L6 Consumer Brands 1 Flashcards
◦ Define consumer psychology
the study of human responses to product and service related information and experiences
product and service related information includes:
- marketer initiated stimuli (e.g., advertisements, package labels, point-of-purchase displays)
- consumer magazines and other media
- word-of-mouth communications from friends and relatives
◦ RESPONSES to these things could be cognitive, emotional, behavioural
What are the goals of consumer psychologists?
describe, predict, influence, and/or explain consumer responses
But also social marketing, e.g.,
◦ how consumption affects the environment
the impact of consumption on children
Why study consumer psychology?
- To improve business performance
- To influence public policy
- To educate and help consumers make better decisions
Describe the sorts of questions that consumer psychologists study, and how they study them?
All kinds of psychological research ares e.g. motivation and emotions, onfo processing, perception and attention…
They employ theories from within psychology (social, cognitive, developmental, perception etc) and outside (marketing, economics, computer science, sociology, anthropology etc)
Use a variety of research methods: ◦ Quantitative, e.g., - lab and field experiments - surveys - big data (don’t have to survey people anymore. We all leave traces on the internet. Traces are mined by companies) Qualitative, e.g., - interviews - Observation - focus groups
Computer Predicts Personality Using Facebook Likes
2015, a study came out saying a computer could accurately predict your personality using your likes on Facebook. Volunteers completed personality questionnaires and allowed researchers to mine their Facebook profiles. 86000 volunteers
• Used Big 5
Computer compared to people that knew the ppt in how well they could predict their personality.
- friend or roommate, computer needed 70 likes.
spouse, the computer needed 300 likes to outperform the spouse.
Self-reported personality traits. Needs an objective measure of the Big 5 traits.
Ernest Dichter
1 “father of motivation research”
2 founded the Institute for Motivational Research (1946)
3 introduced Freudian concepts to the US advertising industry (later made famous by Packard’s The Hidden Persuaders) (we have socially undesirable motivations and we channel them through advertising
4 pioneered the focus group technique (he was interested in mapping out the content of things instead of processes. He tried to uncover symbolic meaning from 230 products using focus group information. He distilled this information into his model for motives for consumption.
Dichter’s motives for consumption (from Solomon et al., 2013, p. 113).
• Power: large breakfasts, fast cars, power tools Masculinity/virility: coffee, red meat, heavy shoes Status: Scotch, carpets
• Femininity: cakes and biscuits, tea, silk
• Moral purity/cleanliness: cotton fabrics, harsh household cleaning chemicals (like bleach), bathing
• Magic/mystery: soups (whenever you get sick), paints, carbonated drinks (bubbles are magical)
e.g.
- Put a Tiger in YOUR Tank (Esso)
- Marlboro campaign (Cowboy hat, hyper masculine) Selling (perceived feminine filtered cigarettes)
consumer psychologist aka
- “market researcher”, “consumer insights analyst”, “UX (user experience) analyst
◦ Define brand
A type of product manufactured by a particular company under a particular name: ‘a new brand of soap powder’” (Oxford Dictionary
A “name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller’s good or service as distinct from those of other sellers” (American Marketing Association
branding” cattle (claim ownership)
A brand is a category (Aaker, 1991)
◦ products are elements of the category
Why do Brands Matter?
• Brands are ubiquitous (everywhere)
• Brands influence our economic decisions
• Brands influence our perceptions and cognitions (e.g., information processing, inferences, memory):
◦ informational value: heuristic for consumers that reduces risk (once you know apple stands by a particular product, once you know apple has the brand on it, it reduces the risk associated)
◦ categorisation allows consumers to go beyond the given information
- brand labels provide a powerful basis for inferences
Peanut butter study (Hoyer & Brown, 1990):
◦ Presented participants with three brands of peanut butter
◦ Manipulated familiarity of brand: One was a known brand (heavily advertised), two were unknown brands
◦ Manipulated quality: High or low quality (determined using a blind taste-test pre-test)
◦ Thus: high or low quality peanut butter was placed in the jar of the known brand or one of the unknown brands
◦ Participants selected a brand and tasted the peanut butter (5 trials)
◦ Results: Strong tendency to select the jar of the known brand, even when it contained an inferior quality peanut butter
On the first trial tendency known brand 93% of the time. That tendency does reduce over time but even on the fifth trial, people are choosing the known brand even if the quality of the peanut butter is low
After trying it 5 times, you would get a sense of whether it is low quality but this brand preference still held.
Coke vs Pepsi Study
There was a pepsi challenge whereby blind tests of coke vs pepsi yielded a taste preference for pepsi, which was used to market pepsi as having a winning taste. McClure and colleagues (2004) repeated this in the lab.
◦ unlabelled cups taste test plus fMRI scan showed: no difference in reported taste (did not replicate the Pepsi Challenge). Any preference correlated with ventromedial PFC activity
When it comes to unlabelled you base preference on sensory reward areas of the brain.
◦ labelled: significant preference for sample labelled Coke
- preference correlated with dorsolateral PFC and hippocampal activity
When it comes with labelled, most people prefer coke (reflective of the market share) and this correlated with activity in areas with higher order cognitive processing and memory.
Tasting the brand
