Friday 30 April 2010

Final Reflections

A blog is an abbreviation of the term "web log" it is a type of website, which is usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of comments. A blog is something is a website where you post things on. The postings can be anything such as videos, music or your own personal thoughts about anything.

The blogging in my opinion were a great assignment which we had to do, because before this I had no clue on how to use a blog at all. During this assignment its given me a chance to learn a new technique which i will definately going to use this in the future.

Blogs are an excellent opportunity to learn about many different things in life or subjects such as marketing. Blogs are internet based and give you the opportunity to be creative and use different tools to make great blogs. They are an affective learning tool which is fun and a personal way of learning different topics, in this subject or others. Blogs can help to create a different life for people and help them learn new techniques to use in the future.

The tool used to create this blog was www.blogger.com. This is a very interesting and easy tool to use to create an affective blog. Because this gives you the opportunity to be creative in how you express yourself in each blog through the use of pictures, videos and music.
Using blogs to teach and learn are very effective because not only are you able to gain a lot of information through the words, there is also the chance to use videos from sites such as www.youtube.com to try and get your message across.

The use of blogs has increases throughout the marketing world and many people now use blogging as a tool to get their messages across. Blogs have exploded on the Web because they have made it much easier to publish content online. Blogging software makes it as easy to publish content online as it is to write a note to post on your fridge. (Infotoday 2010)
Using blogs is very simple to do as it teaches you how to link from one page to another and also shows you how to add videos. Signing up for a blog account is easy to do as it takes less than 3 minutes and in some cases most blogs are free to use.

Creating a blog and maintaining it is much easier to do than running a website. Blogs have the ability to automatically archive old posts and refresh the content of the main page, like using live feeds. Blogs have grown really quickly in the blogging community thanks to the help of easily linking your blog to other sites. Everyone likes to receive feedback on how well their blog is doing and what they can do to improve, blogs can receive instant feedback from people who have visited the blog.

The strengths of using blogs were that it is an easy way for you to basically create a website without doing the boring middle stuff to maintain it. Blogs give you the chance to receive instant feedback from other followers of your blog and gives you the chance to link your blog to others.
Another strength is that blogs give you the chance to revise things you have learnt before. For example when students come out of a lecture they tend to forget what they had done so they use the blogs to remember and catch up on work they had missed.
Blogs teach you how to embed videos and make it really simple to use.
A weakness that blogs has is that it can become repetitive and so continuously doing a blog can become boring and a waste of time.

I found blogging fun and a good laugh in comparison to assignments just on their own (there as boring as hell) Blogs taught me how to imbed videos and follow and comment on other peoples blogs. this gave me a chance to be creative and express myself better.

Blogs help to get a personal point across for the person using them and gives them a chance to experience how to use blogs in their own way.
Using blogs gives the chance to use many different tools such as adding images and embedding videos. Many things were learnt from using blogs and if given another task it would be great to use blogs to demonstrate points.
At first using blogs was a bit difficult in terms of adding videos; however that was learnt and improved as the assignment continued. Blogs have given people a whole new way of using their skills and knowledge to share with others on marketing subjects or any other subjects.

Tuesday 27 April 2010

Perception Experiment

Product Packaging





For our experiment on perception, our group decided to do a product packaging test of some chocolates. The reason why we chose packaging and not taste was because we wanted to see how people were heavely influenced to buy a product through the use of its packaging. This was because before buying a product like this people don't actually know what it tastes like so their main attraction to the product would either be how well it was advertised on TV or the packaging.






These are the chocolates we decided on as a group.











The way in which we had done the experiment was that we would should the class the chocolates packaging and ask them to imagine the had never bought the chocolate before, and decide which one they would go for. this would shows us some sort of buying characteristics because it would be people buying these products based on appearances suc as colour.





Based on our results it showed us that the most popular chocolate the class chose was the Divine. This was because they thought the packaging of this particular chocolate looked more high end type and was more upper class.


There was however a major flaw in our experiment which was that these were chocolates people had already seen and tasted before so some of the views to the choclate were quite bias and caused a bit of problems with the results.




Product packaging is very important in trying to grab customer attention and creating a popularity for the product. Looking at the two drinks packaging above most people propably go for the Mist as it looks more appealing through the use of the light colours. However this can't solely be based on looks because if it was why is Pepsi so big? There were other factors involved in the decision as shown below.



Pepsi used football players such as Kaka and Messi to advertise their brand to people. this made the drink more known as famous people were drinking it and the adverts make seem like the drink is worth buying and fighting for.
Pepsi used this to become big however Mist was not the same maybe they tried something but i've never heard of the drink.

So product packaging is a huge thing to help promote a product however it is not theonly thing that would make it a huge and well known brand across the world.

Monday 5 April 2010

Social Class

Social class is the grouping of people by occupations. Social class is the division of society made up of people holding similar social characteristics. Doctors and lawyers and university teachers are given more status than unskilled labourers. The different positions represent different levels of power, influence and money.

Social class 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.



The above image shows the different sociall classes and is a very good definition on what it actually is. It shows who the top dog is (this case the Pharoah - nowadays Kings, Queens and Presidents) this shows exactly how the classes are labelled and whos in a higher class. This was the class of the olden days nowadays there are not really any Pharoahs or Tomb builders, however this is what a class would generally look like.



This is a general view on the class system in the UK. You have the upper and middle class who are doing ok for themselves and live good lives. However the lower class is not so lucky they don't really have anything and so look up to the other two classes wanting to be like them. The Lower Class are generally stereotyped and shown like this stating they have nothing that others could want.

When marketers are advertising there products they need to think what class they are targeting. for example if they had a high end advert like advertising a Bugatti Veyron they obviously wouldn't be targeting lower class people.



Above is an advertisment for the nnew Jaguar. This is a really high end product aimed at the upper class people who can afford it. This wouldn't work for people of lower class as they have to worry about keeping the family stable financialy and not think about spending money on a Jaguar.



The Vauxhall Zafira is a good middle class product as its not to expensive and is a good family car. It has an element of cool in it and parents may also be considered cool having a 7 seater and a decent looking one at that.



The Nissan Micra is a decent low class car and targets the lower class people. This is because it is cheap and affordable and a good car for people with a low budget and kids. (a bit embarassing for the kids though).

Thursday 1 April 2010

Generation Marketing

The method of marketing to a specific generation is affecting the way that we promote and sell products and services. We are all a product of our generation. Each generation have their own characterestics, because of this as a marketing target we can usually categorize by generations by the way that we act and speak as well as our belief systems.
There are four popular generational categories that most marketers tend to focus on.
They include:
Millenials or Generation 2001ers, born after 1980
Baby Busters or Generation Xers born between 1965 and 1980
Baby Boomers born between 1946 and 1964
Mature Citizens born between 1909 and 1945

The picture below basically shows what our generation was all about with the class Chuckle Brothers leading the way.




This image is a typical definition on what our generation actually was. (This was during the 90's) back then you had the likes of the awesomely funny Chuckle Brothers, Blue a young Harry Potter and The Spice Girls. These made a major impact on the lives of young children during the 90's and shaped how we lived our lives and have grown up now.

Nowadays however people since 2000 have changed and now theres different people who shape our society they are making the big impacts on the new generation.

The above Celebs maybe old, however they are the ones who are influencing the younger generation. Our generation since the 80's to the late 90's are considered Generation Y. Generation Y describes the demographic cohort following Generation X. Its members are often referred to as Millennial or Echo Boomers.




This advert is perfect to define the wants of the Generation Y. Because after the release of the Mp3 player came the Ipod, which was a huge success with our generation as it was the latest technology out and everyone wanted it, and this ad shows how poular it actually was. However nowadays you have the likes of the Iphone which every one wants and things that were big a few years ago are no really wanted anymore, theres not a huge demand for this anymore as peoples taste are growing.

Wednesday 24 March 2010

Pester Power

Pester power is the power children have, by repeated nagging, of influencing their parents to buy advertised or fashionable items. (good times)

Children have long been able to influence what their parents bought on their behalf, by making it easier for the parents to give in than to endure relentless badgering. Parents nowadays are now more likely to take a child's demands seriously, whereas in earlier times they were expected to be satisfied with whatever they were given. Also, the increased pressure on parents to work longer hours has led to a society that in increasingly cash rich and time poor, which makes it a more attractive option to buy their way out of the time-consuming task of fending off demands.



A great way for marketers to promote their products and sell them is y advertising to children. If children like something and want it they will pester their parents so much until they get it (me and my dad went through a lot of that). even if children have some of their own money saved up they will still try and get their parents to buy things for them just for fun to see what happens.
Even when promoting Holiday destinations marketers do sometimes target children to convince their parents to take them there. Most of these adverts are done on TV and the Internet because these are the main soures children use nowadays.





This adverts was a great way to encourage children to come to the resort it tryed to connect with the kids though the use of cartoon characters from Disney such as Mickey Mouse and dragons, pirates and cars. This makes the kids want to come and force their parents to take them. (A nightmare for most parents)

Saturday 20 March 2010

Family

Family is important to most people and is normally classed as one of the biggest, if not the biggest and most important value. A family could be described differently as a Nuclear family, Extended family etc.

Nuclear Family - father, mother & children who live together
Extended Family - nuclear family plus other relatives such as grandparents, aunts etc.
Family of Orientation - the family you are born into
Family of Procreation - the family founded through marriage



The whole family plays a huge part in most purchasing decisions, such as moving homes. The biggest decisions most often are done as a family, for example planning a family holiday every member of the family would get a chance to say where they want to go and all have to agree before the holiday can be booked. Businesses have to createsomething for everyone for example if the children want to go to a place with water slides and roller costers the parents would want a place to themself so businesses will have to creat something for all.



Field (1969) identified three dimensions to determine relative influences of husband, wife, child -
discernment or technical know how
price - expensiveness - who pays
satisfaction - who uses

The advert above is a great choice for a holiday for kids because they have all the freedom they want in the water what everthey want. However it doesn't look like theres much for the parents to enjoy except watching their kids jumping in the water and having a good time (what else cold they ask for?).



This advert is pefect for the family as it gives the family the chance to pick the kind of holiday they want which the whole family can enjoy, its like creating your own perfect holiday like the ad suggests.

It is said that 80% of UK purchasing decisions are made by women but 83% of 'creatives' are men. This basically means that women make decisions which may benefit the whole family but aren't very fun such as buying a 7 seater car for the family instead of buying a sports car like the husband would want.



This is what the purchasing of a family would look like generally, the wife would want things that would benefit the whole family such as a dishwasher and the husband and children would want things that would benefit them such as a colour TV and games consoles.

Thursday 11 March 2010

Values

Beliefs of a person or social group in which they have an emotional investment either for or against something.
"Values are our ideas about what is desirable". Wilkie

I think values are something which we hold to be important to us and strive to keep a hold off. different people have different values which are important to them even if they are similar to others they have their own uniqness in them. Many people hold family as an important value for them and is of great importance, some may think freedom is an important value.


A husband and wife may believe that their home is of great importance to them and believe it holds great value to them. Marketers can take full advantage of this and try and target people through the use of improving their homes. Since its the wife's decision theres always an improvement needed as they dominate the home.



This advert is great as it is targeting the dominant figure in the home which is the wife (don't know why). This advert from Ikea would definately get women interested and wanting to improve their home. This is showing that women are the dominant figures in the home (the ones that wear the pants) and by targeting them they will fall for it.

People also value their lives through fun and enjoyment some may say "we only lives once so why not enjoy life". so they try to fulfil this and consider it as a high value aspect of their life next to their family.

The ad below just shows how some people can avoid boredom and just have fun.



This ad was pretty funny with the lady just having a laugh with the man next to her in the other car. this was an antiboredom campign ad done in Romania. this was just a bit of fun which people hold as a value.