Goodbye Blog

Blogging has been a fun and personal way of learning the different topics in this module. Some of the most fun blogs to make were the Teens, Nostalgia and Family. The main reasons for these was because before research, I had already had some sort of clear understanding of the area as well as the fact that I could be more personal with them.

Blogging was a new experience for me as I have not carried out a blog before. This experience has lead to make me learn about different blogging skills, it also gave me the opportunity to learn each topic in depth which was studied in lecture, as in depth research had to be carried out individually in order to write about the topic in the postings. Blogging has enabled me to take part in individual learning and understanding certain topics on my own such as gift giving.


I found blogging fun in comparison to assignments just on their own as I was able to find videos, print ads and incorporate humor into it all. I could also make it personal and write it the way I speak. I too, was also able to express myself more. Although they were fun, it did get quite hard to do, when I got a bit lazy on them.

It has been a great experience and friendship with blog i would love to do all again.

Charity

A charity assignment was held in which primary research was carried out in my group. Three focus groups were carried out; one with over 30s and one with under 30s.

Each Group was asked these Questions:

1.) Do you ever give to charity?
2.) What charities do you support?
3.) Why?
4.) How do you donate?
5.) Are there any charities you would never donate money to?
6.) Do you have any concerns about charities?
7.) What would make you give more money to charities?
8.) How do you react to direct mail from charities asking you for money?

Under 30's focus group:

The results:

*The Majority said that they hardly ever gave to charity.
*If they did donate it was with the use of collection boxes at shop tills
*Almost everyone said the animal charities were the least important, except for the vegetarian girl of course
*Their main concern was whether their money actually would reach the victim


Over 30's focus group:

*They all regularly gave to charity
*The women mainly gave to Cancer Research where as the men gave to Salvation Army. One man gives to the Poppies Charity which occurs once a year
*Cancer Research was popular for this age group due to it directly affecting them. *Salvation Army, because of the English soldiers and incurable kids
*Cancer Research they buy brooches and give to collection boxes as well as donate clothes to charity shops. For the Salvation army, the cash is given straight to them.

The chosen charity sector which we will contribute fund raising activities is a children’s charity called “Great Ormond Street Hospital’s Charity. The fund raising event will be a major target to help raise money for this prestigious charity, who dedicates their personnel lifestyle to help and take of the children in need. The fund raising activities are based around children as the donation is towards a children’s charity. This funding will provide us with the money that would help Great Ormond street hospital’s charity provide the best possible treatments available and in providing hope to thousands of families throughout the UK and worldwide.

Great Ormond street hospital’s charity has a main purpose to provide excellent care for their young patients and their families as well as to establish new treatments and find cures for childhood illnesses. www.gosh.org

Great Ormond street hospital’s mission is to provide the best support services for their young children and their families as well as providing them spacious accommodations. We hope that our fund raising activities would help maintain these services and help Great Ormond street hospital with costs such as, the most modern and advanced equipment and finance to rebuild and refurbish the hospital.

The method of advertising played a key role to achieve the marketing communication objectives set. The reason for this is because the main objective to run the fundraising event was to make profit and encourage people to attend the event, therefore in order to do that the event had to be advertised in various ways to get the message across to the targeted audience. This was achieved as the group promoted the event in various ways such as by the use of posters, word of mouth, leaflets, telephone and digital marketing. The method of advertising helped towards achieving the objectives because it there are various methods that can be used to promote the event through advertising.

Culture

‘














Culture is a prism through which people view products and try to make sense of their own and other people’s consumer behavior’. (Solomon 2006)

Culture is made up of three components:

Beliefs – our mental and verbal verbal processes which reflect our knowledge and assessment of products and services. Example Nokia user friendly.

Values- - indicators consumers use as guides for what is appropriate behavior, they tend to be relatively enduring and stable over time and widely accepted by members of a particular market. For example avoiding unnecessary spending.

Customs: - overt modes of behavior that constitute culturally approved or acceptable ways of behaving in specific situations for example giving gifts on Christmas.

Culture is extremely important in everything we do, especially within the marketing industry as it is something they have to take into account when advertising anything. Marketing teacher (2008) states










All these components have an influence a person' s culture. It mainly helps marketers understand and asses their targeted cultural market in order to market products to them.

Language - this component relates to the balance between the verbal and non verbal communication.

Religion - Marketeers need to ensure that any products or services they are trying to sell is not offensive to any religion. This includes marketing promotion and branding.

Values & Attitudes - Obviously, values and attitudes change depending on nations. For example if the company are intending to globalise themselves, they will need to make sure that they have a good understanding of the new local community to ensure the products fits in with their local attitudes.

Education - For example, in countries with low literacy levels, advertisers would avoid communications which depended upon written copy, and would favor radio advertising with an audio message or visual media such as billboards.

Lecture 13 - Social Class

Speaking of class.......

In today's lecture we discussed about the topic social class.

What is Class?

Sociologists define social class as the grouping of people by occupations. Doctors and lawyers and university teachers are given more status than unskilled labourers. The different positions represent different levels of power, influence and money. Years ago, your class would affect your chances of getting an education, a job, etc. and it would also affect the people who you could socialise with and marry. Today this type of thing is all but gone with the high-profile exception of the Royal family.

The British Social Class System

The British society has often been considered to be divided into three main groups of classes:

• the Upper Class
  Often people with inherited wealth. Includes some of the oldest families, with many of them being titled aristocrats.

• the Middle Class
  The majority of the population of Britain. They include industrialists, professionals, business people and shop owners.

• Lower or Working Class
  People who are agricultural, mine and factory workers.

Solomon (2006) states that all societies can be divided into haves and have-nots, the reason for this is because social equality tends to be widely held value throughout Europe, this means that some people seem to be more equal than others.




Above the video shows that there are four common social classes which are: (1) Upper class, (2) Middle class, (3) Working class, and the (4) Lower class.

In all societies where classes exist, every class is seen by the following factors:

* Personal or household income or wealth
* Net worth includes the ownership of land, property, means of production
* Occupation
* Education and qualifications
* Family background

Measuring Social Class in Britain

• A B C1 C2 D E
• A – upper middle class
• B - middle class
• C1 – lower middle class
• C2 – skilled working class
• D – working class
E –lower class

Lecture 12 - Marketing fo children

Since the 21st century, kids have become a huge face of media and advertising. Young children are increasing becoming the target audience for marketing because they amount of toys and new products that have come out for kids is big. For example, remember the pets, now the PSP, then characters like, Pokemon, Ben Ten etc. This tend to spend a lot of money on them self but not because their parents buy it for them, but they nag and cry and make a scene until they don't get what they want. Whilst this child-targeted marketing used to concentrate on sweets and toys, it now includes clothes, shoes, a range of fast foods, sports equipment, computer products and toiletries as well as adult products such as cars and credit cards.

In today's modern society children are treated with great care and affection, parents tend to spend time and money on them. In today's society children tend to get thing's without working for it for example, getting a job, however comparing this attitude to the olden days children they had to work and were restricted to receive certain things as there was low income and parents could not afford it. However, today the majority of people have reasonable income which enables them to afford things that their children want.

Today's children are influenced greatly by certain popular role models, for example their favorite television actor such as Hannah Montana.






Marketing to children:

Due to today's modern generation of children, there are many brands and companies that target children as their target audience, therefore children are exposed to many products that they can choose from when deciding to purchase a product.

Elder children in the age range of 12 and over tend to go for more branded products, as they tend to see this as fitting into the society, for example children at secondary schools will be very conscious about what brands they wear, therefore they will purchase popular brands which will keep them popular in the school environment. This is a way to start a trend within the children environment as one child may purchase a product and others will follow this.





This video above is an excellent proof how kids are marked more effectively than adults. Kids ads are so much more colorful and attracting they it would be wrong for them to not say 'Mum i want that toy. Looking at this ad of dolls its what every kid girl would want. The way the markers have taken advantage is so unique. I mean, which kid would want those dolls?

Lecture 11 - Over 50's marketing

Growing older is getting cooler, according to the ad industry. As those who (mis)spent their youths in the late Seventies hit the “big five-oh”, marketers are wondering how brands can target this new wave of oldies.
http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/home

Growing older is cooler... huh you must be joking... Not Me mate

So reaching 50 does not have to mean slipping on furry slippers and curling up on the sofa with a cup of warm cocoa. There is life in the 50-pluses yet, and where there is desire and aspiration, you can bet a marketer will be lurking close at hand offering a path to salvation through consumerism.

Old people's marketing sound just so boring to me. What's the point, i mean their not young any more to do any but then again not every old person is the same. Some 50 years old look so young, you can't even tell, but some are still fun. Which reminded me of this ad below, bless them, their so bubbly:



Did you see what i meant. They still got it in them.
However their are some ad that just don't let you get old. Its not like that a bad thing but just went a bit over the top. Have a look your self:




The over 50 generation are an increasingly powerful group. Owning 80% of the UK's wealth. This adult generation's population are dramatically increasing and by 2020 they will make up more than half the adult population.

Marketeers and advertisers adore this group as it makes advertising easy for them. It is said that the most brands are successful when they learn to grow up alongside their consumers. Thus keeping their brand loyalty.


Generational Marketing consists of the following,

a. Teens
b. Pester power
c. Generation Y
d. Generation X
e. Baby boomers
f. Over 50s

Generation X

'The generation of people born between 1963 and 1981 who entered the workplace from the 1980s onward, bringing new attitudes to working life that run contrary to traditional corporate expectations'.

(BNET UK, 2010)

This is the time when new employees where being recruited and there was a different way in which people worked for example, due to the culture back then working life was a lot diferent to that in todays world. In those days people would go to work, come home and rest and then do the same thing the next day.

Generation Y

'A label attributed to people born during the 1980s and early 1990s. Members of Generation Y are often referred to as “echo boomers” because they are the children of parents born during the baby boom'.

(Business dictionary, 2010)

This is where the new generation has taken over. This generation requires a lot more attention. Along with the extra attention, this age group requires a lot more technology orientated work place.They are abandonment and unique but also not that wiser then the generation X therefore they attract attention to generation X.

Over 50's marketing has to be done very careful. This is because they are old and not as wise as they used to be as their getting old. If you were to market a product for the old men then it would be wise to do in the newspapers as older people tend to stay together with the current affairs. Also targeting in places like Iceland where they shop mostly, or at bingo were they spend their nights.


Traditional Attitudes of over 50's

Many people over the age of 50 tend to buy certain types of products, this may be due to different events that has happened within their lifestyle such as the world war 11. Their particular affinity includes:

FOOD: Ice cream, crackers, sweet biscuits, artificial sweeteners, soups, bread, cakes, frozen fish, and stock and gravy.


FINANCE: Life insurance, buildings and contents insurance, premium bonds, NSI bonds, stocks and shares, unit trusts, and ISAs/PEPs.


DRINKS: Any traditional alcohol, tea, fresh coffee, and milk.



Health & Pharmaceuticals: Vitamins and supplements, Rheumatism, and Arthritis remedies.


Leisure & Holidays: they tend to take more organised holidays, coach trips, castles/ stately homes, plays/classical concerts/ballet, trust membership and bingo


There top media are:

TV: BBC News, Antique Roadshow, Heartbeat, Miss Maple, Who wants to be a millionaire?, Bargain hunt, Natural World, and Gardeners World.


PRESS: Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, Saga Magazine, Birds Magazine, Readers Digest etc...


RADIO: Folk/ country music, easy listening, music mainly form the 50/60s, and classical.

http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/home/marketing-to-old-generation

Lecture 10 - Segmentation, targeting & positioning

In today's lecture we talked about segmentation, targeting and positioning. The main factors involved in this process where:

• Age
• Income
• Social Class
• Gender
• Personality
• Lifestyle
• Benefit
• Usage


Segmentation, targeting and positioning (STP) are often used before marketing programs are planned. It is a tool that helps the company to differentiate its product offering from that of its competitors and ensure that the same reaches the exact market profile for which it is intended. STP is related with market research and marketing research.

STP uses information about current market size, market shares, concentration of customer base for particular products, potential customers, customer's purchase decision process that gathered from market and marketing research to find out kinds of consumers with different needs and different characteristics.

Segmentation, targeting, and positioning together comprise a three stage process. The first stage is to determine which kinds of customers exist, then the second stage is to select which ones we are best off trying to serve and finally the third stage is to implement our segmentation by optimizing their products/services for that segment.


Targeting is the next step after segmentation. Once a company has selected the most appropriate segments for its product and/or service, it needs to develop a strategy to target its specific audience. The company then selects the most appropriate way to target their audience.

Positioning involves implementing our targeting. For example, Apple Computer has chosen to position itself as a maker of user-friendly computers. Apple has done a lot through its advertising to promote itself, through its intimidating icons.

Example of segmentation:

Segmentation are products such as soaps, shampoos and toothpastes.
In today's modern society there is a variety of products such as shampoos that companies offer. For example, there are shampoos that can meet every individuals needs such as for greasy hair, damaged hair, colored hair, and fine hair. The images below represent various shampoos for different types of hair:



This shampoo is to help get rid of dandruff.












This shampoo is for kids hair, who have soft and sensitive hair.













Above the diagram is basically is explaining that segmentation is the identification of buyers within the market that have similar needs and buyer behavior. Society is made from thousands of buyers with different needs. Segmentation is trying to match groups of buyers with the same needs. Certain group is referred as 'segment'.