Cultural Factors.
The US is a multi-cultural society that is changing at an ever accelerating pace. Defining target audience for a particular message is critical to knowing the cultural frame in which the listener/viewer will perceive the message.
Social Factors.
While closely related to culture, social factors are more specific to the individual. These include:
1. Status- How the listener/viewer perceives his/her place in society, particularly in terms of relative placement on a largely imaginary hierarchy of wealth, power or other social value.VALS.2. Family- In the US we now have multiple models for family structure, but family is still a powerful social influence. Families go through life cycles just as individuals do, and advertisers have to keep up with buying trends associated with the different stages of the cycle. See Table 4.2 in the text.
3. Reference Groups- In spite of the emphasis on individualism in US society, virtually everyone has a need to belong to some group beyond the family. These can include an informal circle of friends, formal organizations such a churches or political parties, local and national clubs relating to personal interests and even street gangs. Reference groups can be exclusive which encourages people to aspire to join them (fraternities) or inclusive in that they strive to increase membership and may actually turn off some people if they get too heavy-handed in their approach (political parties).
4. Occupation- While the text places this under "personal" factors, occupation has many social implications and researchers can rank occupations on their perceived value to society, which will influence many decisions. Since many occupations have professional organizations or trade publications, we can often collect data easily and learn quite a bit about how to influence individuals in specific occupations.
5. Lifestyle- This is also a personal pattern with social implications. As with occupation, we can frequently isolate individuals with particular interests or who participate in particular leisure-time activities and collect data that can help us understand them better.
The VALS system of evaluating behavior of individuals and sub-groups is interesting, but it is more valuable for evaluating existing groups such as current customers and it is difficult to extend to large populations of essentially unknown dynamics.
Motivation.
Motivation has been studied extensively by both advertisers and psychologists. Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a good place to start. Maslow determined that basic human needs can be organized in a hierarchy, and until the lower levels of need are fulfilled, motivational schemes aimed at the higher levels are ineffective.
As noted the Fig. 5.1 in the text, the needs ascend from:
1. PhysiologicalThis simply means that trying to sell people a product based upon its ability to make them feel "cool" is not going to work unless they are well-fed, reasonably secure and feel they are part of some larger social group.
2. Safety
3. Social
4. Esteem (Ego)
5. Self Actualization
The text takes what most advertisers refer to as "emotional appeals" or "motivating appeals" and divides them into emotional, rational, moral and other.
A simplified version might be:
Emotional-What the text calls moral appeals should fall somewhere under Threat, Security or Ego.
Rational-1. Threat
2. Security
3. Love & Sentiment
4. Sex (as in the consumers' identification as masculine or feminine)
5. Ego
1. ConvenienceOther-
2. Value
1. Humor
2. Curiosity
A.I.D.A. Formula.
A formula widely used in advertising for translating the theoretical concepts of motivation covered above into tangible spots that will sell is called AIDA.
The elements are:
1. Attention- It is essential to capture attention. This can be done with a strange sound, silence, humor, or unusual video (although audio is more popular because the TV viewer may already be headed for the refrigerator). This often uses the first 5 seconds of the spot, and sometimes even more.2. Interest- This is where an understanding of your target audience is essential. Try to ease them into the message in a way that will hold their interest. Techniques will vary greatly by target audience.
3. Desire- Desire is established when you can match the product's characteristics to the target audience's aspirations. The motivational appeals discussed above can help with this process, but ultimately it comes from understanding both audience and product.
4. Action- This is what salespeople call the "closer." Provide all the information necessary to allow the listener/viewer to act on the desire you have created. This can include giving Web addresses, emphasizing multiple easy methods of ordering and payment and stressing that now is the time to act.
