L8+Group+influence

Consumers belong to or admire many different groups and are often influenced in their purchase decisions by a desire to be accepted by others. A reference group is an actual or imaginary individual or group conceived of having significant relevance upon an individual’s __evaluations__,__aspirations__ or __behaviour__. – external influence that provides social cues, may have social power – capacity to alter the actions of others. The reference groups have three different influences on us, which are: informational, utilitarian and value expressive.
 * Group influence** **&** **opinion leadership**
 * Importance of groups**
 * Reference groups**
 * //(point of reference//** //- an indicator that helps you orient yourself)//

The term reference group describe any external influence that provides social cues. The referent can be a cultural figure which have an impact on lots of people e.g. Mother Theresa, it s can also be a person or group whose influence is confined to the consumers environment e.g. leisure activity enthusiasts, sports clubs, bands or political party.Reference groups that afffect consumption can include parents, fellow skiers, motorcycle or other leisure activity enthusiats, a political party or even sports clubs and bands. Some of them may have bigger influence that other groups and for a broader range of decisions. Good example of that are parents which have main role of forming our values towards many important issues e.g. which school choose, attitudes about marriage. This are normative influence which helps to create fundamental standards of conduct. For contrast our example of Harley Davidson exert comparative influence. In this case decisions about specific brands or kind of activities are affected.

In every group, all members share one feature which unites them in their consuming decisions towards it. Individuals don’t need to have direct, personal contact with the group or its members to be influenced by the consumption choices of those they admire (ideal self). Reference groups don’t influence the purchase of every product, and especially not in the same way (luxuries, high perceived risk products, consumed publicly are more susceptible to influences).

There are 3 basic types of reference groups: Example based on the flu. Get vaccinated or not • Informational – Individual looks for info, are sensitive to experts. Refers to the way as some information groups work as an information force. Some groups talk about the vaccination in 70’s and the problem that occur; also conspiracy theory (flu created by companies) – these are very __informal group__, but many people follow this one because it is easier to identify with them, since they are normal people like us; There are other groups like the WHO that oppose to the previous one and explain how it works, etc – formal groups with high organizations and very organized. • Utilitarian – Preferences and decisions are influenced by people around. They have direct or indirect control on our lives. They can reward us our punish us. They control the good and the bad things that happen. For example Simobil: “if you get vaccinated we pay all the costs to the employees, if you don’t you will have to pay yourself” they influence to do what they want. In pharmaceutical salesman were forced to get vaccinated (you must be careful because there are several rights that must be respected). • Value-expressive – They way we feel about ourselves. We look up to them and want to be like them, or we hate them and try to be the most different – groups who oppose pharmaceutical and are more orientated to home medicine and that don’t believe in drugs and on this vaccine. If you belong to this group and are vaccinated you’re a traitor. HD we had a lot of values like strong independent men. Belief that the association with this good will enhance own image to others, high-symbolic products, transference of qualities form the product to the buyer.
 * Types of reference groups**

• Formal – organisations with a recognised structure. Relies more on legitimal powers like laws. They are supposed to influence us. • Informal groups – such as a group of friends or neighbours. They are also very powerful due to the value they share. They have also much power because it is very easy to identify with them. The power can vary (neighbours vs. mother). Formal groups are easier to identify, access and control; these are more product- activity-specific (comparative influence). Informal groups exert more influence in day-to-day life (high on normative influence).
 * Other categories of groups**

__Both formal and informal groups influence the indicudual's purchase decision, althought the impact of reference group is afected by such factors as the conspicuousness of the product and the relevance of reference group for a particular purchase.__

• Groups by membership. • Aspirational reference groups – You might want to belong to this group. You look up to this group, but you’re not a part of them (in the south park episode it was the blond boy that wanted to belong to HD) Not surplinsingly, many marketing efforts that specially adopt a reference group appeal concentrate on highly visible, widely admired figures, such as well know athletes. However, marketing strategies are not restricted to the use of celebrities as aspirational reference groups people can admire or identify with. Campaigns also use “everyday people” to whom the common consumer can relate - __identificational reference groups__. Since people tend to to compare themselves with others who are similar, they are often sawed by knowing how people like themselves conduct their lives. For this reason, many professional strategies include "ordinary" people whose consumption activities provide informational social influence.

• __Positive__ (we look up to, listen, etc) and __negative__ (we hate them, we will avoid what they do, they still have an effect on my, a negative one - avoidance groups, avoid all traits that could identify the individual with a specific group; anti-conformity, defiance of the group) reference groups. • __Brand communities/tribes__ – shared passion for a brand (community developed around the brand like HD; Porshe is typical a sports car. It is a very manly brand with several porsh clubs with few female membership. Cayenne was considered a horrible idea by brand community since it was promoted as a female car and SUV. They promoted on Sopranos has a car for a wife of a CEO which once again destroy the image of brand community and continued complaining. They had to lauch a serial of adds to explain that Porshe was still a sports and men's car. This only works for a product where involvement is very high) • __Virtual communities__ – collection of people whose **online** interactions are based on shared enthusiasm. Interned made it possible to communicate and share ideas even though members are very far from each other. These anonymous groups grow up around an incledible diverse of set interests. It made it possible to discover new people which could be closer than they thought with same interests.
 * Other categories of groups**

Influence through __similarity__ – ‘people like me’; therefore I will trust you, i will listen to you, etc The likelihood that people will become part of a consumer’s identificational reference group is affected by the following factors: • Physical nearness (propinquity - close). Same town for instance. • Exposure (often). Work on the same place. • Group cohesiveness: bigger in smaller groups (reason to membership restriction) In the Dove campaign they used normal people and not models to arise identification to the product.
 * Indentificational reference groups**

The following classification of power baes can help us to destinguish among the reasons a person can exert power over another, the degree to wich the influence is allowed volluntarily, and wether this influence will continue to have an effect in the absence of the power source. In spite of this, individuals can **//exert the following power within the reference group//**:
 * Power bases within reference groups**

• **Referent powe**r. (looking up to, ‘the standard’). someone who stands for the values of the reference group. Celebreties that we admire and look up to. They can be a standard for us (Ophra can be a standard to be good at a talk show). Very important for marketing strategies because people want to identify, act as the referent (endorsements) • **Information power**. (they know, __insider__). They can provide us with new information. A person can have information power simply because he or she nows something others would like to know. People with information power are able to influence consumer opinion by virtue of their (assumed) access to the "truth". • **Legitimate power**. (offical) Official title that gives you legitimate power. Like the minister of health. props or clothes may be used to manifest/clarify legitimacy. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">• **Expert power**. (knowledge & experience) If the title “includes” knowledge we will listen to it. Expert power is derived from possesing specific knowledge about a content area. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">• **Reward power**. (tangible or intengible). Like the Simobil example previously explained - When a person or group has the means to provide positive reeinforcement, that entity will have power over a consumer to the extend that this reeinforcement is valid or desired. The reward may be tangible, as occours when an employee is given a pay rise. Or the reward may me intangible: social approval or acceptance is often what is exchanged in return for moulding one's behaviour to a gropu or buying the products expected of gropu members. However, this kind of arguments as left such campains with little credibility. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">• **Coercive power.** (intimidation, extortion). Pharmaceutical example - While coercive power is often effective in the short term, it does not tend to produce permanent attitudinal or behavioural change. Surveillance of some sort is usually required to make people do something they do not wish to do. Fortunatelly, coercive power is rarely employed in marketing situations. However, elememnts of this power base are evident in fear appeals, intimidation in personal selling, and campaigns that emphasize the negative consequences that can occour if people do not use a product.

People __conform to the desires of others__ for two basic reasons. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">• Informational social influence – __modelling__ behaviour on others (people perceive other peoples’ behaviour as evidence of the correct way to act). We like to model or repeat what others are doing. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">• Normative social influence – conforming to satisfy the __expectations__ of others and/or to be accepted by the group.
 * Conformity** (look in the book) - A basic example of general conformity are the norms that rule and order a society, preventing chaos.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">• Cultural pressures: Different cultures encourage conformity to a greater or lesser degree. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">• Fear of deviance: The group may apply sanctions to punish behaviour that differs from the group's. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">• Commitment: The more dedicated a person is to a group, the more motivated the person will follow dctates of the group. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">• Group unanimity: If the whole group does the same thing is very difficult to oppose them, especially when the group has a lot of members with high expertise. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">• Susceptibility to interpersonal influence: Refers to the individual's need to identify or enhance his or her image in the opinion of significant others - social comparison theory (selectiveness on choosing benchmarks).
 * Other factors for conforming**

This theory explains how individuals evaluate their own opinions and desires by comparing themselves to others. In general, people tend to choose a //co-oriented peer,// or a person of equivalent standing to do a social comparison. more people in a group less likely that a member will be singled out for attention -Group members often do things they would not do as individuals because their identities become merged with the group, they become //deindividuated//. - In many cases, group members show a greater willingness to consider riskier alternatives following group discussions than they would if they would make their choice on their own. = //risky shift// (One reason for this phenomena could be the diffusion of responsibility as each member is less accountable for the outcome) Nevertheless, risky shift is mostly apparent by low-risk product purchases. Group discussions tend to increase decision polarization and lead often to a more extreme direction of the final decision. On the other hand, there is also a concept of __resistance to influence__. <span style="font-family: Wingdings; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings; msoansilanguage: EN; msobidifontfamily: Wingdings; msofareastfontfamily: Wingdings; msolist: Ignore;">Ø  many people emphasize their independence, unique style or ability to resist the best efforts of salespeople and advertisers when they are choosing products -- marketers should take this fact into consideration ** Anti-conformity: ** Anti-conformity means that people avoid to do what is expected by being   aware of what is expected. ** Independence **** : ** Independent people just follow their own guidelines. ** Reactance: ** Reactance is a negative emotional state to overcome a loss of freedom. (e.g. freedom of choice) In this state for example, it is more likely that people have an increased desire to get forbidden products or a decreased desire to have a product which is over promoted. ** Uniqueness: ** Moreover, there also exists a need for uniqueness. People may try to establish an unique identity by deliberately not buying market leaders. All this contribute to create one’s own self-concept rather than being in line with social conventions.
 * Social comparison theory **
 * Group effects on individual behaviour **

Information obtained from those we know or talk directly to tends to be more __reliable and trustworthy__ than that received through more formal channels. If a friend tell me something is different than the effect of an add. WOM can be efficient due to the speed at which this can occur. Even faster due to the internet. WOM can have a negative marketing impact – informal discussions among consumers can make or break a product. How can marketers limit negative WOM? - political, engaged consumers and boycotts. WOM motivation factors: - high involvement with a product or activity can make people enjoy talking about it; - when a person is knowledgeable about a product or activity, can start conversations in order to let others know it; - when there is a genuine concern about others (for instance, tell them what is better to buy or something else); - reduce the uncertainty about the wisdom of a purchase.
 * Word-of-mouth communication (WOM)** (very important to marketing, specially today when people are smashed by advertisement clutter: WOM is crucial in evaluation and adoption of products - (formal vs informal information seeking])

Viral marketing refers to the strategy of __getting customers to__ __‘sell’__ a product on behalf of a company that creates it by sending on recommendations, etc. Viral marketing is particularly suited to the Internet (fast, networked, global, multimedia, etc. Example: hotmail -> free email service for users -> but -> every message has at least one small ad) Virus? __Participation means motive__! Individuals must have motivation to participate in the viral marketing. They must have a reason to do that. For marketers: What kind of reason can we give them? -> Google case -> people search for information -> Google put ads on the searched topics -> people have motivation (need to find something or get some information) and Google takes the opportunity to make money (through the ads).
 * Viral marketing**

__Opinion leaders__ who are knowledgeable about a product and whose opinions are highly regarded tend to influence the choices of others. Specific opinion leaders can be difficult to identify but marketers who know their general characteristics can try to target them in their media and promotional strategies. //Super-influencerscs// <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">• They are technically competent and possess expert power. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">• They have pre-screened, evaluated, and synthesised product information in an unbiased way thus possessing knowledge power. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">• They are often among the first to purchase new products. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">• They tend to be socially active and highly interconnected in their community. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">• They tend to be similar to the consumer in terms of values and beliefs (WOM). <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;">• Effective opinion leaders tend to be slightly higher in terms of status and educational attainment than those they influence, but not so high as to be in a different social class.
 * Opinion leadership –the flow of influence runs two-ways: leaders are afected by responses of the influenced.**
 * Value of opinion leaders**

The McCann report is available on: @http://www.imaginar.org/docs/when_did_we_start_trusting_strangers.pdf

Summary of the McCann report

Chapter 1 - The rise of social media

Today, people have very less time for meeting friends and so the social networks enable them to share photos, videos, music and opinions. The new social media enabled users to be active and to share opinions and thought globally. Anyone can create content in a manner that was not possible before, when media belonged only to the professionals. The fact that 80% of the 1.5 bn internet users are using instant messaging and that nearly 58% have joined a social network leads to changes in our communication as a society.

<span style="color: #000000; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Chapter 2: DIGITAL FRIENDS

In 2008, 1.5 bn people are online and communicate as a society thnaks to internet. There are different ways to communicate (users world-wide): -email 99% -instant messenger 81.6% -social network 58% - VOIP 51.3% (Voice over IP: like Skype) There are different ways to use social network: -stay in contact with existing friends 58% -meet new friends 42% -dating 18%

Social networks and blogs are perceived as important platforms for socializing with new or older friends but this impact is not geographically uniform. this is due to the differences between culture. In Philippines, Mexico or India, web users have been more enthusiastically embraced by social network in terms of socializing and meeting new friends via blogs/social networks than in Canada or Netherlands.

The key factor is that social web is increasingly adopted as a core social platform by hundreds of millions of users worldwide. Social platform as a communication channel has a bad impact on the scale and nature of our friendship network.

PC based internet is for expanding networks while mobile is for maintaining current ones. With written communication, you can share links, videos and pictures.

Nature of friendship is changing and there are some difference in the nature of friendship between different region: -Brazil: very large friend network -China: instant messenger as a top way for communication -India: email and mobile as largest way for communication -Japan: smaller friend network reflects the structure of society -UK: social networks are equals to face-to-face communications -US: email just leads face-to-face but SMS yet to catch on.

In 10 years we can see a significant shift to virtual communication with friends, partner, work colleagues or children. People changed totally their ways of communication. They are using more text-based ways like SMS or e-mail to keep in touch with personal relationship and also for business and work. <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 70%;"> <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In conclusion, we can say thanks to internet and new technologies like mobile phone, people can increase their friendship network and that's why we find some digital friend with whom we communicate via internet(email, instant messenger or social network). But for our older friend, we still communicate with them by face-to-face. Moreover, people communicate with different ways following where they came from. A Brazilian and a British do not communicate with the same ways. = = <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 44.8%;"> <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> Chapter 3: Proliferation of influence channels

<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The rise of social media and digitisation of our friend networks has created a lot of new influence channels that allow consumers to voice and have their opinions heard. Consumer contribution to the web has become the norm. This has created a lot of tools to influence other consumers like voting buttons and favourites lists. These are powerful forms of influence that do not require much commitment.

The web has become an extension of existing relationships, for example; over 44% of users have shared an opinion about a product or service by an instant messenger with a friend in the last month and 42% by email. Also other social channels, like blogs, are extremely popular. <span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">People trust recommendations in social media channels more than paid-for communications; this makes clear that being active in social media will become increasingly important for brands.

The most important factors to share their opinions is about good experience demonstrating the importance in the new influence landscape of investing in a quality product.

Consumers would much rather comment and judge something that is already known and familiar, because they are familiar with these products they feel safer in recommending it.

About the process of looking for opinions on a brand or product we noticed that search is number one, but an email recommendation is virtually the same with 80%. Instant Messenger conversation with a friend has the same penetration as visiting a branded website. Both of which demonstrate the increasing reach of digitised direct communication channels as a form of influence.

Because of these aspects today we trust the opinions of strangers from all over the world almost as much as we trust the people we know.

How much we trust strangers online is more likely to be determined by nationality and cultural, social and technological differences.

Chapter 4: The Influence Economy The social web has become a tool which enables people to share their opinions about products and services. We are the most likely to share our opinions about films, music, technology and books. As a result companies today have to be aware that bad practice or poor service will be reported and will enter the purchase decision process. The highest participation rates are in Asia, the lowest – in Europe and North America. They depend on the level of web market development. Countries with more developed web markets haven’t embraced the consumer influence revolution with as high level of enthusiasm as countries where web markets are less developed. The level of contribution depends also on the culture. In Asia hierarchical societies predominate and sharing opinions face to face is not as accepted as it is in the more individualistic societies of Europe and North America. Looking for information we are mostly interested in 'holiday and destinations', however very few people share their own experiences to this topic. There are significant differences in categories we share information and we want to find it. After 'holidays' come home technology, travel and portable technology. Following them films, music and books, all important in sharing as well. We are not interested in information about low involvment and impulse products, but we like to review them online. We search opinions on expensive products like for example cars.

Chapter 5: Democratization of Influence From this part of the report we can draw that influence isn’t concentrated in a small group, but it is “democratized”, that is, each of us influence each other. This change is mainly due to the appearance of the internet, where we can discuss every topic we intend to. Despite this change, the influence isn’t completely democratized, in fields were technical knowledge is required (financial, real estate, etc.) we still are more influenced rather that we influence others. In this chapter an interesting graph is shown where is shown that we think of ourselves more as influencers than as receivers, which constitute the main point of this topic. The small group of influencers’ position is actually filled by the big group that is all of us. A real example of this are the online discussion forums, where someone ask for some insights about a product and each of us can access there, give our opinion and be on the influencing side.

Chapter 6: The Super Influencers All people influence according to the report, but some are //Super Influencers, the// most active in social media: //“…a new kind of influencer, who, thanks to social media and the tool it provides to create and share influence emerges above the clutter of mass influence to spread opinion far and wide”.// They are likely to be male, aged 25 – 34, and likely to be highly educated. Super Influencers also fit the profile of **//early adopters//**//,// people who are the first to try new products, take risks and share their opinions with friends. They are very heavy users of social media, particularly in terms of content creation. They blog, upload videos and photos and comment on sites and social networks. Social media provides them with the tools to create and share influence. Thus, they are not merely consuming, they are big **content generators**. For instance, they are much more likely to want to share opinions because a brand is fashionable or their friends are not aware of the brand. The report also claims that bloggers even had an influence on the election of Obama as the presidential candidate for the Democratic Party.