Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
Twelfth Edition
Chapter 5
•Group Influence and
Opinion Leadership
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Reference Group
• Reference group – an actual or imaginary
individual/group that influences an individual’s
evaluations, aspirations, or behavior.
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Social Power
Social power – capacity to alter the actions of others. It’s important to
marketers because consumers voluntarily modify what they do and buy to
identify with the referent.
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Types of Social Power
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11-5
Types of Social Power
• Expert power – power based on possessing specific knowledge
about a content area. Example a professional who possess
knowledge in specific areas act as an endorser for a particular
product.
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For Reflection
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Membership Versus Aspirational Reference
Groups
Membership reference groups
• People the consumer actually knows
• Exp: families, friendship groups, and colleagues
• Advertisers use “ordinary people”
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Positive Versus Negative Reference
Groups
• Avoidance groups: motivation to distance oneself from other
people/groups.
• Antibrand communities: coalesce around a celebrity, store, or
brand—but in this case they’re united by their disdain for it.
Spread negative WOM through social media.
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Consumers Do It in Groups
Why do we conform?
• Cultural pressure - how different cultures encourage conformity to a
greater or lesser extent. For instance, the Japanese society
emphasizes collective well-being and group loyalty over individuals’
needs.
• Fear of deviance
• Commitment
• Group unanimity
• Interpersonal influence
• Environmental cues
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Brand Communities and Consumer Tribes
• A group of consumers who share a set
of social relationships based upon
usage or interest in a product
• Consumer tribes share emotions,
moral beliefs, styles of life, and
affiliated product.
• Tribal marketing: linking a product
to the needs of a group as a whole.
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11-11
Virtual Communities
• A collection of people who share their love or hatred
of a product in online interactions
• Social networks
• Forums
• Blogs
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11-12
Word-of-Mouth Communication
Word of mouth (WOM): information transmitted by individuals
directly to individuals.
• Most reliable / efficacious form of marketing
• Cheapest form of marketing
• Uses social pressure to conform
• Influences two-thirds of all sales
• We rely upon WOM more in later stages of product adoption /
mature products
• Especially powerful when we are unfamiliar with product
category
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Negative WOM and Power of Rumors
• We weigh negative WOM more heavily than positive WOM.
• Negative WOM is easy to spread, especially online.
• Any one can start a negative WOM thread.
• Information/rumor distortion.
• Larger companies can sustain bigger damages, but can cope
better than smaller companies.
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11-14
Viral Marketing
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11-15
Social Networking and Crowd Power
Web sites where members post information about themselves
and make contact with similar others
• Share interests, opinions, business contacts, etc.
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11-16
For Reflection
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Opinion Leaders
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Monomorphic vs. Polymorphic Opinion
Leaders
• Monomorphic opinion leaders has the information concerning
one particular, highly specialized topic, while polymorphic
opinion leaders has a broadly-based set of information and
knowledge.
• Expertise tends to overlap across similar categories (i.e.
cosmetics and fashion or appliances and computers)
• It is rare to find a “polymorphic” opinion leader, but they do
exist.
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11-19
Characteristics of Opinion Leaders
• Experts
• Unbiased evaluation
• Socially active
• Similar to the consumer
• Among the first to buy
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For Reflection
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Market Maven
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Surrogate Consumer
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