WEEK 15

GROUPS

There may be several different kinds of groups to where an organisation may place their customers. These people can be put into groups where they have people with the same behaviours or attitudes. Consumers may be grouped in a number of different ways. They can be grouped according to the financial class they belong to, age groups, culture, occupations and also according to what products they purchase.

The different types of groups available are:

Reference groupes:
These are groups that have signifant relevance on the groups evaluation, aspiration or behaviour. This group influences consumers in three ways. These influences are informational influence where an individual seeks information about various brands from an assosiation. The secound influence is utilitarian , this is so that he/she can satisfy the expectation of assosiates, an individual's decision to purchase a particular brand is influenced by their preference. The third influence is value expressive is where the individual that has purchased a certain product or brand feels that using or purchasing that brand will enhance the image other people have of him/her. This is a table that shows this groups influence.

Ascribed group:

This is the group people are born into, family, gender, social class. This can be what typre of class they come from for example middle class, high class or lower class. It also depends on the gender as in if they are male or female.

There are also many other kinds of groups available like:

Dissassociation

For example chavs

Contrived:

Organisations may look for certain target markets to advertise their products and they do this by achieving what groups people tend to fall in and which groups they are targeting for their products. They do this by doing some many kinds of market research where they learn about these attitudes and behaviours and get additional information to group their customers.

People of different age groups may be interested in the same things but are still grouped differently for example:

An old woman may want to buy clothes from a shop like marks and spencer where as a young girl would prefer to shop in a place like new look. The difference is that they may have different fashion taste.