Final: Who Uses Personal Care Products?

MKT 305: Consumer Behavior

Message Appeal

When advertising and marketing a product, it is vital that you understand your targeted audience and what motivates them. Message appeals are common psychological strategies advertisers used to reach their targeted audience in efforts to persuade them. The type of message appeal to advertising the care products would be fear.

Fear appeals to people when a product or service is needed to help reduce risks in someone’s life, such as the risk of poor health issues, the security of losing a home, financial failure, and even political choices. Advertisers use fear to promote immediate behavior change, such as better eating and hygiene habits and not smoking. This appeal is also used to isolate individuals in a certain group or groups. This may be an influence on the consumer to purchase skincare products to avoid being isolated from the group as a result of the negative reasons such as bad odor and poor hygiene.

Cultural Appeal

To develop a successful marketing strategy, cultural influences of the society where a new product is being introduced must be considered. The three cultural differences that would be best to analyze for this product would be beliefs, rituals, and values.

Beliefs: Belief plays a vital role for consumers because it can either promote a positive or negative view of a product. A consumer for personal care products may believe the skincare products being offered will protect their skin and be cost-effective. These beliefs are faith-driven, and knowledge of the personal care products being offered by the company. Consumers often tend to adopt convictions about the traits of the product, and this creates an idea of the brand image. The image of the brand is what shapes customer’s habits and opinions towards the products.

Rituals: Rituals are considered commonly repeated practices or routines. The concept of consumer rituals is often used as a way for the advertising industry to get the attention of the consumer. Customs assumes an essential part of people’s life occasion. For example, weddings and graduations are directed in various societies. Personal care products can be appealing to the consumer on such occasions to modify beauty for such events.

Values: Societal values depict which mode of conduct, products to consume, activities, etc. are satisfactory and unsatisfactory. A few nations, for example, the United States, are more individualistic, with natives settling on obtaining choices because of individual inclinations. In different countries, for example, Japan, individuals tend to settle on purchasing options considering the welfare of a gathering, for instance, the family. The way this plays out in promoting procedures is that advertisements centered on people improve the situation in individualistic nations while gather publicizing works better in countries with aggregate gathering esteems.

Micro Cultures

A micro-culture that should be targeted by the company is a lifestyle. Lifestyle is considered one’s method of living. A company can use lifestyle to target the consumer’s market. Psychographics is the study and classification of people according to their attitudes, aspirations, and other psychological criteria, especially in market research. It looks into the consumer’s life and classifies them. Not at all, like identity qualities, which are difficult to depict and measure, lifestyle attributes are valuable in sectioning and focusing on buyers. Lifestyle and psychographic examination unequivocally address the way customers ostensibly express their internal identities in their social and social conditions.

Additional Demographics

Ethnicity: Race and ethnicity are demographic factors that play a crucial role in marketing strategy. Ethnicity should be targeted because the personal care products are more than likely going to target an individual ethnic group based on the cultural preference for personal care. In this case, the company will need to target a diverse group of consumers and not a specific group.

Education and Occupation: Companies should target consumers with high levels and good academic and professional backgrounds because they are in the position to be able to afford higher price point company products.

Group Influence

There are three different reference group influences, which are Informational influence, Utilitarian influence, and Value expressive influence.

Informational Influence: Informational influence is when a consumer obtains knowledge about various brands from a specialist or experts who are knowledgeable individuals who have factual data from skilled individuals who work close to the product. Customers will get the brand-related data by contrasting and distinguishing brands. These all will get from the companions, relatives, or from a man who has reliable information about the brands. The company can utilize influence groups by educating its customers on the importance of consuming the product. This is by illustrating the benefits associated with the product.

Utilitarian Influence: Utilitarian influence is the customer’s consumption of a specific brand that is affected influenced by their inclinations and preferences. The person’s choice to buy the result of brands will impact the dispositions of other individuals (who have a social connection with the purchaser), and it’s likewise affected by the inclinations of his or her relative. To utilize this, the company has to undertake the market evaluation and analysis to determine the customer’s specific tastes and preferences so that they produce products that conform to their preferences, hence enhancing satisfaction.

Value Expressive Influence: Value expressive influence is when a person feels like individuals who buy or utilize exceptional brands are regarded or respected by other individuals, and a customer will think while buying how he might want to show up in the general public. The company utilizes this reference influence by producing differentiated quality products that are unique with those of its competitors to attract many consumers.

Help develop a plan to address need recognition, search behavior, and getting the product into the consumers’ consideration set.

Needed recognition: Needed recognition is the first step in consumer’s buying behavior and is also called problem identification. This often occurs when the consumer discovers the unmet need that they want to fulfill.

Search Behavior: The ability for consumers to quickly find high-quality sites positively influences their shopping behavior.

Executive Summary

This will detail the development of a plan to address the need recognition, search behavior, and getting the product into the consumers’ consideration set.

Company Description

The company description is a summary plan. This provides a summary of how the company was founded, its core founders, and the products offered by the company. This will address the need recognition since consumers will be able to have an understanding of what products ate produces by the company and decide if they satisfy their needs.

Target Audience

Here, the marketer tries to identify its target market where its consumers will consume the products or services produced by the company. The target market will be based on demographics such as age, gender, etc. and geographical locations. The main reason why the company should establish its target market or audience is to learn their behaviors so that they may produce products that meet their demands and satisfaction.

Strategies

The significant strategies in this section will be aimed at getting the product into the customer’s consideration set. One of the approaches may be product strategy, where the company may produce differentiated products that are unique in the market and can be easily identifiable by their brands in the market. This will help in creating customer loyalty on the company’s products. Another strategy is the distribution strategy, which helps in identifying the best distribution channels aimed at delivering the product to the market efficiently to enhance its constant availability. Pricing strategy, on the other hand, will enable the company to produce its quality products at lower costs to maximize profits in the long run. The firm will practice value pricing so that the customers will be comfortable with all prices for the products hence attracting many customers and gaining significant market share.

References

Burns, D. J., Fawcett, J. K., & Lanasa, J. (1994). Business Students’ Ethical Perceptions of Retail Situations: A Microcultural Comparison.

Majid, E., & Farshad, A. (2016). Investigating the impact of viral message appeal and message credibility on consumer attitude toward brand.