Reflection on Blogging

Sadly its all come to an end, all my blogs are done and dusted I can't believe this year has gone SO quickly! However before I live you all for good I will be Reflecting on my experience with writing blogs and using Blogger.com

According to Mednet-tech.com blogs are web logs which are constantly updated by the person who is writing them, you could say that they are some what of a detailed diary but the whole world knows your business :). Blogs can contain information on any specific topic you wish to discuss. Blogs give you an opportunity to write what ever you feel like talking about, research shows that blogs are being used these days for all sorts of purposes. Even Businesses us blogs to communicate and interact with customers and other stakeholders. Blogs are changing the way our societies are for example, journalism and politics.

Advantages & Disadvantages of using blogs
There are many advantages and disadvantages of using a blog for both businesses and students. However, the some of the things that can be an advantage for students may actually be a disadvantage for business related blogs. They way blogs work is so quick and easy this is a advantage to both the student and the business, if they would wish to change any information on their post all they would have to do is click a few buttons, type their message and then post it. On the other hand this can be a downfall for businesses as some customers may expect them to update their blogs every day. Blogs can help businesses build a stronger relationship and brand loyalty with their customers which can be beneficial to the business. Another advantage of having a blog is that they can be a great way to get back positive or negative feedback from customers for a business and the student’s lecturer by having the feedback businesses can improve on their product or service and for the students they get to know whether they are going through the right path of studying.

A disadvantage for a student using blogs can be that they would post unnecessary information and get carried away with adding lots of pictures and unnecessary links to YouTube video. From the business point of view some employees that are keeping up-to-date with the blogs may not have a very interesting way of writing which may make the business product or services sound dull. One of the main disadvantages of using a blog is that they can be very hard to maintain, students may leave their blogs to the last minute and never really get down to doing them. This is the same for a business; employees may be extremely busy with work and may not find time to write and post blogs before they finish work and go home


My experience from using Blogger.com was a pleasant one however, at first i did find it difficult to use as i didn't know what i was doing or pressing. But after 5 blogs i was a pro :) the only issue i had with blogging was the fact that i couldn't load YouTube videos for some reason they decided when they wanted to load or not.


Thank you so much for visiting my blog, i am so happy blogging is over and done with WOOOHOOOO :)

Family Purchasing

This blog is based on family purchasing, our families are a massive influence on how we spend our money because we have have been bought up by our parents i believe that if your parents was to spend money carefully and watch where every penny went you are more than likely to be like that once you are on your own two feet. You could say that a families needs are affected but how many children a couple was to have, who was employed and how much are they earning etc.

There are different definitions of what different people would class as a family.

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 main things that affect who makes the purchasing decisions are deiscerment, price and who is going to use the product or service. A few years ago in a traditional family the man would go and earn the money and the women would stay at home cook, clean and look after the children if the couple would have any. However nowadays it can be completey different and could be the other way round or even couples would prolong having children and both the man and woman would go to work and buy food shopping together.

For every purchase there is usually a Gatekeeper who is the person with the money, the User who will be the person that will actually use the product or service that is purchased, the Influencer who are the people who enccourage the purchase outcome, the Buyer the person who goes and buys the product and finally the Decider who is the person that makes the final decisions.

Generation Y 1980+

In class we was asked to get into groups to create a power point presentation on Generation Y. We researched and found that Generation Y was the was the largest population growth in the 1980's in human history, it is estimated that there are 200 million Generation Y's out there in the world.

Our values are:

›Work-life balance
›Respect
›Fun and enjoyment
›Self-fulfilment
›Relationships
›Sense of Belonging and Security

We found in our research that Generation Y when it comes to their issues of their personality they are:

žLazy
žLittle respect for authority
žPoor work ethic
žSpoilt
žSelf-Centred

However when we presented this to the class majority of everybody disagreed with these finds as some people thought that their personalities were nothing like that.

Here is a collage of all the things we thought best showed our generation and childhood.

Generation Marketing- Tweens

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 characteristics, 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. The different generations are split into groups these are:

• Millenials also known a Generation Y (Born after 1980)
• Baby Busters or Generation X (Born between 1965-1980)
• Baby boomers (Born between 1946-1964)
• Mature Citizens (Born between 1909-1945)

As anyone who has been through puberty and adolescence they would know that it can be the best and worst of times. Many exciting changes happen to you with every concept of your body and you tend to feel a bit uncertain about yourself. 'Tweens' are 8-12 year olds and these days are raised on television, have turned into the most materialistic generation of the all, some would say they are 'consumers in training'. Consumers in this generation group have a number of needs, including experimentation, belonging, independence, responsibility and approval from others. Just in the UK this group has the most fastest-rising spending power on the high street, it is said that this group spend between £600 million and £1 billion a year.

An article in the independent states that there are children as young as nine who are going on Internet chat rooms to talk about their sexual encounters and the parents have no idea a study of pre- teen girls shows. This is very disturbing to thing that little girls are talking about sex! These girls shouldn't be talking about things like that, they should talk about their Barbies or Hannah Montana!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fx1Gnu3jXg

Click on the link above and this will take you to Youtube and show you a video of a young girl you is just 7 and it already a tween! (Shocking)

Values

Solomon (2006) defines 'Values to be a belief about some desirable end-state that transcends specific situations and guides selection of behaviour'. I believe that we decide what our own values are based on how we have been raised, our social crowd and the person you really are. In a way you could say they are like personal goals that a person would like to achieve.

Depending on the person and what they are like not everybody values will be the same. However, Kahle's (1989) has a list of 9 values:

1. Self Respect
2. Excitement
3. Being Well Respected
4. Self-fulfilment
5. Sense of accomplishment
6. Warm relationship with others
7. Security
8. Fun & enjoyment
9. Sense of belonging

In class we undertook a VALS survey which my results were Experiencer/ Achiever. My primary VALS in the Experiencer and secondary is Achiever, VALS states that my primary Vals type represents my more dominant approach to life.

Memory & Nostalgia

Wright (2000) states that Nostalgia is a segmental longing for earlier days when summers were hotter, days were longer, food tasted better and people ere much more friendlier, long-lasting brands that many consumers remember from childhood.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dz1a3LHSvnY

If you click on to the link above this will take you to youtube where an 2008 Holvis advert will be shown. This is a great example of how marketers and advertisers use nostalgia to target the consumers.

Music and sound is very important when it comes to the way consumers shop. consumer spend a lot of money every year on products as advertising jingles maintain brand awareness and most background music creates desired moods (Solomon, 2006). By analysing the Warc article Music in advertising findings show that consumers get more enjoyment out of adverts with music than ones that don't. The article goes on to state that 'brand recognition is improved' when certain types of music has been used for a brand. For example, 'I'm loving it' song that is played on many McDonalds adverts.


Different types of people have different brands and products that bring back the memories which makes them feel nostalgia. I believe that smell also triggers you brain to have flash back in the past ans start daydreaming, the smell of a Jasmine flower does this to me. Every time a smell a Jasmine flower it instantly reminds me of my summer holidays in Cyprus with all my family.


I have put together a collage of most of the things that make me think back to my childhood and my teens. Every picture on the collage makes me think of those happy memories and wish i could go back to them.

Soloman (2006) states that a 'memory involves a process of acquiring information and storing it over time so that it will be available when needed'. According to the information -processing perspective, there are three distinct memory systems: sensory memory, short-term memory and long-term memory. Each one plays a role in processing brad-related information.

Sensory memory allows storage a person was to receive through their senses, this storage of the memory is very temporary as it only last a couple of seconds at the most.

Short-term memory also stores information on a temporary basis and the capacity is limited.

Long-term memory this system allows us to store information for a long period of time. In order for the short-term memory to enter the long-term memory it the person will have to be reminded of this memory over and over again. Marketers use this process by creating catchy slogans or jingles that the consumer might repeat on their own like the 'I'm loving it' slogan.

Groups

A group is two or more people who set or norms, have role relationships and experience independent behaviours. Being part of a groups can influence what we learn and how we behave.

People form groups for many different reasons some might join a group to make new friends, survival or even to be accepted into certain societies. Since i started uni i have been apart of the Netball society I personally do not play for the team but i do go out with the girls for most of the social nights that they have at the student union. The reasons why i joined this group was because i used to play netball when i was younger and the main reason was because i just moved to a different town away from home, not knowing anybody and i wanted to get to know as many people as i could!

However, certain behaviour with certain groups can be undesirable. This can be the case for brands too for example, a few years ago Burberry's iconic chequered pattern was misunderstood by the public coming across as very chavy. Certain people over did it with the chequered pattern e.g. Daniella Westbrook.This had a major impact on the sales and reputation for Burberry as people didn't really buy any of their products which had their iconic pattern on. An article from the Daily Mail states that.. 'The luxury brand with a chequered past, Burberry has shaken off its chav image and become the fashionistas favourite once more'. They did this by spending millions of pounds on getting high class models like Kate Moss to model for them, by have Kate they mad the brand seem more desirable to public.

Maslow's Hierarychy of Needs

Maslow's hierarchy of needs has all the main aspects a person has when joining a group, Maslow factors are as folows:

• Sel Actualisation
• Esteem needs
• Safety needs
• Belonging need
• Psychological needs

Marketers have to take into account of all these factors. marketers mainly believe that 'man is a social animal' and need unconditional positive regard. Children will learn through through conditional positive regard. I would say that the most important factor of the hierarchy would be belonging, the reason behind this is because marketers and advertisers use this factor as pivotal message in ad campaign.

According to Solomon (2006) social comparison theory asserts that this process occurs as a way of increasing the stability of one's self-evaluation, especially when phsysical evidence is unavaliable. Consumers are selctive about who they use for benchmarks. In general, for social comparisons, people tend to choose a Co-Oriented Peer, or a person of equivalent standing.