B2B

A company grows cotton. That company sells it to a factory where they spin the cotton, and turn it into fabric and thread. A t-shirt company buys some of thier cotton fabric and thread. They also buy dyes and print (with it's own trail of transactions behind it). The t-shirt company sells those t-shirts to Topshop. Topshop sold the t-shirt to you- only, of course, after a hefty mark and and putting it's own label in.

Inbetween each of these transactions transportation companies have been hired to ship around these goods. All the companis in each stage of this process has will probably have bought a property from an estate agency, furniture from IKEA, electricity from EDF, hired staff from a temp agency or through a newspaper, bought computers from Currys, pens and pencils out of a Viking catalogue, put new windows in from Velux, had local painters in to re-decorate, hired a repairman when the coffee machine stopped working, calamity, I know, hired a solicitor, an accountant and a cleaner and had so many other transaction with many other businesses. And for what? So that You could buy a t-shirt from Topshop.

Business to business (B2B) transactions are much more likely to be of a higher value,but fewer, than B2C transations. Most companies are buying to create something else to sell on, and therefore buy in bulk. This means that you cannot afford to lose any of your customers. An example that was given in class was the comparison between a company selling MRI scanners (B2B) and Coke (B2C).

Focusing on the UK, Coca-Cola has millions of customers. A company selling MRI scanners probably has very few, probably only the NHS. However, Coke has hundreds of compititors, other soft drinks, hot drinks, squash at home, water, alcoholic drinks, all from different companies. There probably aren't many retailers of MRI scanners in the UK. This means B2B retailers must work much harder at building a relationship with the customer. This is why personal selling is much more efficient than advertising and many other types of marketing that are widely used in the B2C sector.

Because there are often fewer substitutes in B2B markets the demand for products and services is more likely to be inelastic- "A situation in which a cut in price yields such a small increase in quantity taken by the market that total revenue decreases". This means two things for marketers. Firstly, it is harder to stimulate sales through price cuts and promotional offers. Secondly, the marketer is, often, able to set the price because if cutting the price doesn't increase sales it is likely that raising the price will not decrease sales. The cause for this, in many cases, is that if a business needs a product, it needs the product. An example given for this in class was financial software, but the same could be true for communications solutions, farm machinery and hospital beds. There are three core causes of price elasticity, "a measure of the sensitivity of demand to changes in price" ; 1. the availabilty of substitutes 2. the amount of budget available to spend 3. time.

The availability of substitutes probably has biggest influence of price and demand elasticity, as has been discussed earlier. Budget affects elasticity as a rise in the price of a product without a rise in the alloted budget for the product would mean that the company would not buy the product.

There are three main types of organisations (Fill & Fill, 2005):

• Government Organisations- eg. Health, NHS, and Policing, London Metropolitain Police
• Institutional Organisations- eg. Not-For-Profit, Cancer Research UK, Community Based Projects, Watford Women's Centre
• Commercial Organisations- eg. Distributors, Eddie Stobbart, Retailers, Zara

The main method of marketing in B2B is personal selling. Salesmen and women have a lot of pressure on them to make sales, and a lot of time and money is put into training them. Earlier in the module we were shown Kotler's Buyer Decision Process. Quickly we realised that this was not always how consumers bought products, especially FMCGs and impulse buys. But his model is much more applicable in B2B buyer behaviour.

Problem Recognition > Information Search > Evalutation > Purchase > Postpurchase Evaluation

In the B2C market this might translate into something like:

I'm Hungry > What's Available? > Ice-Cream or Cake > Ben&Jerry's > Should have had Cake

In the B2B market it might look quite different and involve many more people, especially in a larger organisation. The Marketing Department might decide that their sales team need some extra training, so they go to the Finance Department to see if there is any funding. The Finance says there is. So the Marketing Department look for what type of training is available. They then take this to the CEO, or who ever needs to sign it off, and the R&D Department want to see what type of course it is, to see if it will be effective for what they are working on. The CEO and R&D agree. So the salesteam go off for training. Then the sales figures speak for themselves. This might look something like:

Sales needs training > What training is available? > B2B or B2C? > B2B > Good choice, most of our clients are Businesses

Randy Shattuck, of the Shattuck Group, summerizes corporate buying as the following things:

• Methodical
  Complex
• Budgeted
• High-risk
• Analytical
• Coordinated

Shattuck states that B2B buyers are motivated to spend because they know that if they don't spend their budget they will probably lose it. He emphasizes that the desired effect of the product is what creates the risk. "The bigger the desired effect, the bigger the risk". Shattuck's version of the B2B buyer decision process differs slighlty from Kotler's:

Identify the Problem > Create Criteria > Search for Providers > Evaulate the Options > Test the Options > Procure the Solution

The main difference is the lack of post purchase analysis. With most B2B purchases there is no option to get it wrong, this is why the solution must be tested. When you are the driver behind a big purchase decision it is often the case that your position, or at least credibility, in the company is at stake.

To improve sales and build inter-business relationships many companies use reciprocity, "A buying arrangement in which two organizations agree to purchase one another's products". They enter into an agreement that, for example, a mobile phone company will provide phones for a car company in return for a company car. Another option is leasing. Companies often make the decision to lease a product rather than buy it out right. This may be because it is an expensive product and they do not have the budget for it, or maybe they feel that because it will become obsolete soon.

Culture Is...

To be able to segment a market by culture you first need to understand what culture is. The Culture Show on the BBC has a Culture Is... application that is fascinating. It has hundreds of words that people have entered that people think culture is. It also has many definitions of what culture is from different people. Boris Johnson says culture is what differentiates human beings from animals. Patsy Kensit says culture is taking her 8 year-old son to the Natural History Museum. James Corden says culture is nothing to so with how intelligent you are. John Humphreys says culture is everything from grand opera to soap opera. Duffy says that culture to her is speaking Welsh.

There are, also, many different dictionary definitions of culture. Wikipedia states that there are three main definitions of culture:

~excellence of taste in the fine arts and humanities, also known as high culture
~an integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for symbolic thought and social learning
~the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution, organization or group.

Marketingpower.com has two very good definitions. Firstly, "The set of learned values, norms, and behaviors that are shared by a society and are designed to increase the probability of the society's survival", and secondly "The institutionalized ways or modes of appropriate behavior. It is the modal or distinctive patterns of behavior of a people including implicit cultural beliefs, norms, values, and premises that govern conduct. It includes the shared superstitions, myths, folkways, mores, and behavior patterns that are rewarded or punished". About.com defines culture as "the perspectives, practices and products of a social group". Dictionary.com has pages of definitions. Most of the relevant definitions include words such as "society", "behaviours", "traits", "patterns", "class" "community", "values", "attitudes" and "population".

From this it can be seen that culture is many different things to many different people. So how, as a marketer, can you combat marketing to many different cultures? Or do you try and define a culture and market exclusively to that culture? Culture is posing more of problem to many businesses daily as cultures are mixing and as many companies go global. How employees behave in one country will not be the custom in another country. I think the most important aspects of culture are values, beliefs and customs, all of which are to be respected.

Values- The important, enduring ideals or beliefs that guide behavior within a culture or for a specific person. For example, health and fitness have recently become important values for Americans.

Beliefs- A cognition or cognitive organization about some aspect of the individuals world. Unlike an attitude, a belief is always emotionally or motivationally neutral. Krench and Crutchfield define belief as a generic term that encompasses knowledge, opinion, and faith an enduring organization of perceptions and cognition about some aspect of the individuals world. It is the pattern of the meanings of a thing, the cognition about that thing.

Customs- A practice followed by people of a particular group or region.

An article, The Need for Culture-Sensitive Marketing, explains that "culture defines the way collective groups of people think and behave". It states that Geert Hofstede defined 5 dimensions of power in culture, and how this greatly affects the way people do business and how they consume. These are as follows: power distance, individualism, masculinity, uncertainty avoidance and long-term orientation. The article summarises with a very interesting point:

"After all, if human relations are defined by cultures, then brands - which ultimately are about product-people relationships - cannot remain agnostic to them."

Geert Hofstede has scored many different countries on these 5 measures. I will explain, in brief, what they mean, but it is explained in full, along with all the country profiles, on his website. Power Distance Index (PDI) is the extent to which people in groups and organisations accept that power is distributed unevenly, this represents inequality, but defined from below not above. Individualism (IDV) versus collectivism. This is whether people are out for themselves, and look out for number one, or whether they think first about others and the greater good of the group. Masculinity (MAS) "refers to the distribution of roles between the genders which is another fundamental issue for any society to which a range of solutions are found... The IBM studies revealed that (a) women's values differ less among societies than men's values; (b) men's values from one country to another contain a dimension from very assertive and competitive and maximally different from women's values on the one side, to modest and caring and similar to women's values on the other." Uncertainty Avoidance Index (AUI) "deals with a society's tolerance for uncertainty and ambiguity; it indicates to what extent a culture programs its members to feel either uncomfortable or comfortable in unstructured situations." Long Term Orientation (LTO) versus short term orientation. "It can be said to deal with Virtue regardless of Truth. Values associated with Long Term Orientation are thrift and perseverance; values associated with Short Term Orientation are respect for tradition, fulfilling social obligations, and protecting one's 'face'."

Not surprisingly Japan and Iran scored very low on Individualism, which means that they have a very collective culture, what is good for the group is good for them. To equate this to marketing, it means that products must be marketed in a way makes the product seen to be purchased by a large number of people. If many people in this society have the product, then it must be good. Japan also scored much higher on Long Term Orientation than Poland and the UK, which means that it merits virtue and perseverance. This Japanese Nike Advert is focused on team not individual sport. At the end it says, "How far will you go?". This plays to the Japanese collectivist attitude that you should always try your best for the greater good of your society, or here "team". Norway scored much lower on the Masculinity scale than South Africa, which indicates that it has a more modest, caring society, whereas South Africa is a more competitive, aggressive culture, as can be seen in this forceful South African Nike advert. These are also attitudes that can be marketed to. A product being marketed in Norway might want to be seen as a helpful product, one that will improve quality of life, however the same product being marketed in South Africa might strive to be seen as one that would improve your quality of life over your neighbour.

Rachel Lawes' article Consumer Behaviour: Look to the Future explains how individualism relates to the marketing world a bit more. She writes "with Western consumers generally determined individualists, each believing themselves to be the master of their own destiny. This makes them sceptical of "official" messages, including most forms of advertising". Saikat Banjeree, writing for Cross-Cultural Management, explains that the reason that culture is so important in marketing is that consumer behaviour is based on two things: inner-self and outer stimuli. Culture is the main player in the outer stimuli sector. He also states, re-iterating this importance, "relationship between culture and values manifesting themselves through consumption of products is well-documented, with material goods being important to individuals due to their ability to carry and communicate cultural meaning".

It is patent that these differences are paramount for business across cultures, whether it is for opening an office in a new culture, marketing in a different country or entertaining clients from other societies. One of the premier companies in advertising the fact that they understand this is HSBC. They have many adverts discerning the differences between different cultures and how this can affect you business.

How do YOU Dress your Windows?

Sociologists define class as the grouping of people by occupation, representing

different levels of power, influence and money.

In traditional British society there are three classes, with little social mobility. Most cultures throughout history have had some kind of class system, usually with slaves. But this sort of society is steadily changing. In previous generations education was seen as a privilege, and was only open to the privileged. Having a degree was a sign of wealth, education and influence. Now education is seen as a necessity not a luxury, open to everyone. If knowledge is power then anyone can have access to knowledge and therefore power, which would in the past have meant a higher social class. We find ourselves in a society where those that "have" want to keep, and those that "have not" want to get- and both are at rights to try.

Despite this an article in the Guardian states that, "The poorest children still have little chance of becoming lawyers, doctors, senior civil servants and financiers". It sites the reason for this is children from the poorest families often end up in the poorest school, therefore obtaining weaker grades. The article reveals some shocking facts, such as, "More than half (55%) of secondary schools in the most deprived parts of England did not achieve the benchmark of 30% of children getting five good GCSEs".

Marketers "Social class segmentation works on the assumption that the higher your profession the more you will earn. Thus the more affluent lifestyle you will lead". Britain has a letter system that is used to work out class based, traditionally, on occupation, as follows:

A Professional staff
B Middle management
C1 Junior management
C2 Skilled manual
D Semi-skilled and unskilled workers.
E Those dependent on the state.

Using the class system as a segmentation of the market may seem out-dated and fairly useless in many respects, but it can be useful when marketing products and services that covey status connotations. James Edwin Harris explains that "consumers use social status to learn about and evaluate value-expressive products". Harris believes that social class and income are independant of each other. He also articulates that people are most likely to see themselves as "middle-class" regardless of determining factors. Harris explains that "this self-concept went directly against the revelation that people who were traditionally [akin in] class kept the same attitudes and preferences". Terrell Williams, writing in The Journal of Consumer Marketing, states that segmentation by class should, "be seen as just one source of social division not as the primary divider". He goes on to assert that the result of large middle class, as can be seen in the diagram below, is that "for many marketers social class divisions fail to make sufficient distinctions between this dominant middle class".

The diagram above shows the change in the ratio of the different classes from the turn of the century to today. Here you can see the pyramid shape that prevailed for centuries in Britain, which had many having little and a few holding most of the wealth. An interesting video, Understanding Class, from Eltechno states that there were those who ruled and those who were ruled. There were those who did the work, and those who prospered from the work done. Currently there is still a small Upper Class but the majority has risen to Lower Middle and Working Class. This has been know to many as the rise of the Middle Class. The video explains that it is since the industrial revolution and the emergence of the service industry that has created the shift in the class system.

The Grumpy Guide to Class, part 1, part 2 and part 3, a rather tongue in cheek look at classes today, hits the nail on the head with how to define class in modern day Britain. It says that it's all about where you live and what you put in your house. It goes on to suggest that one of the defining features of class is how you dress your windows. Do you use venetian blinds or lace curtains? It sounds extraneous, but they have a point. It's about what class you strive to be in. And this is done through obvious purchases. These sets of rules have come about so that people can instantly tell what class you are, or what class you wish to be perceived. It's why brands now put the label on the outside of clothing. It's why people drive an certain type of car. These are publicly perceived purchases. It's all about judgement. And marketers play on these insecurities people have that they might be seen as middle class, when really they are upper middle class, or they want people to think they are upper middle class. One of the pivotal points that the grumpies made was that class is no longer where you were born, what your father did you where you went to school, but it's what you wear, what car you drive. Things that people can instantly see and instantly judge.

Hanah Montana Syndrome

Business Week defines a becoming a tween as "when he/she rejects more childlike images and associations and aspires to be more like a teen". BW believes that the main purchasing power of tweens is the dependant of the finance of the parents and other family adults through allowance and gifts, and not dependant on their own financial resources such as after school work. It also states that tweens are the main decision driver in many of the family decisions. A whole new way of marketing to tweens has evolved through the combination of play with purchase, such as the Build-A-Bear workshops and online stores such as fashionology.com, as can be seen in this video. Most of the tween marketing, currently, is focused on girls, but, BW says, marketers focus is turning to the boys.

As could be expected the mobile phone industry is also turning it's attention to tweens, with giants such as Disney and Nickelodeon making the mobile phone and accessory market as full and varied for tweens as it is for adults. Not only this but a range of new networks are poping up in the US to offer starter packs focused on helping tweens stay in contact with their parents, often with features such as GPS to help parent "track" the child.

Marketing Junk Food to Kids states that there are three main reasons companies want to market to children. Firstly, brand loyalty. It is as Hitler said, above. If a child drinks Coca-Cola at five, she will probably drink Coca-Cola over other brands for the rest of her life. The second reason is pester power, that I have explained in the previous blog. The third reason, and here is is talking only of the junk food market, is that the marketers want children to think that they can only eat "kid's food". Things that come in funny shapes and colours, with cartoon characters on the box.

This last point can, however, be transferred into other markets, that children think they should have their own products, that differ significantly, if only in looks, from those their parents use. For example, Disney have bought out a series of Disney Princess TVs, DVD players, CD players etc.

You can get children's bed that look like race cars, IKEA has a whole section of it's merchandise solely aimed at children, so there's no way that parents will get away with buying them a boring old adults desk/chair/bed/wardrobe. And these aren't just things that are smaller, in a child's size, they have a completely different look, style. Children are alot more fickle with what they like, and will therefor quickly grow out of the child-friendly products, wanting the next latest fashion.

One advert that is aimed at adults, but is extremely child-friendly, is the BUPA Health Insurance adverts. It uses bold colours and simple shapes that would appeal to a child, and make it stand out in his/her mind. This is a tactic being more frequently usd by marketers as the Insurance company is more likely stick in the mind of a generation of children, and when they come to want medical insurance they will be more favourable to Bupa, and they probably won't even know why. Bupa will have become part of thier evoked set from such an early age that these children won't even know it's there. It also employs a sing-song tone of voice and a story-like script with a happily-ever-after ending.

Although ASA has just extended it's code of conduct to include online marketing there is one problem. According to The Guardian this code only includes "paid for banner and pop-up ads and sales promotions" yet this leaves the rest of the website to be used as one big advert. Just one of the many websites the article site is the Cheestring website. It is an easy to use, "play" style website, with games and quizzes. One of the quizzes asks: "To keep teeth healthy, what is the best food to eat at the end of the meal? An apple or a Cheestring?" (The answer is Cheestring.) And apparently these websites really do work. The article states that;

"A recent study carried out by Intuitive Media for New Media Age magazine interviewed more than 2,800 primary school children and found that 43% of them said they would buy or eat more of a food brand because they have seen it online or played a game about it. What is more, over 20% of them go online to find out about their favourite foods and snacks."

So with branding and advertising seeping into the heart of child's play on the Internet, know as embedded brand opportunities, many adverts are going unnoticed. Agnes Niarn, on The Dangers of Internet Marketing, is concerned that the laws that apply in "the real world" aren't being enforced online. This includes things like product placement and advertising alcohol, advertising tobacco and advertising to children. This is all compounded with the problem that arises with every topic concerning children and the Internet; it is much harder for parents to monitor what their children see on the Internet.

An article entitled "Should We Ban Marketing to Children?" takes a brief look at just how detrimental to children such omnipresent marketing can be, suggesting that such a high level of advertising creates a materialistic cycle that is getting out of control. Children are growing up as walking, talking, living advertisements that believe that the brand is the value. As they become more materialistically focused they become desensitised to the things that really matter in life, and come to believe that the only way to happiness is having the right "things". This creates an even bigger "need" to buy these things, and that this high level of exposure to the consumer culture at an early age is associated with increased chances of becoming obese, anorexic, bulimic, acting in violent or aggressive ways, using alcohol or tobacco and being sexually promiscuous.

Entertainment not Information

It is now generally excepted that generational marketing is a more effective segmentation than the more traditional age segmentation. Generation is not purely about age, and there are many discrepancies over which age fits what generation. It is about experiences. What has happened in your lifetime to that has created the unique way you view the world? And which of these do you have in common with a lot of people? It is a practice based on the values and attitudes of the market.

Up until the late 80s many marketers believed that advertising to adults, usually the 30+ segment, was the most effective way. But then they realised that exploiting teenage angst worked much better. All they had to work out was, What is Cool? Today a highly marketed to generation is Generation Y. Those born in the beginning of the 80s. Those who were too young to remember Communism in Europe. Those too young to understand the early 90s recession. They saw Diana die. They haven't quite grown up with the Internet, but have seen it's revolution. They were there to see the first iPod released and they stood in silence as they watched the fall of the Twin Towers live in their living rooms. They have read countless reports of tragedy and first hand accounts of those involved. Instant access. Instant information. But this is not enough.

Information is free and readily available at the touch of a button. Entertainment has value. Round the clock news means that nothing is new. By the time a story reaches the evening news it is old news because it has been told every hour on round the clock news channels. By the time news reaches these dedicated news channels it is still already old because first hand reports, blow by blow details have been circulating in the web, on Twitter, on mobiles before it even reaches the news room. This is the world of Generation Y.

Ed Walker writes, in The Value of Generational Marketing, that generational marketing requires a "comprehensive understanding of values and attitudes, which tend to be the drive behaviours". Kevin Higgins write, in Generational Marketing, that "generation-shaping social and economic events influence how each group reacts, and astute marketers must be cognizant of how their target generations view the world and shape their marketing message accordingly".

J. Walker Smith write, in a different article named Generational Marketing, that by "knowing how the motivations of customers are tied to the underlying values of the generation to which they belong, a business can tailor products, services, and communications to their needs, interests, and desires."

The message? That it is no longer enough to know what your customer does, where they eat, how they travel, how old they are, what beer they drink, what music they listen to. These facts are arbitrary. Now you need to know what they believe in, how they feel about different issues, what are their attitudes on political, social and environmental issues, have they been affected by poverty, terrorism, wealth. Theses are the facts that marketers need to know about their consumers.

Another rising group that marketers are keen to maximize are the silver surfers. Oxford University Press has the following to say about them:

People are now living far longer than they did in the past and older people form an increasingly large percentage of the population. As a section of society, they are relatively rich as they no longer have young children to provide for and, in many cases, have already managed to pay back the loan on their house. Not surprisingly, many companies are competing to attract this group, which is sometimes referred to as the grey/gray or silver market:

The potential of the silver market in Japan is not only based on the number of elderly people, but also on their spending power. For the first time in history, our grey market is increasing and our youth market is declining.

Grey/gray is also sometimes used as an adjective relating to this part of the population: US advertisers are competing for thegray dollar (= the money that older people can spend on goods). An increase in life span causes an increase in grey power (= the economic and political power of older people) Grey consumers are becoming key markets for an increasing number of companies.

Roughly speaking marketers have four generation segments, which, ironically, they base on age (or at least when the consumer was born). They are as follows:

• 
  
  Mature Citizens- born pre 1945


• 
  
  Baby Boomers- 1946-1964


• 
  
  Generation X- 1965-1980


• 
  
  GenY- post 1980

These figures vary from definition to definition.

Below is a presentation done in class on generational marketing based on Generation Y with the links activated at the end:

Timeline Link and some other thoughts on GenY.

Brands Link.

I'm A Latch Key Kid!

Up until recently the family that I live in may have been chastised for being a "broken home", but that is not how it is being seen now that it has become

 more of a norm than an anomaly. Now I'm just a "latch key kid" in a "nuclear family". It is obvious that the stage of life a family is in will affect the products that family buys, and who participates in the decision and to what extent. This is based, loosely on the Family Life Cycle. This is quite a basic model, and things are getting increasing complicated. No longer are the majority following the traditional family life cycle, as shown below:

But there are many differences between the family life of 20, 30, 40 years ago and the families of today. As with every generation parents are trying to raise thier children in the way that they wanted to be raised. One of these differences is what some people are calling "helicopter parents". Essentially these parents are babyboomers trying to do the best for their kids in a way that some experts feel is detrimental to the child. They want to wrap them up in cotton wool and sweep all of the obtacles out of the way for their child. Some people feel that the mobile phone is to blame, calling it "the worlds longest umbilical cord".

Here are some demographic statistics given by my lecturer, Ruth:

◊ Average household size is 2.4 people in 2001

◊ Dramatic increase in one person households 12% in 1961, 26% in 1990, 6.8 million in 2001 – 28%

◊ More than 50% of women over the age of 65 years live on their own

◊ Life expectancy for women is 78.8 years for men is 73.2 years

◊ Divorces have increased to 1 in 3

◊ 7% of households in 2001 – single parents

All these shifts in the way families are constructed and perceived are having a massive impact on the way inwhich families make decisions. One of the biggest changes in the way inwhich familes now make decisions and how they used to make decisions is the involvement of children. And one of the most common forms of this involvement has coined the phrase "pester power". It is hardly possible to walk down a high street or shop in a supermarket without hearing the voice of an angry parent being nagged by their child. According to Dave Lawrence, in an article for Marketing Weekly, states that "parents want their children to be a part of everyday decision-making, for instance, choosing holiday destinations based on their children's wishes". 

This may be a because the parents wanted to be part of such decision is thier childhood, but were not allowed, and now that they have thier own family, probably with a higher income from having both parents at work, are able to give more to their children. Another factor that affects higher involvement of children is that, in many cases relating to technology, the children know more about the product being bought than the parents. And the phenomenon of High School Musical, seemingly aimed at 14-16, being a huge hit with the under 10s audience has created quite a stir. My 7 year old cousin has a High School Musical sleeping bag, karoeke machine, bed spread, posters, pencils, backback and I'm sure the list extends to many more products which she didn't have time to show me. My 5 year old step sister has the High School Musical game on her Nintendo DS.

This diagram, by Taylor, Nelson, Sofres, shows the % of the decision made by various members of the family.

But this information is a few years old now. This is a fast growing trend, especially among the tweens. The diagram below is from a 2003 survey of 8-12 year olds and how much influence they feel they have in family decision making. 

In the 1950s video at the top of the page the little boy has no say in whether he gets to watch the movie, nor does he argue the right to watch the movie. In Charlie in the Chocolate Factory Veruca Salt was made to be quite the except, as rich and spoilt, but it seems that children much younger are doing the same "I Want It Now" routine, and getting it Now.

What Does YOUR Car Say About You?

I have started off with this video as I feel that it provides a good, basic explanation of why people conform to group opinion, they do not want to "rock the boat", or they simply feel that if everyone else is says something then it must be true. The need to "belong" is half way up Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, under social needs. After a person's basic physiological and safety needs, such as water, food and shelter, have been satisfied psychological needs are to be fulfilled; emotional needs such as warming loving relationships and a supportive communicative community. Maslow explains that humans need to feel acceptance from the "group" which is often found in family, a tight social group, sports teams and other groups, but can lead to the formation of gangs.

Most people belong to many different groups consciously, sub-consciously and sometimes unintentionally. Below is a diagram of some of the different groups I belong to and how they affect me.

All theses different groups pose various amounts of influence on different parts of my life. For example my reference group affects the products that I buy. Now that I am at university I have to do my own grocery shopping, and when buying habitual products, such as bread, milk, sugar I have found myself just picking up whatever brand I'm used to having at home, that my Mum would have bought. My peers often affect both the products and brands I buy. Teenage needing to belong is summed up well by bloggist Black Champagne

teenagers are very insecure in their own look and status and they need to latch onto trends to give themselves security and an identity.

It's a way of using others as a benchmark to your own behaviour and purchases. Festinger (1954) came up with the Social Comparison Theory which states

individuals want an accurate assessment of their opinions and performance, and that in the absence of objective standards, they look to others (preferably those who are similar in a relevant dimension) for information about their relative standing.

Gauging one's own behaviour by that of those around you is something that everybody does. Buying outward status symbols such as the most fashionable brands and the latest car are easy, obvious ways of portraying social standing as class. And can easily be bought. They are also a barrier that people, at first, don't need to get through. You are being constantly assessed by those around you. So is it that fashion is an outward depiction of your personality and creativity, or do you create a persona through how you outwardly depict yourself?

Festinger, L., A Theory of Social Comparison Processes. Human Relations, 1954

His first hypothesis is that in humans there exists a drive to evaluate his opinions and abilities by comparison with the opinions and abilities of others. Both opinions and abilities have a strong impact on his behavior. People want to know how their abilities stack up against others. Some abilities have clear criteria (e.g., running times), others are actually an opinion themselves (when there are non-social means of comparison available). People also don't tend to evaluate themselves against others that are too different than themselves. In fact, given a range of people they will choose people most like themselves for comparison. Also, a discrepancy in a group with respect to opinions or abilities will lead to action by members to reduce that discrepancy.

One website, Social Conformity and Violence, states that "Conformity can be defined as a change in a person's behavior or opinions as a result of real or imagined pressure form a person or a group of people". It goes on to say that a key part of group conformity is compliance, the "behaviour of a person motivated by desire to gain reward or avoid punishment".

A private necessity might be a washing machine, and a public luxury could be a luxury car. The most common type of public luxury is the car. It has been stereotyped and personalities have been judged on them for years. An article in the Telegraph says "sociological research has revealed that the population at large does draw conclusions about the personality of car owners from their vehicles. The longer the bonnet of a car, the more arrogant and macho the driver is judged to be. The larger the boot, the less youthful the owner". And the car industry feeds off this seemingly innate judgement. One of the most common theories for this phenomena is that it is an easy way of comparing your success against those around you. If you park your car in the company car park you can immediately gauge your car against that of almost everyone else in that company. If you park your car on your street you can see straight away how it sizes up to your neighbours. But if you really want to know what your car says about you, read Forbes' analysis.