Consumer Behavior

Introduction to Consumer Behavior – Environmental Factors

Welcome back, in the last session we had discussed about the definition of marketing, the concept of value,
segmentation, targeting and positioning and the marketing mix elements. The reason why we discussed all of
this was discussed towards the end of the last session where we discussed about how all of these elements are
relevant in the digital marketing space. Now, but at the center of the entire marketing activity that you do is the
customer or the consumer and it is important for us to understand how and what are the different elements that
make the consumer so unique. That is where we discuss about consumer behavior.

When we draw from a lot of psychology, lot of understanding that we have about how consumers behave. There
are different things that essentially are influencing the consumer and basically influencing the decision that the
consumer makes. And as marketers, the role that we have to follow is to ensure that all of these different
influences are somewhere interpreted and somewhere influenced in such a way that the consumer is now
interested in purchasing or procuring our products and services, rather than those of the competition.

So we'll start of from understanding what are the different factors that influence the consumer? The first and
most important elements that influence the consumer are environmental conditions. Say, for example, there is a
certain political environment in the country, there's a certain technological environment in this society, there is a
certain societal norms and cultural norms that exist, all of which influence a consumer in certain ways. Culture
is one of the major influences of how consumers behave. When I say culture, these are a set of societal norms
which are generally acceptable for a vast number of people out there. Say for example, if you take the Indian
culture, there are different food habits, there are different dressing styles, there are different consumption
patterns that you see, there are different festivals that you observe and there are different consumption patterns
in different festivals.

All of these are influenced by culture, a culture that most of the people in the country share. There are also some
subcultures that have a little deviation from the general culture that you see always. There are different social
classes. Say for example, you have a middle class, an upper class and a lower class. Each of these customers
who identify themselves with one of these social classes will have a certain way of consuming. If you carry a
product that is meant for the upper class, it associates yourself with that class of people or with that creed of
people or with the people who are generally able to procure and use such products. So all the environmental
factors and all the cultural factors are big influences in how consumers behave in the marketplace.

The second important factor is societal factors. In societal factors, one of the most important things to
understand is the role of reference groups. Now, there are a lot of groups that basically are reference groups,
when consumers make purchase decisions. Many of you are students. You would have a group of friends who
influence all the purchase decisions that you make, your mobile phone choices, your social media consumption
choices, your t-shirt and apparel choices, all of which are influenced by a set of friends that you have. Because
now you want to associate yourself as being part of this group, you will consume things which are also
consumed by these people. So that is what we generally call as a reference group. And the reference group is
very important because the reference group often is the direction in which you consume.

There are also aspirational groups. Many times you know that your immediate friend group or your immediate
family doesn't necessarily have a certain consumption pattern, but you might find that the Indian cricket team is
endorsing a certain product, a product that you want to consume because you aspire in with the kind of people
who are consuming these products. You look into Bollywood actors and actresses and they endorse a certain set
of products and because you aspire to be part of that group, you will consume these products. So aspirational
groups, as opposed to reference groups are also important influences in consumer decision making.

There are also people out there who are experts in certain areas. Say for example, in your friend group, there
might be a person who has the expertise and who has a greater understanding about digital cameras as compared
to all the other friends that you have. So, this person becomes somebody who we call in marketing literature as
an opinion leader. Every time you have a certain doubt, or every time you have a certain requirement of
consumption of a certain product category, you will reach out to this person. You'll ask this person as to what
are the products out there and what are the parameters based on which you should make your consumption
decision.

So, opinion leaders, reference groups, and aspirational groups all of them influence consumer decisions and
consumer buying patterns in the market place. There are of course, a lot of other personal factors like the age of
the consumer, the income of the consumer, the place that the consumer lives in, the life-cycle stage of the
consumer. All of these patterns and all of these features also influence a consumer's decision making in the
marketplace.

Now that we have understood what are the key factors that influence the consumer, which being the societal
factors, the cultural factors, your family, your friends, etc. and a lot of personal factors, we need to now look
into details of how the consumer thinks and how the consumer make certain decisions that he or she makes.
Decision Making Process – 5 stage process

We'll talk about two different models that help us understand how the customer goes through in making a
purchase decision. Now you might feel that it's a very simple thing.

Every time that the customer has to buy a mobile phone or every time the customer has to buy a television or
sometimes that they have to buy an air conditioner, it is a very easy thing for consumers to make their choice
and it is something that automatically happens in the consumer's mind. But no, in psychology, in marketing and
in consumer behavior, we try to break this process down into different stages.

Now we'll talk about a five stage process that consumers generally use to make a purchase decision. Now these
five stages that you can see are need recognition, search for information, evaluation of alternatives, product
purchase and post purchase behavior.

Now I'll come into each of them in detail and we'll discuss how the customer moves from one stage to the other
and how he comes to the purchase decision and why is it so relevant to us. Because we try to make sure that the
customer can seamlessly move from one stage to the other and at the end of the day, the customer can come and
procure our products.

Now, the first and most important stage here is need recognition or identification of a certain need. Now, in the
last session we had discussed that a need is basically a basic human requirement that the customer has. Say for
example, hunger, thirst, air etc. are basic needs. Now the customer needs to understand that there is certain need
that exists. In many cases the customers feel and understand these needs on their own. Say for example, you
have your mobile phone, your mobile phone breaks one fine day. You have a need for a new mobile phone
because you want to communicate with others. You have an understanding that your mobile phone doesn't work
as well as it was expected to work because it has become very old, so now you have a need for replacing this
and getting a new mobile phone. So in many cases the customer will identify the need in himself or herself.

In many other cases, the customer doesn't necessarily know the need, so hence there are ways in which we
provide stimuli and we help the customer understand these needs. Now, once a customer has understood that
there is a specific need, the next thing the customer does is to search for information, search for ways in which
he can fulfill that need, and this thirst for information is one of the critical ways wherein we try to make
ourselves relevant to the customer. The search for information in most cases starts from your immediate
reference group like we discussed earlier. You will go about ask your friends. You'll see what kind of products
you're friends are consuming. You will see a lot of advertisements out there and in today's day because
information is so easily accessible, almost two third of consumers who are making a purchase decision start
from the internet.
They go to a search engine like google or yahoo or bing or any of these places. They start searching for
information there. You see which products exists. You see which companies are offering these products. You
see what are the prices of these products? What are the different features that are available? You have options to
compare all of these products. That is where we talk about the second stage, which is search for information.

Once the customer has searched for a lot of information, the third stage basically is to evaluate the available
alternatives. Say consider the example that the customer is now buying a mobile phone or let's take the example
of any of you is buying a mobile phone, a very easy decision. Now, the answer to this question in many cases is
no, because the number of options that you have, the number of brands that are available, the closeness of all of
these brands, all the brands look the same. The specifications are the same. It is very difficult for you to identify
which of these brands to buy, so it becomes very difficult for customers to now evaluate the available
alternatives. Many times the customer looks for key features in each of these products. The customer looks for
features which are relevant to the customer. Some customers might find that the battery life of the product is the
most important feature for me, so I will go for the product that has the highest battery life. Some other
customers feel that the style of the product is more important to me, so I'll go for the product that has the best
style. Some other customers think that I'm a brand conscious person, so I should buy a product that is the best
known brand, so customers will go for the product that is the best known brand. So irrespective of whichever
customer you are, the customer identifies a set of parameters or set of attributes in the in the product and based
on these attributes, the customer starts evaluating all of these different products.

So you started with identification of need, you went into searching for information, you went into evaluation of
all the alternatives that are available. Once you have evaluated all the alternatives, think back at the case of you
buying a mobile phone. It's not a very easy decision to make, but once you have arrived at a product to buy; this
particular brand, this particular model, this particular price point that I have to buy, now you get into the fourth
stage which is the actual purchase decision or actual purchasing of the product. There are different options that
you have. You can think about buying the product from the online space. You can go to one of the e-commerce
portals and buy the product there. You can think about buying the product from the offline space wherein you
can go to the electronic store nearby to your house and buy the product from there.

There are different reasons why you choose one over the other. We know that in general if you consider online
versus offline shopping scenarios, online shopping scenarios, you'll have products which are a little cheaper.
There are different reasons why online companies are able to provide new products at a cheaper rate, we will
come to come to all of these things in detail when we come to these sessions, but you'll find that there are price
advantages you have when you buy it from the online space, but it takes time for the product to be delivered to
you. If you are looking for a product immediately, you want the possession of the product immediately, then
you cannot wait for the product to be delivered to your house probably three days, four days or a week later, so
hence you might go to a retail store nearby and buy the product from the retail store nearby where in you'll be
able to get the product immediately, but it will of course be at a higher price.

Now, that is a trade off that the customers generally mix. So purchasing is the fourth stage of the purchase
process or the decision making journey of the customer, and the next important element here is about the post
purchase behavior. After you have purchased the product, there are certain behaviors that the customer, a
customer generally shows. One of them is the evaluation of whether the product was worthy or not. You would
have, all heard about this concept of satisfaction. Now satisfaction essentially is the difference between how the
product or service performed versus how you expected it to perform. Say for example, you identified that you
wanted a new product, searched for all the information that was available and evaluated different mobile phone
options out there. The most important parameter for you was battery life. You expected that brand A is going to
give you a battery life of three days.

You buy this product, bring it back home. Remember, your expectation was that the battery life is going to be
three days. Once you have come home, you start using this product and in eight hours the battery has gone dead.
You started off with a full charge, but the battery died in eight hours. Now the performance of the product was
eight hours, whereas your expectation was three days. Now the performance was not able to meet your
expectations, the outcome is going to be dissatisfaction. When the performance of the product is exceeding the
expectations, say for example, you expected the product to be a working for three days, but the product actually
work for a whole week. Now performance is actually exceeding the expectations and that is where we say that
the customer is extremely satisfied.

Now what happens when you're satisfied, you generally have a good feeling about the product. You have a
reason why you will go about talking good about the product. You will also write a lot of good reviews on
ecommerce platforms, on social media. If you are unhappy about the product, you will do all the things on the
contrary. You will go about talking bad things about the product. You will tell your friends and family members
never to buy the product. So how the customer behaves towards the end of the purchase process and after the
purchase of the product is extremely important because many times, this is where genuine feedback is collected
from the customer. Whether the customer liked the product? If the customer liked the product, then he is going
to share a lot of positive word of mouth. If the customer didn't like the product, there is going to be a lot of
negative word of mouth that will happen. If the customer extremely like the product, there is going to be a
concept where the customer will come back and buy the same product. This is what we call loyalty. If the
customer doesn't like your brand, then the customer is never going to come back and buy the product from you.
So this is where we say that you have lost a customer.
So these are the five stages. And each of these five stages are critical because every customer, or let's say in
most cases, the customer goes through all of these stages one after the other. These stages, once again are need
recognition, information search, evaluation of alternatives, purchase and post purchase decision making.

Decision Making Process – AIDAA

Another model that helps us understand the journey the customer takes, a similar to the one that we discussed
recently, is something that we call the AIDA model. Now, the AIDA model is also a five stage model which
starts off with awareness, interest, desire, action, and advocacy. Each of these stages is similar to what we
discussed earlier.

Now, what do I mean by awareness? This is where the customer is aware of the certain products that are out
there. For example, when we talk about how the customer buys a certain product, today if you're thinking about
buying a certain mobile phone, you need to be aware of the different brands that are out there. You need to be
aware of different products that are out there, so that is where the first stage of awareness talks about.

So the first and most important activity that marketers need to do is to make sure that you are somebody who
the customer is aware of, the customer knows that your brand exists. Say for example, when we talk about
different products out there, if you take the entire number of products that are available in the mobile phone
category and put everything down into one bucket, all the brands of products, all the brands of mobile phone
manufacturers and put them into one bucket, you can call them the total set, the total set of every brand or every
offering that is available in this particular category. Now, from the total set, of course the customer is not going
to be aware of all brands that are out there, the customer might be aware of a few brands which are out there. So
from the total set, there are a smaller number or a limited number of brands that the customer is aware of.

Now, I might be aware of three brands, five brands, seven brands in a certain category. Think of all the brands
that you're aware of in the mobile phone category. Each customer has a certain number of brands that the
customer is aware of. This is what we call as the awareness set. Now, one of the most important activities that
marketers try to do or advertisers try to do is to make sure that your brand is in the awareness set of all the
customers in your target group. All customers, which are part of the target segment that we discussed in the
previous session, should be aware of your brand. So that is where awareness set comes into picture. Once the
customer is aware of a certain brand, once there is also a need for buying a new mobile phone, the customer
starts looking into the awareness sets and start considering not all, but a few of these brands that are out there.
Say for example, I as a customer am aware of 10 different brands of mobile phones, but I might not necessarily
be considering all these 10 brands when I'm making a purchase. For example, there might be brands which I
know, but these brands are not suitable for my requirement. So I might necessarily not think about these brands
when I'm thinking about purchase. So that is where you talk about a smaller set of brands out there, even
smaller than the awareness set, which generally we call the consideration set. Now the consideration set are all
the brands which the customer is evaluating. Remember the five stage model in the previous that we discussed
earlier in this session. So need recognition, search for information, evaluation of alternatives.

In evaluation of alternatives, the brands that we evaluate are the ones that are there in the consideration set.
Now, even from the consideration set, the customer now thinks about reducing the options and arriving at the
final choice. So that is where the customer thinks about the choice set. The choice set is generally a one or two
or at max three brands from which the customer is now thinking to purchase. So you start from the total set, you
went into the awareness set, you came into the consideration set, you went into the choice set, and from the
choice set the customer finally makes a purchase decision.

Now, what the AIDA model tells us is that how you can create yourself, how you can build yourself into this
model. Say for example the first of the stage is where you create awareness for your product. You might be
communicating that the offering that you have, has certain benefits. You might be talking about the points of
differentiation of this product. You might be talking about other advantages, the unique selling proposition of
this product.

By doing so, you are now telling the customer that, “Hey, look, see, I am having this offering for you and you
should be aware of this offering.” Once the customer is aware of this offering, the next stage in the model is
basically interest. Once a customer is available, once the customer is aware, the customer might start showing
interest in the product. Now, when the customer starts showing interest in the product, this is where the
customer seeks out a lot of information. This might be the case where the customer goes into a search engine
and starts looking for your product. This might be the case where the customer, talks about your product and
price to gather information. So once awareness and interest is done, third stage is where the customer has a lot
of information about your product to now start desiring to buy your product.

This is where the customer is actually given much more information, a lot of incentives, a lot of motivating
factors to now come and purchase your product. So that is a desire stage. Once attention, interest and desire are
created, the fourth stage is that the customer actually acts. Action is where the customer actually purchases the
product. So like we discussed in the earlier model, action is where the customer is buying your product and the
next stage is advocacy. Once a customer uses the product, like we discussed earlier, he can be satisfied, or he
can be dissatisfied. In each of these cases or either of these cases, the customer is now going to talk about your
product. He might talk good in case he liked the product, he might talk bad in case he didn't like the product. So
in either of these cases, the customer will now talk about your product. So that is the next stage.

So awareness, interest, desire, action, and advocacy are the five stages in the second consumer behavior model
that we discussed. So in some cases, both of these models are a lot similar to each other, but in the course of
these modules that we cover on digital marketing, we might come into either of these models. So it is important
for you to understand both these models and why these two models are important. Because it helps us map the
entire journey that the customer goes through in arriving at a product purchase decision and beyond the product
purchase decision, the customer might also engage in post purchase behavior.

Now that we have discussed both the five stage customer decision making process and the AIDA model. Next
we're going to discuss about a few other elements which are generally heard of, but we need to have a deeper
understanding of those as well.

Psychological Factors influencing customers

First of these elements is what we call as motivation. What is motivation? Motivation is when the customer has
a very strong drive to purchase a certain product and fulfill the need associated with it. Now, we discussed what
needs are. Needs are basic human necessities. Needs could be biogenic needs or psychogenic needs. Biogenic
needs are those that are required for your survival. Psychogenic needs are things that are required for you to feel
complete, feel happy. So there are different motives that drive customers to make purchase decisions in the
marketplace. Say, for example, the need for hunger. Once the need for hunger or need for food gets beyond a
certain point, you will be extremely motivated to purchase a food item or go to a restaurant or have a burger.
When you have an extreme need to associate with a certain reference group or with a certain aspirational group,
you will consume a product which associates with that aspirational group. So motivations are generally when
the need or the drive is so high that the customer has to act immediately.

The second important thing that you would have commonly heard is, perception. Now, perception is where the
customers collect a lot of information, organize this information and try to paint a picture of what the world is
according to them. Now, everybody has a certain perception of how the world is. Now even products and
services that we offer become part of this perception of the customer. Remember, when we discussed about
positioning, there are points of differentiation and points of parity where-in we're trying to create an image of
what our product or service is, in the customer's mind. We are essentially trying to create a perception in the
customer's mind. This perception is very important because many times it is this perception that drives the
customer to either choose your product or to choose the competitors product. Now, this perception is created by
the kind of information that you provide to customers, the kind of offerings that you provide to customers, the
kind of things the customer hears about your product or services from other people that they are associated with.

Now, not all information that you provide to the customer is always understood by the customer. The customer
has a very selective span of attention. The customer only pays attention to things that the customer is interested
in. Say for example, you might not always pay attention to an advertisement about, say for example, a
nutritional health drink. But if you are on a diet, you'll start paying attention to a healthy nutritional drink
advertisement. This is what we call selective attention. Now, selective attention is critical because you have to
understand that not everybody is going to be attentive about what you provide.

The next case is selective distortion. Not everything that you provide to the customer or not all information that
you provide to the customer is always accepted and memorized in a way that you provide to the customer. The
customer has a method by which the customer now starts distorting facts that you provide with only
understanding things in the way that the customer wants to understand. So in many cases you will have to be
very clear to the customer and tell the customer very clearly because otherwise the customer has a way of being
biased in certain directions whereby they might want to distort information that you provide.

The third element is that the fact that the customer doesn't always remember everything that you show the
customer, the customer has selective retention. The customer is only going to retain information that you
provide to the customer about things that the customer is so interested in. You might remember advertisements
which are extremely interesting, extremely new, extremely exciting, something that is novel, and something that
you've not seen. Other advertisements which are generic out there, advertisements which are very commonly
seen, you might not remember. Now, there are some elements of content that make it interesting enough to be
retained in your memory. So this is what we generally say selective retention. So, selective attention, selective
distortion, and selective retention, all three are extremely important in how the customer learns and how
customer retains things in their memory because every experience that the customer has in the market place
helps the customer learn a few things.

If you consume a product and the product ends up being not so great, you will realize and you will learn that
this product is not so great. That will stop you from considering this product in your subsequent purchase
additions. If you go to a certain place in the market and buy a product, the product ends up being counterfeit.
You realize that such marketplaces or such places in the market where you get products are not good, are risky
in certain ways, and all of this learning that you have is somewhere encoded into your memory. So every time
the customer now has to make a purchase decision, there is certain retrieval of this information from the
memory which helps the customer in making decisions. So motivations and perceptions are extremely critical,
and perceptions are what, as marketers we try to create in the marketplace.
Understanding Word of Mouth

Now, one another important thing that we need to understand in the digital space is the important of this concept
called word of mouth. You would have heard this concept very frequently. Word of mouth is all informal
customer to customer interaction that is not controlled by the marketer. Now the definition of word of mouth is
right here. You can see and read the definition for yourself, but it is very important for you to understand the
importance of word of mouth. Word of mouth is generally compared with advertising and other sources of
market are controlled ways of reaching out to customers. Word of mouth is essentially all informal
communication that you get to hear from your friends, from your family members, from other people who don't
have necessarily a reason to talk to you about a product in a good way or in a bad way. Word of mouth is all the
product reviews that you see on social media. It is all the product reviews that you see on e-commerce platforms
on amazon.com, on Flipkart, on Paytm, on any of these e-commerce platforms.

You will see that there are product reviews available. Now most of these product reviews out there, of course,
I'm not saying all product reviews, but most of these product reviews are uninfluenced organic inputs given by
customers who have either used the product or seen somebody else using the product. Now it is much more
relevant and much more credible than advertising that is out there because when generally a customer sees an
advertisement, the customer has a feeling that this advertisement is out there to influence me to go and purchase
the product that is being advertised. A word of mouth on the other hand doesn't necessarily have such a motive.
Word of mouth is generated by customers who have used a certain product and have found that product to be
useful and have told me that this product is extremely great and extremely useful, so I had attached greater
credibility to word of mouth.

I attach more importance to word of mouth as compared to the other forms of communication or information
available to me. I generally have a tendency to go to e-commerce platforms and look into word of mouth before
making a purchase decision. So all of this information that is out there in the digital space, specifically
information that is known as word of mouth, is extremely critical in how the customer goes about, making the
purchase decision. And this is one essential thing that has changed the way in which consumers make purchase
decisions. Earlier too, there was a lot of word of mouth out there. Customers attached greater importance to
word of mouth, but with the emergence of digital technology, word of mouth has now taken center-street.

For example, earlier say 20-30 years ago, if you wanted to buy a car, you would have spoken to a few friends.
You would have spoken to one person who's either an expert in automobiles, who works in an automobile
company or is a mechanic nearby, to understand which the best car out there is. You would have heard from
these people. All the information that you heard from these people would have come to you immediately, you
would have forgotten it in some time. Your family members, your friends, other people would have heard from
you. They wouldn't have necessarily got this information directly. So, the reach of word of mouth was very
limited. Word of mouth was very spontaneous. There was no way by which you could remember all of this
exact details about the vehicle and talk to somebody else, but with the emergence of the digital space, word of
mouth has unlimited reach right now. You write something on Facebook, probably 3000 of your friends hear
about. You tweet about this, a few million people hear about it.

You put it up on amazon.com or Flipkart or any of these ecommerce platforms, every single customer who
comes to that platform is now viewing the certain content that you have provided. So the reach of word of
mouth has become exponentially high. Word of mouth is extremely, extremely fast propagating. You would
have seen a lot of viral campaigns recently. You would have seen a lot of campaigns which basically have been
started by consumers and which basically are spread like wildfire. You talk bad about a product. You remember
there was a product, a noodle product in India recently, a few years back, which basically pulled off the shelves
because of the controversy. Such negative word of mouth spread much faster. So although word of mouth has
always been there, it is with the emergence of the digital space, that word of mouth has now taken center-stage
and word of mouth will be a central construct that will discuss throughout our journey in this course.

Apart from this word of mouth, the entire marketing context has also changed drastically with the emergence of
the digital space. Now, in the next sessions, we'll talk in detail about how digital has evolved and how
consumers have changed, what are the different tools, techniques, platforms, and other elements of the digital
marketing toolkit that you necessarily can use. But as a precursor to the next sessions, we will see how digital
space has completely altered and completely changed the way marketing operates. Say for example, the reach
has exponentially increased with the emergence of digital marketplace. Earlier you had a limitation with respect
to how many customers you could reach. You had a limitation with respect to how many customers could come
to your retail store. You had a limitation to how many customers view television or read a magazine or read a
newspaper. Today, you basically have let go of all of these limitations. You can basically reach out to any
customer anywhere in the world who has access to an internet and access to a platform or a device that can
access the internet. So the reach has become exponentially great.

The second thing is you are today able to reach customers throughout the day, anytime of the day. Earlier,
customers had to wait for office timings, had to wait for the time that the shop was open and only on these times
you were able to get to the customer or the customer was able to reach out to you. Today you basically have a
24x7 operation. The customer can come to an e-commerce platform at any point of the day, anytime of the
week and purchase the products that they are looking for. You don't need to necessarily have the kind of people,
staffing the e-commerce platform because most of these things are automated today.
Earlier, it was very difficult for us to gather information. If you had to have some information about what
customers thought, what customers behave or what things customers were thinking, it was very difficult for you
because you always had to have those long surveys that you had to take to the customer and gather a lot of
information from the customer as part of your marketing the search activity. But today all of this has become
much easier because everything that the customer does on a digital space is now trackable. You have access to a
lot of data. The customer browses from website A to website B you are able to see what the customer has been
doing. The customer comes to your e-commerce platform and looks for a certain product. You know that this is
the customer who was looking for this particular product. You know that the customer is also going to these
other websites.

You know that the customer has a social media account where the customer is connected to 10 other people, a
few of whom could be influencers whom you can use to reach out to this customer and motivate this customer
to buy. You also have options where in new business models have come out. The entire e-commerce industry
has come out where in you are able to sell a lot of products which traditionally you were not able to sell,
because a traditional retail space has limited shelf space. You couldn't sell a lot of products there. Today, with e-
commerce, you are able to sell much more products through these channels. So the entire way in which we do
marketing, the whole of the creation, communication, delivery and exchange of value has completely
transformed with the new technology, and with the emergence of internet. So these and many other things will
be discussed in the coming sessions.

In the next session, we will specifically look into the origins of digital marketing, the scope of digital marketing,
the kind of landscape that we operate in. You'd have heard a few of these terms. We will talk about outbound
marketing. We'll talk about inbound marketing, we'll talk about social media marketing, we'll talk about mobile
platforms, and we’ll talk about different types of media that you can use. We'll talk about paid media, earned
media owned media, and different elements of digital marketing as an introduction to the different domains that
we're going to discuss throughout this course. So I would once again urge you to go back into the readings that
have been mentioned, do a few of these exercises so that you're all prepared to come and carry on with the other
sessions that we have on offer.

Thank you very much.