable about products so their advice is taken seriously. (Consumer Behaviour: A European Perspective, 2010, page 407)
Identifying and exploiting opinion leaders can be a powerful tool, especially when launching new products. If opinion leaders have or are talking about your product it is a powerful endorsement and makes people more likely to buy. This can be seen when prominent bloggers are given samples of items just to talk about them, they can create buzz even before the product has launched.
For further reading on opinion leaders a study of cross-culture opinion leadership can be found here, which also lists attributes of opinion leaders on page 4.
Lecture Content & Process
In class we were set a group task. We were first split into groups according to our ages. With three groups of the oldest, middle and youngest students. In our groups we had to decide on the order of importance of 15 items if we were stranded on the moon, we then had to decide as a group which items were the most important and one person in each group was just an observer. The task was designed to show group dynamics in action.
One bright spark in our group suggested we added up all our individual scores to work out the group average and then working out our group decision from the our total scores, however, after we had set about working this out and got a list, the same bright spark suggested we actually discuss as the our answers and come up with a list through discussion as that was the actual whole point of the task.
Interestingly everyone was happy at first to use the original group total method to decide on the group's list, but after the discussion was suggested people were more hesitant to change method. This could be an example of groups trusting opinion leaders less if they are indecisive; or just typical student behaviour on a Friday morning in the last lesson before the weekend.
The youngest group - Observer Jess' group was mainly led by one individual who mainly made jokes, however, the individual who led the group actually had the best individual score which was far better than the group score though the group did not listen to his input regarding the task.
The middle group - Big Mike's group wasn't led by anyone and everyone talked over each other leading to the group fragmenting into smaller conversations.
The oldest - Observer Charlotte's group was our group, Charlotte said it was led mainly by three people though everyone had some input.
Overall it was an interesting task to see how different groups performed and interacted. It would have been really interesting if we could have recorded all the discussions and watched them later. From the observers' feedback on all three groups I think I preferred the dynamic of our group, however, our group did not score the best on the task.
After this task we were set another and split into three different groups. This time we had to come up with 3 rules for behaviour in our classroom including things like lectures starting at the hour i.e 9 AM instead of 9:15 after the late people had arrived. We then rejoined as a group and shortlisted the 9 total rules into 3 which would be applied. One thing I noticed was that after the day's lesson people were saying how the class felt much more like a 'group'. I think this is due to the fact we had a degree of control and responsibility during the lecture.
The interesting part!
Now time to show off some marcomms that puts this into action!
This ad, has great background music, uses some great visual effects to highlight the belonging to groups and personal relationships and reinforces it by letting you know you can "stay close to the people that matter to you" and intrinsic in that statement is that they will stay close to you also.
I don't think I could possibly say anything about the next ad.
Except maybe, it is his birthday. There also seems to be a clear opinion leader/ group leader in this advert who decides what's happening and the rest follow.
And finally a nice one from O2. The advert is tinted blue which is the same as O2's logo. The imagery highlights the belonging in the following ways: entering in groups, holding hands, a crowd bouncing a beach ball together (also blue and white like the O2 logo), similar expressions on their faces, jumping in time, clapping in time, a couple staring intensely into each other's eyes and has the strap line "O2 - Together is better".
"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, 6th 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 group - A group with structure and organisation, usually to achieve a goal e.g Work
In-formal - A group without structure, but working towards the same purpose e.g A hobby club
Peers - An informal group of who share a similar status and usually roughly the same age e.g students
Groups influence the socialisation process: they influence what we learn, how we behave and our values.
Group norms, acceptance and pressure
Norms are rules people are expected to observe; they represent the dos and don'ts of social life e.g piercing ears (Introduction to Sociology, 2007, Page 56-7).
Individuals in groups can react to this pressure in the following ways:
- compliance
- internalisation and identification
- counter conformity
When in a group there is a pressure to accept the norms and conform with the group.
Group pressure can cause people to conform even when they know or think the rest of the group is wrong. This can be seen in the atrocities that happened at Auschwitz and more recently in the student protests. A famous experiment which shows the pressure of conformity is the Asch experiement shown below:
Opinion leaders
An opinion leader is someone who is frequently able to influence others' attitudes or behaviours. They are able to do this because they are known to be knowledgeable about products so their advice is taken seriously. (Consumer Behaviour: A European Perspective, 2010, page 407)
Identifying and exploiting opinion leaders can be a powerful tool, especially when launching new products. If opinion leaders have or are talking about your product it is a powerful endorsement and makes people more likely to buy. This can be seen when prominent bloggers are given samples of items just to talk about them, they can create buzz even before the product has launched.
For further reading on opinion leaders a study of cross-culture opinion leadership can be found here, which also lists attributes of opinion leaders on page 4.
Lecture Content & Process
In class we were set a group task. We were first split into groups according to our ages. With three groups of the oldest, middle and youngest students. In our groups we had to decide on the order of importance of 15 items if we were stranded on the moon, we then had to decide as a group which items were the most important and one person in each group was just an observer. The task was designed to show group dynamics in action.
One bright spark in our group suggested we added up all our individual scores to work out the group average and then working out our group decision from the our total scores, however, after we had set about working this out and got a list, the same bright spark suggested we actually discuss as the our answers and come up with a list through discussion as that was the actual whole point of the task.
Interestingly everyone was happy at first to use the original group total method to decide on the group's list, but after the discussion was suggested people were more hesitant to change method. This could be an example of groups trusting opinion leaders less if they are indecisive; or just typical student behaviour on a Friday morning in the last lesson before the weekend.
The youngest group - Observer Jess' group was mainly led by one individual who mainly made jokes, however, the individual who led the group actually had the best individual score which was far better than the group score though the group did not listen to his input regarding the task.
The middle group - Big Mike's group wasn't led by anyone and everyone talked over each other leading to the group fragmenting into smaller conversations.
The oldest - Observer Charlotte's group was our group, Charlotte said it was led mainly by three people though everyone had some input.
Overall it was an interesting task to see how different groups performed and interacted. It would have been really interesting if we could have recorded all the discussions and watched them later. From the observers' feedback on all three groups I think I preferred the dynamic of our group, however, our group did not score the best on the task.
After this task we were set another and split into three different groups. This time we had to come up with 3 rules for behaviour in our classroom including things like lectures starting at the hour i.e 9 AM instead of 9:15 after the late people had arrived. We then rejoined as a group and shortlisted the 9 total rules into 3 which would be applied. One thing I noticed was that after the day's lesson people were saying how the class felt much more like a 'group'. I think this is due to the fact we had a degree of control and responsibility during the lecture.
The interesting part!
Now time to show off some marcomms that puts this into action!
This ad, has great background music, uses some great visual effects to highlight the belonging to groups and personal relationships and reinforces it by letting you know you can "stay close to the people that matter to you" and intrinsic in that statement is that they will stay close to you also.
I don't think I could possibly say anything about the next ad.
Except maybe, it is his birthday. There also seems to be a clear opinion leader/ group leader in this advert who decides what's happening and the rest follow.
And finally a nice one from O2. The advert is tinted blue which is the same as O2's logo. The imagery highlights the belonging in the following ways: entering in groups, holding hands, a crowd bouncing a beach ball together (also blue and white like the O2 logo), similar expressions on their faces, jumping in time, clapping in time, a couple staring intensely into each other's eyes and has the strap line "O2 - Together is better".
Wonderful choice of ads. All boxes ticked. I like the idea of videoing the discussion groups - thanks
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