McGraw-Hill/Irwin Copyright © 2008 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Chapters 13 & 14

Part 1
Subculture and Social Class

Part 2
Reference Groups and Family

McGraw-Hill/Irwin Copyright © 2008 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
 Subcultures
• Distinctive groups of people in a society that
share common cultural meanings for
– Affective and cognitive responses
– Behaviors
– Environmental factors

13-3
 Types of Subcultures
• Marketers use a variety of demographic
characteristics to identify subcultures

13-4
 Analyzing Subcultures
• Can be analyzed at different levels and
often done in stages
– A broad subculture is identified based on some
broad demographic characteristics
– It is further segmented into subcultures based
on other demographic characteristics
– If necessary, further segmented into even
smaller and more precisely defined subcultures

13-5
 Analyzing Subcultures cont.
• Can follow the same approach as cultural
analysis
– Content of subculture examined based on
description of cultural meanings shared by its
members
• Marketers identify the typical characteristics,
meanings, and behavioral tendencies
shared by people in the subculture

13-6
 Analyzing Subcultures cont.
• Marketers need to determine the
appropriate level of analysis for the problem,
and develop appropriate marketing
strategies

13-7
 Acculturation Processes
• Acculturation refers how people in one
culture or subculture understand and adapt
to the meanings of another culture or
subculture
• Consumer acculturation refers to how
people acquire the ability and cultural
knowledge to be skilled consumers in
different cultures or subcultures
• Important in the modern world

13-8
Acculturation Processes cont.
– Important for people who move to different
regions within same country and must adapt to
different subcultural meanings
– Degree to which immigrants, movers, and
marketers become acculturated depends on
their level of cultural interpenetration

13-9
Acculturation Processes cont.
– Four stages of acculturation corresponding to
four levels of cultural interpenetration
• Honeymoon-where everything about the new culture
is new and fascinating
• Rejection
• Tolerance-where people begin to appreciate the
cultural meanings of the new group
• Integration-where people adjust and adapt to the new
culture
– An important aspect is proficiency in the
language of the new culture

13-10
 Social Class
• A national status hierarchy by which groups
and individuals are distinguished in terms of
esteem and prestige
• Four social class groups used for consumer
analysis
– Upper
– Middle
– Working
– Lower

13-11
 Social Class cont.
– Identification with each social class is influenced
most strongly by one’s level of education and
occupation
– A composite of many personal and social
attributes
– Families in each social class can be further
classified
• Overprivileged
• Average
• Underprivileged

13-12
 Social Class cont.
– Social class and relative standing within a class
are important sources of consumers’ beliefs,
values, and behaviors
– At a conceptual level, are useful for
investigating the process by which consumers
develop their characteristic beliefs, values, and
behavior patterns

13-13
Social Class Groups for Consumer
Analysis
Upper, upper The highest class, “old rich”, well-known
(1% of pop) families
Upper (2% of pop) Professionals & businesspeople who have
achieved financial success

Middle Professionals, small-business owners,

corporate managers with comfortable
incomes
Working class Lower-middle class or blue-collar workers
who earn an average pay

Upper lower The “working poor”, who perform unskilled

labor and menial work for minimal wages

Lower Poor, unemployed

 Social Class versus Income
• Controversy as to whether social class or
income is the better variable for use in
consumer analysis
– Each variable has its advantages and
disadvantages
– The choice between using social class, income,
or a combination depends on the product and
the situation
– The choice between using social class, income,
or a combination depends on the product and
the situation
13-15
Social Class Versus Income cont.
• Social class superior to income for method and place
of purchase of highly visible, symbolic, and
expensive objects
• Income is generally used for understanding purchase
of products that require substantial expenditures but
are not status symbols within the class
• Combination of social class and income is usually
superior for product classes that are highly visible,
are symbols of social class or status within the class
and require moderate to substantial expenditure

13-16
Part 1 Done

Yahoooooooo!
 Reference Groups
• A group consists of two or more people who
interact with each other to accomplish some
goal
• A reference group involves one or more
people used as a basis for comparison or
point of reference in forming affective and
cognitive responses and performing
behaviors

14-18
Reference Groups cont.

14-19
 Analyzing Reference Groups
• Reference groups are cultural groups in that
members share certain common cultural
meanings
– Marketers try to determine the content of the
shared meanings of various reference groups
– Reference groups can have both positive and
negative effects on consumers
• Associative reference groups
• Dissociative reference groups

14-20
Types of Reference Group Influence
• Most people are members of several
primary informal groups and a few formal,
membership groups
– People identify and affiliate with particular
reference groups for three reasons
• To gain useful knowledge
• To obtain rewards or avoid punishments
• To acquire meanings for constructing, modifying, or
maintaining their self-concepts

14-21
 Reference Groups cont.
– Three types of reference group influence
• Informational
• Utilitarian
• Value-expressive
– All three types of reference group influence can
be accomplished by a single reference group.

14-22
Reference Group Influence on Products
and Brands
• Reference groups do not influence all
product and brand purchases to the same
degree
– Influences vary on at least two dimensions
• Degree to which the product or brand is
– A necessity
– A luxury
• Degree to which the object in question is
conspicuous or know by other people
– Public good
– Private good

14-23
Reference Group Influence on Products
and Brands cont.
– Reference group influence will vary depending
on whether the products and brands are
• Public necessities
• Private necessities
• Public luxuries
• Private luxuries

14-24
 Reference Groups and Marketing
Strategy
• Developing marketing strategies through an
analysis of primary informal group
influences
• Peer group influence as a major asset of
firms that sell in-home to groups
• Describing similarities between previous
consumers and potential consumers
• Using salespersons as reference groups
• Soliciting experts to aid in the direct sale of
products

14-25
Reference Group Influence on Products
and Brands cont.

14-26
 Family
• Marketers are interested in both families
and households
– Household is the housing unit having people
living in it
– Nonfamily households include unrelated
people living together
– A family has at least two people, the
householder and someone who is related to the
householder by blood, marriage, or adoption
• Nuclear family
• Extended family
14-27
 Family Decision Making
• How family members interact and influence
one another when making purchase choices
for the household
– Identification of roles of family members in
family decision making is important

14-28
Family Decision Making cont.
– Types of family decision-making roles include:
• Influencers
• Gatekeepers
• Users
• Deciders
• Buyers
• Disposers

14-29
Influences on Family Decision Making
• Areas explored in research on family
decision making are
– Differences in product class and their
relationship to family decision making
– The structure of husband/wife roles
– The determinants of joint decision making
• Children and family decision making

14-30
Conflict in Family Decision Making
• Decision conflict arises when family
members disagree about some aspect of
the purchase decision
– Means-end chain model is a useful framework
for analyzing decision conflict

14-31
Six Common Types of Family
Influence Strategies
Patterns or Styles of Influence
Behaviors
 Consumer Socialization
• Refers to how children acquire knowledge
about products and services and various
consumption-related skills
– Can occur directly through intentional instruction
or indirectly through observation and modeling
– The consumer knowledge formed in childhood
can influence people in later years

14-34
Consumer Socialization cont.
– Developing early brand awareness and loyalty
is an important marketing strategy for many
companies
– The flow of socialization is not restricted to
parents influencing their young children

14-35
Factors Influencing American Families
• Three important changes:
– Changes in female employment
– Changes in marriage and divorce
– Changes in childbirth and child rearing practices

14-36
Demographic Changes in Household
Composition
• American families are highly diverse
– Various types of families constitute distinctive
markets for many products
• Married-couple family
• Traditional family
• Nontraditional family
• Nonfamily households family
– Cohabiting couples

14-37
A Modern Family Life Cycle

14-38
 Family Life Cycle
• The modern family life cycle captures most
types of families in American society,
including:
– Single parents
– Young singles
– Older singles
– Married couples with children

14-39
 Family- Marketing Analysis
• Considerations for using the family life cycle
for marketing analysis
– Modern family life cycle does not include
nonfamily households
– Modern family life cycle does not capture every
possible change in family status that can occur
• Does not include the boomerang age

14-40
Family- Marketing Analysis cont.
– Marketers use the family life cycle to:
• Segment the market
• Analyze market potential
• Identify target markets
• Develop more effective marketing strategies
– Developing marketing strategies for the
bachelor segment is a challenge
– Some stages in the family life cycle are more
important markets than others
– Stages of the family life cycle that contain
children are quite important to many marketers
14-41
 Family- Marketing Implications
• Ideas for marketing strategies to help
reduce shopping time and stress
– Provide information
– Assist in planning
– Develop out-of-store selling
– Automate processes
– Improve delivery

14-42