 Hi, welcome. My name is Dr. Marcy Stone and this is Unit 7, the effects of consumer groups in your consumer behavior course. This course has 10 units and Unit 7 is on the effects of consumer groups. These are the Unit 7 learning outcomes. Explain how we are motivated to buy or use products in order to be consistent with what other people do. Explain how consumers' word of mouth, both positive and negative, is often more influential than advertising campaigns. Assess how online technologies are accelerating the impact of word of mouth communication. Identify how social networking is changing the way companies and consumers interact. Identify the demographic factors that relate to family and household structure. Why are learning outcomes important? So every learning outcome ties back to course materials and content. And that includes your assessments and also your test preparation. And then these are the Unit 7 overview topics. So we have consumer buying motivations, consumer word of mouth versus advertising campaigns, social networking and communication, and then we have demographic factors. And then these are the vocabulary terms that we're going to be discussing in this presentation. All right. So there are quite a few things that influence the consumer buying decision process. So these might include friends, social media, family, coworkers, or online reviews. Sometimes a consumer may make a decision to buy a product to compete with friends or neighbors. And this thought process may be conscious or unconscious. Other influences on the consumer buying decision process may include culture, social class, or groups the consumer belongs to. From a marketing perspective, it's important to consider that influences may come from a variety of sources. Okay. So this slide, it just analyzes again that consumer buying process. We look at need recognition. So I have a problem. We search for product information. We might look at several products and then evaluate those. We might actually make a choice and then purchase it. And then we have that post purchase behavior in here and evaluation of that product again. And then any disposal issues at some point. And so when you're looking at each of these stages, consumers may, depending on the purchase, they may go through some of these very quickly and just make up their mind about what they want to purchase and then be done with it. And then others may take months to evaluate. So just depending on maybe the level of involvement that they might have in that research process. And it might depend on like overall value of what they're going to be paying. So word of mouth advertising works well for consumers and marketing companies. It's inexpensive and it can be one of the best ways to promote a product. So when someone gets really excited about a product, they may tell a dozen people about it. They may create a video and post it online. Social media is a great way to get word of mouth marketing advertising promoted. So there's also social media influencers who have a great many followers who might also promote products through word of mouth. So these influencers may be given free products or even paid for their might even be paid for their reviews. And advertising campaigns can cost quite a bit of money and take time to develop. So a strategic marketing plan should include the possibility for word of mouth promotions and potentially using or hiring social media influencers. So social media is an effective way to promote products or brand and over the last decade it has continually changed. Social media allows companies to better target to their specific market for products and services. Strategic marketing plans should include social circles, social networking and ways that consumers can interact with companies through social media. So this may be even a Facebook targeted ads. So if a consumer searches for like air conditioning repair on Google in the morning, they may check into Facebook in the afternoon and see air conditioning repair ads and possibly coupons. Many consumers may see this as useful and not advertising at all. So in addition, consumers enjoy interacting with their favorite brands on social media. Companies may answer questions about products and post their latest commercials. So this type of marketing is important to include in a marketing plan. Okay, so now we have a consumer buying process here and we've talked about this quite a bit in this course. But we're looking at what draws their interest. What is it about a particular product that might draw their interest? Is it beneficial? Is it going to provide any values for the consumer? And then we look at how embedded might it be. Let's say that they look at a product, they don't buy it. Let's say that they're on Amazon and they look at a product and they don't buy it. Do they think about it even days later and then go back in and eventually buy it? So is it something that's visibly at the top of their mind? And then you have those psychological factors we've talked about. Is it something they're going to love? Is it something they're going to hate? Do they appreciate it? Are they surprised? Or is it something that maybe they love or hate because of a past experience? I actually recently was searching to a little bit of a consumer story from me. I actually was researching different ways to do my hair and online. And I happened to come across, I don't even remember how. I don't remember if it came up in advertising, but I happened to see different types of blow dryers. And it was the first time for whatever reason. I've never really actually searched this, but it was the first time I ever heard that you can buy blow dryers that have brushes in them. And I was like, huh. So I went from there, went on to Amazon and looked at a couple, found one that I think it was around $40 and ordered it. And I figured if I didn't like it, I could just return it, that kind of thing. And I didn't really think much about it, just that it would be fun to try, you know. So I get this in the mail, try it the next day, and I'm in love with what I did to my hair. It made my hair a lot straighter and a little bit of a wavy hair. And so this thing was, it dried my hair very quickly. I was pleasantly surprised for something that I literally had no idea even existed a few days before. I was pleasantly surprised. And so for me, that process of buying it was actually better than the anticipation for this particular product. I was so happy about it that I told, I don't know, 10 people about it in two weeks. And now I'm telling you, but I was so happy with it that I told people about it. And the first time I brought it up, someone said, oh yeah, I have one of those. It's a Dyson. And I was like, Dyson, the vacuum people make these things. And then someone else told me, yeah, it's like $600. And I was like, I don't need that. So it's interesting how we go through these kind of ups and downs almost during the buying process. And sometimes we truly are pleasantly surprised with a product that we weren't even aware of or didn't really have high expectations for maybe. So anyway, just a little personal story. And we all have these as consumers as we go through the buying process. Okay, so it's important to consider demographics to better understand consumer buying habits. So we've talked about this a little bit before, but it includes demographics might include age, race, education level, homeowners. It really helps to really narrow down your population or your target market. Family demographics might include information about the size of a family or maybe who the head of household is. One example of this might be, again, we talked about the prenatal vitamins and buying those and then receiving coupons that are related to that purchase. And so we see this a lot. If you go grocery shopping at a particular store, you buy something. The coupons that are going to come up almost immediately are usually related to something that you just bought. And so it's trying to show you this system or the CRM system is trying to show you things that they think you are going to be mostly interested in. And that's really what demographics and narrowing down your market is all about. Alright, so Unit 7 learning outcomes. So we talked a little bit about how we get motivated to buy products or maybe to compete with other people. We talked a little bit about how important word of mouth is, both positive and negative. And then how online technologies accelerate that world of word of mouth when we see that with social media. And then how social networking is changing the way that companies and their customers interact with each other. And then any demographic factors that might be related to family and household structure. What's next? Unit 8, the influences of class, ethnicity and age. My name is Dr. Marcy Stone and I just wanted to say thanks for listening.