1. CONSUMER BEHAVIOR, 9e Michael R. Solomon
Chapter 10 Groups
CONSUMER BEHAVIOR, 9e Michael R. Solomon
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2. Chapter Objectives
When you finish this chapter, you should understand why:
Others, especially those who possess some kind of social power, often influence us.
We seek out others who share our interests in products or services.
We are motivated to buy or use products in order to be consistent with what other people do.
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3. Chapter Objectives (continued)
Certain people are particularly likely to influence others’ product choices.
The things that other consumers tell us about products (good and bad) are often more influential than the advertising we see.
Online technologies are accelerating the impact of word-of-mouth communication.
Social networking is changing the way companies and consumers interact.
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4. Reference Groups
Reference group: an actual or imaginary individual/group conceived of having significant relevance upon an individual’s evaluations, aspirations, or behavior
Influences consumers in three ways:
Informational
Utilitarian
Value-expressive
Humans are social beings as such we belong to groups, try to please others, and look to others’ behavior for clues about what we should do in public settings.
The groups we look to for guidance – our reference groups – may be actual or imaginary. They influence us in three ways. Table 10.1 describes these influences. The information influence means that others provide information on consumer choices. The utilitarian influence means that our choices are influenced by important others. The value-expressive influence means that the individual uses the consumer choice to express values consistent (or not) with the group.
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5. When Reference Groups Are Important
Social power: capacity to alter the actions of others
Referent power
Information power
Legitimate power
Expert power
Reference power exists when the one person admires the qualities of another and tries to copy the referent’s behavior. It’s important to marketers because consumers voluntarily modify what they do and buy to identify with the referent.
Information power exists when someone knows something others would like to know.
Legitimate power is granted through true authority in a situation. For instance, police officers have legitimate power. Expert power accrues to a person who is an expert in a particular field. Due to their expertise, others will be influenced by them. Reward power refers to the influence held by a person who has the ability to offer a reward.
Coercive power is the opposite of reward power. It is held by someone who has the ability to punish.
Reward power
Coercive power
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6. Discussion
High schools have all types of reference groups, with members representing all types of social power. Think back and try to identify people who had the following types of power.
Referent power
Information power
Legitimate power
Expert power
Reward power
Coercive power
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7. Types of Reference Groups
Any external influence that provides social clues can be a reference group
Cultural figure
Parents
Large, formal organization
Small and informal groups
Exert a more powerful influence on individual consumers
A part of our day-to-day lives: normative influence
Some groups are more powerful than others and affect more of our consumption decisions. Normative influence occurs when the reference group helps to set and enforce fundamental standards of conduct. Comparative influence affects decisions about specific types of purchases. For instance, our parents might exert normative influence on a wide range of choices while a book club exerts influence on the choice of books we buy and read.
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8. Brand Communities and Consumer Tribes
A group of consumers who share a set of social relationships based upon usage or interest in a product
Consumer tribes share emotions, moral beliefs, styles of life, and affiliated product
Brandfests celebrated by community
Brandfests are held by many companies like Mini and Harley-Davidson. The festivals enable consumers to interact with others who share a similar brand passion.
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9. Membership versus Aspirational Reference Groups
Membership reference groups
People the consumer actually knows
Advertisers use “ordinary people”
Aspirational reference groups
People the consumer doesn’t know but admire
Advertisers use celebrity spokespeople
Membership reference groups are people we know like our families, friendship groups, and colleagues. Because we tend to compare ourselves with similar others, many promotional strategies include ordinary people. Seeing the consumption activities of others acts as a form of social influence. Aspirational reference groups are people we admire. They may be successful businesspeople, athletes, or performers.
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10. Factors Predicting Reference Group Membership
Propinquity
Mere exposure
Several factors make it more likely that we will be a member of a reference group. First as physical distance between people decreases and opportunities for interaction increase, they are more likely to form relationships. This physical nearness is called propinquity. We come to like persons or things if we see them more often. This is known as mere exposure phenomenon. Cohesiveness refers to the degree to which members of a group are attracted to each other and how much each values their membership in the group.
Group cohesiveness
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11. Positive versus Negative Reference Groups
Avoidance groups: motivation to distance oneself from other people/groups
Antibrand communities: coalesce around a celebrity, store, or brand—but in this case they’re united by their disdain for it
Reference groups can affect our decisions both positively and negatively. Sometimes we deliberately do the opposite if we want to distance ourselves from avoidance groups.
Antibrand communities are those that coalesce around a brand but they are united by a disdain for the brand. Many brands have been targeted by antibrand communities including Dunkin’ Donuts, Rachael Ray, and Starbucks.
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12. Consumers Do It in Groups
Deindividuation: individual identities become submerged within a group
Social loafing: people don’t devote as much to a task when their contribution is part of a larger group
Risky shift: group members show a greater willingness to consider riskier alternatives following group discussion than if members made their own decisions
People in larger groups have fewer constraints on behavior. Deindividuation occurs when our individual identities are submerged in the group. In other words, we don’t stay out alone so we may behave differently. At a costume party, we may act wilder than we would in our everyday lives.
Social loafing is a similar effect. It happens when we don’t devote as much to a task because our contribution is part of a large group effort. For instance, people tend to tip less when going in together to cover a restaurant bill. The risky shift effect explains why decisions we make as part of a group tend to differ from those each of us would choose on our own. Why would the risky shift effect occur? Psychologists say it could be a diffusion of responsibility. Individuals are less accountable for the outcomes when more people are involved in a decision. The value hypothesis is another possible explanation. It states that our culture values risky behavior so when people make group decisions they conform to this expectation.
The group could also increase decision polarization, meaning whichever way the group was leaning at the start of the discussion, the group becomes more extreme in that direction.
The change in our shopping behavior in groups is the reason some brands use home shopping parties.
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13. Discussion
Home shopping parties—such as Tupperware, Avon, Pampered Chef, Amway, or Botox—are designed to put pressure on friends and neighbors to buy merchandise.
Have you attended these parties? Why or why not?
Do you believe putting social pressure is ethical? Why or why not?
Why are these parties more common among women?
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14. Factors Influencing Conformity
Cultural pressures
Fear of deviance
Commitment
Group characteristics
unanimity
size
expertise
Susceptibility to interpersonal influence
We don’t mimic others’ behaviors all the time, so why are we more likely to conform sometimes? This slide lists the common culprits.
Culture pressure refers to how different cultures encourage conformity to a greater or lesser extent. For instance, the Japanese society emphasizes collective well-being and group loyalty over individuals’ needs.
Individuals may believe that the group will apply sanctions to punish nonconforming behaviors. This is the fear captured in the factor, fear of defiance. According to the principle of least interest, the person who is least committed to staying in a relationship has the most power because that party doesn’t care as much if the other person rejects him. As groups gain in power, compliance increases. The trait, susceptibility to interpersonal influence, refers to an individual’s need to have others think highly of him or her.
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15. Opinion Leadership
Opinion leaders influence others’ attitudes and behaviors
Experts
Unbiased evaluation
Socially active
Similar to the consumer
Among the first to buy
Everyone knows people who are knowledgeable about products and whose advice others take seriously. Opinion leaders are valuable sources of information because they possess social power. They may have expertise but one source of influence is their similarity to the person being influenced. Homophily refers to the degree to which a pair of individuals is similar in terms of education, social status, and beliefs.
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16. Opinion Leaders
Is there a generalized opinion leader whose recommendations we seek for all types of purchases?
Experts may be monomorphic or polymorphic
Very few people are capable of being experts in every subject so it is unlikely that generalized opinion leaders exist.
Monomorphic experts are those whose expertise applies to a limited field. Polymorphic experts are experts in several fields. However, estimates suggest that even polymorphic experts focus their expertise in a specific category.
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17. Figure 10.1 Old and New Social Networks
The two-step flow model of influence proposes that a small group of influencers disseminate information since they can modify the opinions of a large number of other people. Research shows that influence is driven less by influentials and more by the interaction among those who are easily influenced. This is because those people communicate the information with one another and also participate in dialogue with opinion leaders as part of an influence network. This figure contrasts the old and new perspectives on networks.
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18. The Market Maven
Market maven: actively involved in transmitting marketplace information of all types
Just into shopping and aware of what’s happening in the marketplace
Overall knowledge of how and where to get products
Researchers use a scale to identify market mavens. The scale includes items like “I like introducing new brands and products to my friends.”
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19. The Surrogate Consumer
Surrogate consumer: a marketing intermediary hired to provide input into purchase decisions
Interior decorators, stockbrokers, professional shoppers, college consultants
Consumer relinquishes control over decision-making functions
Marketers should not overlook influence of surrogates!
Unlike opinion leaders or market mavens, we usually pay surrogates for advice. Their recommendations are very influential!
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20. How Do We Find Opinion Leaders?
The self-designating method
Simply ask individuals whether they consider themselves to be opinion leaders
Easy to apply to large group of potential opinion leaders
Inflation or unawareness of own importance/influence
Key informant method
Key informants identify opinion leaders
Companies want to use opinion leaders to spread word-of-mouth communication about their brands, but how do they find the opinion leaders? The most common technique is simply to ask individual consumers whether they consider themselves to be opinion leaders. The problem is that just because we transmit advice about products does not mean that other people take the advice. For someone to be a true opinion leader, others must follow the advice given. Figure 10.2 provides a scale used to identify opinion leaders.
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21. Sociometric Methods
Sociometric methods: trace communication patterns among group members
Systematic map of group interactions
Most precise method of identifying product-information sources, but is very difficult/expensive to implement
Network analysis
Referral behavior/network, tie strength
Bridging function, strength of weak ties
The play Six Degrees of Separation is based on the premise that everyone is connected to everyone else, at least indirectly. Sociometric methods trace communication patterns among members of a group. We can use this method to better understand referral behavior and to locate strengths and weaknesses in terms of how one’s reputation flows through a community. Network analysis focuses on communication in social systems, considers the relationships among people in a referral network, and measures the tie strength among them. Tie strength refers to the nature of the bond between people. It can range from strong primary to weak secondary. Even weak ties can be influential.
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22. Word-of-Mouth Communication
WOM is product information transmitted by individuals to individuals
More reliable form of marketing
Social pressure to conform
Influences two-thirds of all sales
We rely upon WOM in later stages of product adoption
Powerful when we are unfamiliar with product category
Because we tend to believe people when they give us product information, WOM communication is considered reliable and credible.
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23. BzzAgent
BzzAgent recruits people to try products and talk about them with their friends and people they meet. It is an example of how marketers are trying to harness the power of word-of-mouth communication.
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24. Negative WOM and Power of Rumors
We weigh negative WOM more heavily than we do positive comments!
Negative WOM is easy to spread, especially online
Determined detractors
Information/rumor distortion
There are 3 themes to complaint Web sites
Injustice
Identity
Agency
90% of unhappy customers will not do business with a company again. Each of these people is likely to share his grievance with at least nine other people.
A study of 40 complaint Web sites such as walmartsucks.com found three basic themes reflected in the sites. These are injustice, identity, and agency. Consumer protestors frequently talked about their fruitless attempts to contact the company. Posters characterized the violator as evil rather than as incompetent. Individual Web site creators try to create a collective identity for those who share their anger with a company.
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25. Figure 10.3 The Transmission of Misinformation
This figure illustrates how information changes as it is transmitted. The farther from the original source, the more difference exists in the information transmitted.
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26. Cutting-Edge WOM Influences
Social Networking
Crowd Power
Guerilla Marketing
Social networking is a powerful way to reach consumers using their own influential network. Skittles did just that when it developed its Web site as a social media hub. Such strategies are made possible by Web 2.0, which refers to the enhanced interactivity available online. Crowd power is like a marketing strategy by committee. The wisdom of crowds says that groups are smarter than the smartest individuals and so groups should have influence. This is the principle behind wikis. Shopmobs are a type of crowd power. Consumers decide to meet together to shop. It’s like a flashmob but for shopping!
Guerilla marketing is a type of grassroots effort, which uses unconventional means and venues to push products. The marketer ambushes the unsuspecting recipient. Aqua Teen Hunger Force’s promotion is an example. Turner Broadcasting planted flashing light boards in public areas. Observers, though, thought they were terrorist bombs instead of promotional pieces! Viral marketing refers to the strategy of getting visitors to a Web site to forward information on the site to their friends to make more people aware.
Viral Marketing
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27. Virtual Worlds: The Next Digital Frontier
A metaverse is a virtual world where everyday people take on identities in a 3-D immersive digital environment. Second Life is the largest and most well-known virtual world. Social networks like Facebook may migrate to a 3-D format someday.
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28. Chapter Summary
People with social power influence our behavior as consumers.
We are motivated to buy things that are consistent with those in our reference groups.
WOM communication about products, especially from opinion leaders, may be more influential than information from marketers.
Web 2.0 accelerates the speed of delivery and the power of WOM communication.
We’ve covered several key concepts in this chapter. You should now understand that self-concept strongly influences our behavior as consumers and that products can play a pivotal role in defining our self-concept. Society’s expectations of masculinity and femininity help to determine the products we buy in that we seek to be consistent with expectations. The way we think about our bodies is a key component of our self-esteem. Every culture has norms for beauty which will influence how we view our bodies and decorate ourselves.
4/7/2017
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