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.

Values

Hello every one once again, hope you all are well? Today's topic is on Values. It is said that there are many different types of meanings for this one word value. Value to me is something which you treasure or which is very close to you and you don't want to get rid of it. It can be materialistic and at the same time it could be something which your elders have given you like teachings or even upbringing. That is my personal take on value.

But a theorist called Wilkie has its own definition of value he states "Values are our ideas about what is desirable". In simple words he is trying to say that values are our ideas which we think are desirable or precious to us.

For us people Value is very important, why? This is because it will tell them how they act and see themselves as individuals. The good thing about Value is that it makes people's positives that's like if there happiness and personal possessions on a high and negative things like depression and anxiety on a low.

Solomon said that values are a very important in a person's daily activities as many products or services are purchased by people because they believe it will help them get a valued product.

When had a lecture on values our lecturer discussed the Kathle's list of values (1983). There were nine of them: 1.) Self-respect, 2.) Being Well Respected, 3.) Self-fulfilment, 4.) Sense of accomplishment, 5.) Excitement, 6.) Security, 7.) Fun and Enjoyment, 8.) Sense of Belonging and 9.) Warm relationship with others. After that were asked to put the list in order in which four suits our life style.

The four which I put were:

1.) Self Respect - As I have self respect and I don't think will ever lose that that is due to the values I have been given by my elders.

2.) Fun and Enjoyment - This is because I am a fun and loving person, I enjoy life to the full and so Fun and Enjoyment is part of my values.

3.) Warm relationship with others - This is because, whether it is my friends or family or even some one I have just met, I will be polite to them and greet them or speak to them in a very warm and polite way. This way will never lose my self respect and will gain more respect from others due to this kind behaviour.

4.) Sense of Belonging - I think this is also important for me in my life style as I am very true to my friends and family as in I never ever back out if they need me, if they require help with anything I am there and belong where I am needed.

Below is a video of an advert on Thinkbox TV. I have chosen this ad because, the guy is in a trance and is thinking of what is in his memory and what he values, he values his new think box tv in which all channels are included so this shows to the consumer that if he or she gets that then you would not miss anything.

Any Comments on this post please feel free to comment. Until then see you all next time.

Learning, Memory and Nostalgia

Hello Guys, I am back and this time its Memory and Nostalgia. Getting straight into theory, one of the theorist called Brit (1955) said that when ever an individual sees an advert or views an advert in a newspaper, the main reason or shall I say the main objective is that the individual seeing the advert or reading it will learn something from it and if by any chance the individual has failed to register what the advert was about then the purchase of the product advertised would not be done as the individual did not get what the advert was about. Below is a picture of an individual confused about a product.

This advert was not only confusing but misleading as the website on which this picture was advertised in got so many complaints and the brand Ralph Lauren being such a big brand had lost its customers trust. This picture was not real as it was fiddled with on photoshop as the models lower half of the body was fake and made on photoshop and the complaints were that a human figure can never look like this.

What is Memory? Is it something which is in your brain? Or is it Something you have learnt at school, college or even University? Or is it the teachings you have got from your family? Basically in simple wordings Memory is a book in the head of your experiences in life, it can be good and it also can be bad.

Theoretically explaining it memory is a process where information is stored and its like a permanent book when you need the information will be there unless you have erased it. Similarly the marketeers who advertise their product want the customers to remember what the product was or what the advertisement was and what brand it was so that the customer gets the advert in its memory and never forget the brand or product being advertised. For this to happen, marketeers need to make their advertising techniques right and not make the customer confused and bored. Its like hitting a bulls eye in darts, if you hit it you are in contention of winning if you don't you need to try harder, similarly if you haven't connected with the customer with the advert, its going to be a struggle. Another Theorist Solomon says that the marketeers are very much reliant on the consumers so that they can get the information they have learnt about the product or service.

There is something called information processing perspective (sounds like an IT term), and in it are three memory systems. First one being the sensory buffer (now this sounds like something to do with music), Second one being the short term memory and the final one being the long term memory. This system of memory plays a role in which it captures and processes any information from the people. In the marketing field, this system relies heavily on how long the customer can remember the product. The marketeers are likely to advertise their products again and again so that the customers remember it and repeat it like its there favourite tune.

If you think product does not have a role in any of this, then think again because it does. It has a role as in the memory of a marketeer. For example a product like an ice- cream if being eaten by an adult it may bring back his or her's childhood memories. So the product plays a huge part as well in all this.

Moving on to the next bit which is Nostalgia. Its a funny word but it also has a place in the marketing world. According to the theorist R. Wright (2000), he stated that the term nostalgia is something which is like a sentiment remembering old days of childhood and good memories. Whereas another theorist Solomon said that nostalgia is a sweet and also bitter type of emotion where the past can be viewed with happiness and sadness.

If I have to give my view about it I would say that the way the customer observes its product that is how the past is being brought whether its good or bad memory. This is the way marketeers use to advertise as it helps to attract the customer and make them feel emotional especially women as they are more sensitive and emotional to anything especially adverts.

Once again any comments on this post, please feel free to post or give your feedback/suggestions. Till then see you soon.

Group Conformity, Opinion Leaders and Peer Pressure

Hello once again, this week in this post, the topic is Groups. When we say groups, straight away in our minds a picture gets created of more than two people whether they are a group of workers, or a team playing a sport. Below is a picture from the program the Apprentice where there is a group of contestants trying to be Sir Alan Sugar's Apprentice.

What is a group? The textbook answer to this question would be that it is an important part of a person's social life. An example of this can be that a group can get influenced by some one's behaviour and in the group one has to influence all sorts of behaviours from the people in the group and as they are more than two people in the group each person is going to be different. Take the picture above for example, when you see the picture above you straight away no that in this you have to be in groups and work as a team, but of course in a group you will have differences and that will be due to the reason of behaviour or shall I say mannerisms of the individual, so conflicts do happen when part of a group.

When you mention the word group, it may seem that its only of one type like where you see more than two people you call them a group, but its not just that. There is much more to it as theoretically there are various different types of groups. One of them is known as something called Aspirational (this type of group is more to do with people having interest in fashion). Second type of group is Peers (That is your friends who you can say have an equal standing and peers can be from school, college or even university). Third one being Acquired (This type relates more towards the work colleagues side or even scouts for a particular club), and finally the last type of group is known as Ascribed (this is the type where you are born into e.g. family, and this is where the gender and social class comes in).

Great news guys......... More Theory coming your way regarding this topic :). Right enough of my poor jokes, and moving on to the theories regarding this topic. The main one being the theory of Social Comparison. Basically it influences the need of the groups and also it looks at the behaviour of the individuals in the group for them to provide a guideline for their evaluation of themselves. This theory also makes individuals in the group also learn about the type of ability they have and also the attitudes that is when they compare themselves to other people.

Following rules and regulations are also a certain type of expectation which a group represents.

Hope this post was useful and any comments or feedbacks on this post please feel free to comment.

Gender

Hello people, today I am going to talk about Gender, as this is what my last lecture was about. Below is a picture of the two genders Male and Female.

By looking at this picture, the first thing which came to my mind was competition, as the way the two people of different genders are looking at each other seems like that they are trying to show that which one is superior. In the lecture our lecturer told us about the difference between genders and the first thing our lecture discussed with us was how the male gender can impress a woman. Below is a video link giving an example of how to impress a woman.

I have chosen this video clip because discussion on how to impress a woman, would be more affective if a woman explains how she would like to be impressed, so the clip chosen by me above shows a woman talking about how a guy should impress a woman.

In class things which we discussed were that little things like buying woman some flowers, boxes of chocolate, spending quality time with her, have a cuddle, supporting her (small things like that) are very common but very affective in impressing a woman, also explained by our lecturer was that if these small affective things are not achieved by guys, then the women feel lonely and that causes them to question their guys in why they are ignoring or not doing these things (the word which will be suitable for this line is nagging). All this may seem easy that these little things can be achieved but, in the real world its more difficult and there are many cases out there where a guy fails to impress a woman and in return gets dumped, hated or nagged.

Below are two pictures of two different scenarios, one being that a guy has impressed a woman and the other where he has not.

This picture shows that both the guy and the girl are happy and this shows that the guy has impressed the girl and in return the girl is happy and enjoying the guy's company. So all ends well with a drink of wine.

I chose this picture for the guy failing to impress, because suppose the guy dancer gets the dance move wrong on stage that would embarrass the guy itself but the above most it will embarrass the woman, and as women are sensitive so the impression of the guy can go wrong and due to one bad dance move, the woman can not be impressed.

If you think this discussion was over, well you thought wrong, this was only the first half, second half was yet to come that is of how to impress a man. Well me being a guy and most of the guys in the class agreed to the discussion which happened or shall I say some part of the discussion. as the ladies in the class gave two main points in how a woman can impress a guy is by a girl stripping or just cooking the guys some hot delicious food. The guys in the class agreed with the food option but only a few agreed to the stripping bit, as from my personal view of it is that female should not only be there to impress a guy by stripping as that can come under discrimination and its a big negative, but majority of the guys agreed to it, was well shocking. Below is a picture of the two things the females in the class said that guys will be impressed with.

I have chosen this picture because even if it is black and white and is a very old picture, this shows that from that generation till now its the same thing that a way to impress a guy is by the woman serving food on the guy's plate and as long as that keeps happening the guy will be happy.

This picture of course of a half-naked woman (a model) stating that a guy would be impressed if a girl has a figure like this young beautiful lady above and basically just literally (I won't say), it should be understandable.

This was not all, after the discussion of how to impress a guy and a woman, the next thing which we moved onto was an activity as our lecturer showed the class a picture of a room which had items in it. All of us looked at the pictured and then gave our feedback on to what we remember from the picture. The end result was that our lecturer told us that the girls have a memory of remembering little things like books, flowers and many of those items and guys remember the big stuff like big sofa (furniture) and bookshelves and many more.

Moving on to the theory side of things relating to the topic of gender, is that our lecturer told us differences in advertisement. From one of the textbooks I read I remember that one of the theorists (Solomon) wrote that in society, the role of men and women are showed to us viewers in terms of behaving ideally which are stressed for both the genders in advertising. For example what kind of advert will a woman be interested in? In my personal view a woman will be attracted to a beauty product advert or a healthy snack (relating to diet) advert or even the clothes advert, whereas a guy will be attracted to adverts which relate to sports like sportswear or deodorants (how to impress women - good odour). Below are two video links one of them an advert targeting women and the other one targeting men.

This advert above was chosen by me for the women viewers because first of all it has Cheryl Cole and as she is looked up to as a role model by young girls and even older women so what ever product she endorses would be a watched by women especially this advert as every one likes nice hair and as Cheryl Cole is promoting the L'oreal advert sending the message to the women if you buy this product your hair will look as beautiful and silky as Cheryl Cole's hair.

The advert above is targeting the men, and this popular advert of Gillete Fusion series has been chosen by me because I feel that sport even though women are these days part of every single sport but this advert has got likes of Roger Federer, Tiger Woods and Thierry Henry and them endorsing the product of shaving shows that the way these guys play smoothly in their sport thats how smoothly a guys skin would feel once he has shaved with Gillette Fusion.

Differentiating between the two genders can be influenced by there responses to the marketing side of things. An example can be like guys are not as sensitive to women when watching a TV Commercial. Below is a link to an advert on binge drinking, it features a young guy but seeing this advert women will still be sensitive or shall I say react to this advert when they see it.

Finally a theoretical statement to end this blog that advertising in the media sector plays a pivotal role when it comes to socialising the male and female consumers. Basically the role of women in advertising has disseminated whereas the role of men have not been portrayed shall I say with accuracy either in the media.

Any Comments on this blog, please feel free to comment or give any suggestions.