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.

Self Concept & Personality

Before our self concept and personality lecture Ruth asked us to take personality test on My Personality.info to see who we really are. It turns out that i aim The "Advocate" (ENFT).

Like Barney Grumble our strengths are that we see the best in people and are likely to bring out the best in them. Puts a lot of effort to making things work out between people. I think this is a lovely personality :) what a positive way of thinking. The Myers-Brigg Type Indicator measures of the more dominant preferences when it comes to us taking in information and making decisions. This theory helps us to understand our working style however it does not calculate our capability. The end result of this personality test is given in scales which are parts of a personality, these are:

Extrovert (E) - Introversion (I)

Sensing (S) - Intuition (I)

Thinking (T) - Feeling (F)

Judging (J) - Perceiving (P)

"Self Concept- the beliefs a person holds his or her own attributes & how he or she evaluates those qualities" (Solomon, 1999). So in other words self concept is how you would see yourself or even how you would like to see yourself in the mirror, however what you may think of yourself other people may not think the same! Self concept can be broken down into three main aspects, these are:

Self Image- this is the kind of person you think you may be, the mental image you have of yourself.

Ideal Self- this is the the kind of person you wish to be, when it comes to bringing out a new product or service marketers will take advantage of this aspect. They would target a certain age group or gender and make them feel like if they purchase the product or service they would automatically feel so much better about themselves!

Self Esteem- this is the extent to which you like yourself, to whether you would approve of your self image.

"Personality- a person's unique make up, which consistently influences the way the person responds to his or her environment" (Solomon, 1999). Personality is the way you behave are and what type of person you really are, like Solomon states it makes you unique in every single way as nobody will have exactly the same personality as you. The kind of personality that you will have may change or developed through the way you have experienced your life.

Enterprise Week

Between the the 9th November to the 27th 2009 Buckinghamshire New University hosted Enterprise Festival. During this time there was many activities to take part in and to go and see. These were designed to get the students involved, work as a team and get their minds thinking more business like. There was lots of different activities which students could participate in such the apprentice challenge, The 24 Hour challenge, My great business idea and many more.

The Apprentice Challenge

The aim behind this challenge was to encourage students business planning, marketing, organisation, selling skills, time keeping etc. The challenge had three steps which were:

1. Sell doughnuts and make the largest profit
2. Promote and sell products of your choice to the public and make as much money on a market stall in the Eden Shopping Centre
3. Stage an event

Jane (who organised the apprentice challenge) came to one of our lectures and gave us a talk about Enterprise week and the benefits of taking part. After the talk majority of the class wanted to get involved and decided to get into groups and the competition. On the first day of the competition we had positioned ourselves in High Wycombe town to sell our doughnuts, as there was 12 other groups selling similar doughnuts we found it a challenge to sell our ones as majority of the locals kept on saying "sorry we just bought some from the other groups" sadly my group didn't get through to the next round however the group that did when the whole competition where my class friends.

A few of my friends and I volunteered to help Ruth on the day of one of the events of Enterprise week, this event was called 'Telling it like it is' it involved Bucks graduates talking on a panel about their experiences and challenges they faced while studying at the university this was then followed by questions & answers session. I really enjoined myself on this day as we all got to know the ex students and they was so helpful and full of advise which inspired me to be like them in three years time. :)

The second panel were people from the industry these people were:

Sue Elms- Millwood Brown

Sue Ullerman- Mediacom

George hudson- burston Marteller

Rick Haslam- RAPP

Matthew Chapman- Billets

Gender- Viva La Difference

For our introduction to gender lecture we started with discussing on ways to impress a woman, as a class we came up with respecting her, cuddling her, kissing her, spending money on her and protect her. If you think about it every single woman wants to feel secure, appreciated and most importantly be reminded that she is loved by the people who are close to her heart. Which means that it is much harder and some people might think that it can be time consuming to impress a woman than to impress a man.

Ruth then went on to talking about how to impress a man, Ruth had stated two and only two points on how to impress a man and these were 1) show up naked and 2) bring food. As you can tell there is so much more of a difference between both genders advertisers and marketers have to target them much more differently. Woman's adverts tend to be more complicated, detailed and mens have a much more straight forward story line to them.

However, here is an advert that i think is based on both genders. The reasons behind my thinking is because Lynx is showing the man that if he sprays himself in there chocolate deodorant he will become desirable to woman once they smell him. I feel that this advert is trying to make a woman want their man to smell like this because every body knows a woman can't resist some chocolate!

Are our brains wired differently?

Nadeau, R (1997) believes that man and woman are not only different from the hormones that drive them but they are also different in the way they think. The brains of males and females are wired differently. He then goes on and states that... "The human brain, like the human body, is sexed, and differences in the sex-specific human brain condition a wide range of behaviors that we typically associate with maleness or femaleness"

He then goes to describe that the reason why men and woman process information differently is because there is a portion in our brains called splenium which is much larger in a woman's brain than it is in a mans and also have more of a brain wave activity. There are also differences in a way men and woman communicate which are functioned by the sex-specific areas of the brain. Woman seem to have an enhanced awareness of "emotionally relevant details, visual cues, verbal nuances and hidden meanings".

Segmentation, targeting & positioning

Solomon (2006) sates that.. "the use of market segmentation strategies means targeting a brand only to specific groups of consumers rather than to everybody- even if that means that other consumers will not be interested or may choose to avoid that brand". For example, if Audi (a very popular car manufacture brand) designs a new jeep and wants to bring it onto the market they will have to deiced which market group they would want to aim their product on. By doing this Audi will have to segment their consumers into groups e.g. young professionals, families, where they live etc. Segmentation is just a process market researchers go through to divide particular groups in to sections which will be similar in their characteristics or behaviour. There are different segmentation veriables that will make it easier for any type of organisation to divide their markets into groups, The main four are Demographic, Geographic, Phschographic and Life Style.

Demographic Segmentation

The word demographic originates from the word 'demography which means 'study of population'. Population can be split up into many variables such as age, gender, income and family lifecycle. As people get older their needs and wants change, many organisations have invented many products aimed at specific age groups e.g. toys for children at all ages, clothes for teenagers etc. Gender segmentation is used very much so for when it comes to cosmetics, clothes and even magazines here are a few examples.

Geographic Segmentation
Geographical segmentation splits the markets into different regions. Marketers use this segmentation because consumers in different areas can show different charateristics and behaviours in particular areas e.g. in certain parts of London like West London there would be particular products being sold where you would not be able to buy in less developed parts such as certain areas of East London. An area can be divided by the town, region or even country. If there is a business working on a global scale it may divide the areas globally such as Europe, Asia, Africa, North and South America.

Phschographic Segmentation
Demographic segementation is very useful to marketers when it comes to develop a more accurate profiles of their target segments. Phschographics segmentation can be split up into different characteristics such as lifestyle, social class and personality.

Lifestyle Segmentation

The Oxford English dictionary defines a lifestyle "as a way of life" and lifestyle segmentation aims to examine the way people live. Soloman (2006) also defines lifestyle to be.... "a set shared values or tastes exhibited by a group especially as these are reflected on con sumption patterns."

The every day activities we do, our beliefs on certain subjects, our opinions and our interests makes us who we are. Marketers would refer these as AIO's which stands for Activities, Interest and Opinions. Our AIO shows our everyday behaviour from where we go shopping to what we decide to buy. Every marketer when it comes to developing and aiming their products or services look at the lifestyle of the particular group and then develop a lifestyle profile on their target market. If a marketer was to do reasearch on the lifestyle a particular group leads they could then sell their product or services to them on the basis that this would improve on their lifestyle.

These two pictures demostrates the different lifestyles people can lead. The first picture shows a couple who look like they have a very high paid job in the city, expensive car, only purchase organic food and live in an amazing house/flat marketers would call this group as the Yuppies. The second picture shows an elderly couple who can also be put into the target group called the Third agers. These people are over 50, retired, may have a high disposable income and as they are retired they would have time on their hands which can make them very adventurous and experimental.

Here is a Youtube video that explains in more detail what Market Segmentation is:

After the segmentation process comes Targeting, this is used when a organisation decides how it is going to target particular groups. Wright (2000) states that targeting is... "When the possible segmentation have been identified and the characteristics of each group having been clearly researched and established, the organization chooses which segments to target and which groups to ignore. The target group is organized in gender, age, lifestyle or behavior".

Once an organisation has selected its target market the next stage would be Positioning, this i when the organisation decides on how they will there product or service with their chosen target audience. Positioning refers to ‘how organisations want their consumers to see their product’. For example, years ago the the UK car Skoda brand had a negative brand associations however Volkswagen took over the brand and has changed Skoda into a award winning cars, this positive reputation has changed the perception of consumers that would never consider purchasing a Skoda car. perception of the brand.

I personally think that the message Skoda is trying to give to their consumers or potential consumers through this advert is that they are a much better brand now and are capable of more amazing creations.