Final Reflections on Blogging

Hey guys, my assignment has come to an end and this post is my final one and in this post I will be talking about my final thoughts of blogging, and how I found this whole thing of blogging, what I achieved from blogging, did it interest me or not? Will I like to create more blogs or use blogs?

First of all what are blogs? Blogs are postings which are done on the internet on a particular topic by individuals like us. A blog can be just simple writing, or has pictures and links. Professionals earn money by blogging by posting articles on things like sport related, or music or even movies. People even watch live sports, movies through the use of blogs.

I am not new to blogs, even though I did not create one, but I use to watch live sports and watch movies and TV Programs through the use of blogs and when at the start of the year got told that our final assignment is creating our own blogs I was really looking forward to it. Although the blogs were meant to be educational, but it was an experience of making your own blogs. I tried my best to use all facilites from the blog from plain writing text, to pictures to Video links. I alsow tried to make it look as professional and add a bit of my humour to.

Apparently in terms of business the use of blogs are really popular. Online companies (large company) like Amazon uses blogs for the consumers so the company can get their thoughts of their service and on their products. One thing I learnt or shall I say which was new to me was that marketeers use blogging to promote their products online.

It is a true fact that you learn something new every day. I am going to admit that my IT skills are not to the best, but the use of blogging made me improve them and I also got use to making my way around the blogger website. I did struggle at first to post the video links as they would not appear, but later I found out that I am not doing it right, once got the hang of that, the use of blog seemed easy. The videos and images related to what I wrote made my blog look professional and for others it made it look enjoyable to see and read. Blogging has helped me into doing my resarch thoroghly as without research, Blogging cannot be done, as you can write loads but without the facts and research your blog would not appeal or attract readers due to the lack of clarity it will have.

The blogs I chose to do were about topics like Perception, Social Class, Generation Marketing, Gender, Personality, Values, Enterprise Week, etc. Each blog had its own class and I enjoyed doing them all. The reason is because each blog had its own research and theory which I liked to do and it had different images and link to it. Despite each blog taking most of its time but still it was useful and I learnt alot from it.

Above I mentioned that each blog took its time to complete due to its research and facts and getting images and videos for the related post. All that was time consuming, so I would call that a disadvantage. As after each lecture what ever we learnt had to do a posting, was hard at first to manage our times due to other assignments from other modules, but once got into the mode, was easy to manage time. One of the lectures I was unable to attend and due to that I did struggle on that blog posting but eventually got the reading and research done, so finally made it through to finishing that post. It took alot of time.

On the whole the experience using blogger.com for the blogs was a great one, I learnt so many things and was really fun to have a blog and my own url, just like having your own little mini website or shall I say like a mini online diary. If I get another chance to do a blog I may not to it on the same topics but I would be more creative and choose a different topic e.g. sports or music or even movies, something which interests me. Now not only I will use blogs for viewing movies and Live Sport but also would be part of it in hopefully creating my own as well and also my recommendations to all the people I know who have not created a blog or used the website, please do, as it is great.

Social Class

Hi there People, todays post is all about Social Class. In the lecture, there was a discussion about what Social Class is? How Social Class influences the purchases of people when they buy certain products?

Getting straight into the theory, Theorist called Krech (2000) gives his definiton of Social Class and he thinks Social Class is a where society is divided and made of people who possess some common characteristics of social life. Below is a video clip which explains about social class in children.

Social Class in todays generation is very affective, thats because what ever the people do in their daily life like a purchase or the way they dress is related to social class. They get judged by the way they appear or how they look, dress and act.

There are three main social classes. 1.) Upper Class, 2.) Middle Class and 3.) Lower Class. Below I am going to explain about these classes in detail.

1.) Upper Class - People who are from Upper Class are the ones who are loaded with lots and lots of money, if to have to say it one word, the word is RICH. Upper Class includes one of the oldest familes also given the title of aristocrats. Below is an advert which targets upper class familes even individuals. It is an advert of Virgin Atlantic upper class, so only who are upper class can afford the luxury shown in the advert.

2.) Middle Class - Middle Class is the type of class which consists of people from the industrialist background, business people, shop owners, also professionals working in other sectors in business. A true fact is that the majority of the Britain's population are middle class. Below is an advert of the new ford focus, which is a car targeted for familes who are from the middle class background.

3.) Lower Class - People from Lower class are just opposites to what Upper Class people are. Lower Class people do not have a high flying budget, they live on a very low and minimal budget for there daily life routine. Factory workers, Mine workers even farmers come under this category. Below is an advert of Morrisons which has Richard Hammond in it. I have chosen this particular advert as a lot of lower class families go and shop in Morrisons.

Social Class is influenced by an important factor called income, this is because if some one has a higher income, it will be considered as that that individual comes from an upper class background (Rich Family). Whereas if some one's income was low, it will be considered that the individual is from a lower class background (low income family). But there is a fact that incomes are rising due to the women are making there way up to working and has seen a rise in working women and also increase of graduates mean increase of graduate jobs.

Being in a job (Occupation) also is part of social class. This is because, say for example if some one is in an occupation of a lawyer or a doctor it will be considered that they are earning lots of money so are considered upper class. Whereas if someone's occupation is a cleaner or some one in the labour market they will be considered to be lower class due to the low pay they get.

Education is a main factor which is part of social class. This is because some one graduating from Oxford or Cambridge would be considered or judged as an Upper Class background, whereas some one who goes to an average university will be considered to be coming from a Middle Class background and if some one is unable to attend to a university that reason would be that the family or the individual is unable to finance its own funds to have a good education will be considered to be from a Lower Class Background.

These Social classes further break down into some more groups. They are as follows:

1.) A - contains upper class people

2.) B - contains middle class people

3.) C1 - contains lower middle class people

4.) C2 - contains skilled working class people

5.) D - contains working class people

6.) E - contains lower class people

This is a good idea to break down the three social classes and it shows that middle class dominates with the majority of the group compared to the other classes. By this type of grouping, it would be easier for the marketeers to advertise and target the products to the different type of classes.

There are lots of positives for Social Class with its groupings, but it also has its criticisms. One of the criticism is that it is not equal, as all the three classes are not considered equal so marketeers when advertising will have to target each class differently. But on the other hand it is possible that some one from a middle class or lower class background can be working in a high paid job, so the level of inconsitency shows in social class too. In my personal view people should not be judges by there social classes as some one from a lower class should not be looked down at as he or she may have the skill to go up one day and similar for the upper class people as they can have a bad time and can come to a low budget as well, so no matter what class you are people should not treat classes differently as at the end of the day they are all one that is human!

Any feedback on this post, please feel free to comment or suggest anything.

Generations Marketing

Hello to every one, I know today is the 1st April, but don't worry I am not going to be April Fooling you guys, but in this post will be talking about the next topic called Generations Marketing.
Generation Marketing is all about approaching the right kind of product development, Marketing, Communications and CRM and due to that it recognises the generations as arcehtypes. The experience of generations consist of four phases starting from when you are a child, then comes when you are in your teens, then comes the midlife also known as middle-age and the final one being when you are in the senior citizen category and the approach respects all of these four generations. But during the seasons the social attitudes and the values are different from the other generations which get experienced at the same phase of life. Below is a picture of an asian family which includes all four generations in one frame. How cool is that!

Now in this section, I am going to go into detail of what each generation is all about and trust me it has got funny names, but once you get to know about it, you get to grips with the information. So here we go!

1.) Generation X - Generation X at the moment are currently standing from the age group of 28 to 48 years old and they are beginning to move from young adulthood to the middle ages. This particular generation experience things like getting honors, survivals and even aim towards liberty.

2.) Baby Boomers - With the name your first instincts may tell you that this is the most youngest generation that is babies. But guess again, it infact is the opposite. Baby Boomers are currently from the age group of 49 to 66 years old, and they are just beginning to move out of the middle ages to senior citizen category. This particular generation has the type of personality that experiences towards relgion, values and even vision.

3.) Generation Y (also known as Millennials) - Millennials are currently from the age group of 7 to 27 years old. This particular age group are on the entrance level into young adult hood. This generation experiences towards community, technology and even affluence.

4.) There is another generation called Homeland Generation and this infact is currently at the age group from 0 to 6 years old (the little babies/ little children). This generation can be called the arrivals generation and in reality these young arrivals share the same kind of habits to the elder generation (67-84 years old).

Comparing these four generations, the majority is of the Baby Boomers leading the way followed by my generation (Millenials).

Below is an advert targeting the Millenial generation and as they are more into the new technology side, the advert below is of the new apple Iphone.

Moving on to Age Sub-Culture, it plays an important role in generation marketing. Age Sub-Culture is basically when one individual's age gets impacted on their personal identity and the way they spend. Millenials are great example for this as people in there teen age have a spree of spending like a F1 Formula car as they just want everything which comes in the market whether its a guy or a girl, this is where they differ from the boomer generation, as when you get to the generation of the boomers you start to save. Millenials want to look cool and protect there image so they want to buy the best. and so are the best example for age sub culture. Below is a picture of the young people looking trendy.

People from Generation X try to look for a balanced life due to work and other social activities. They do not get pulled into the traditional types of advertising e.g. all hyped up products. They are more expressive towards their needs so that they can stay in control by buying the communications related products like fax machines, mobile phones, etc. In other words they tend or shall I say prefer to buy products which are needed in their personal life but also at the same time are practical as well. They also are not like the millenials generation who are spending lots on technology and clothes (fashion).

Any Feedback on this post, please feel free to comment. Until then take care, and see you all soon.