Consumer Behaviour for a Hypothetical Product - Coursework Example

Consumer Behaviour for a Hypothetical Product Student’s Name Grade Course; Tutor’s Name: Date: Consumer Behaviour for a Hypothetical Product Introduction Lifestyle magazines are a rich source of information for young women especially regarding relationships, careers, and fashion. As such Populist Publishers has launched a magazine targeting women aged between 17 and 25 years in Australia with the hope of attending to the information needs presented in this market. According to the Population Reference Bureau (2010), the 2006 statistics indicate that the country has 4.2 million young people aged between 10 and 25 years. Of this, 37 percent are girls aged between 18 and 25 years. This therefore means that the country has a ready market for the product. The name of the magazine of “On the Move” and is specifically meant to capture the attention of the ambitious woman who understands that opportunities are available to those who seek them. Though the name may not specifically capture the attention of the young women, the graphics on the cover page and the marketing strategy stated here under will compensate for this. Target Market description The magazine will target young women aged between 17 and 25 years in the major urban centres across Australia since literacy levels, the need for information and entertainment and the purchasing power are higher in urban centres compared to rural areas. In addition, the content of the magazine is formulated to resonate with young women are fashionable and career-oriented. At 17 years, most young women start considering the careers they will take in future especially after high school graduation. The magazine also targets young women who are discovering their likes and preferences in life and will therefore features stories that will appeal to their adventurous spirits. At the target age, most women are yet to realise their ambitions in life and hence the magazine will provide them different platforms through which they can learn, have fun and be informed. This will help them in their decision-making. Although the target group is still undertaking tertiary education, a fair percentage earns decent incomes. Even those who are not yet in income earning activities having money provisions from their parents and guardians which enable them to purchase different products in the consumer market. This therefore means that marketers can use the avenue presented by the magazine to market their products and services. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: In the hierarchy of needs developed by Abraham Maslow, the magazine discussed in this essay will serve to address social needs; esteem needs; and self-actualization needs which are contained in the three upper tiers in the hierarchy. According to Huit (2007), the hierarchy formulated by Maslow describes “the kind of information people seeks at different levels of development” (p.1). The target audience for the magazine have their basic needs and security needs met, thus leaving them a persistent yearning for information that can help them make their lives better, enlighten them on social issues, empower them, thus addressing their self esteem and edifying them, thus providing them with the aesthetic and cognitive information needed to pursue self-actualization. By publishing the magazine and circulating it in the market where the target audience can access it, the publisher will have provided young women in Australia a channel where they can access information that they need at that particular stage in their lives. To serve this market and fulfil the three identified needs in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, this magazine will have to know how to motivate the target audience to become even better. As Dill (2009) observes, “The mass media is taps into the bottomless pit of motivation, since motivation is the only thing that can get people back to the winning path” (p. 180). Unlike other magazines in the market however, this magazine will not give a standard picture of how women should look like. This approach of the magazine is based on the findings that the mass media is responsible for passing on the impression that women are valued by the society based on their looks and sexual appeal (Dill, 2009). As the main product differentiation factor, this magazine will seek to establish itself as an idealistic magazine embracing women in the target age group regardless of their body size or looks. To compete favourably in the market, the magazine needs to be priced well in order to not only appeal to the target market, but also meet the affordability criteria. As such, the will be sold at 5 Australian dollars per copy. By this low sale price, the magazine will be affordable to more readers and hence will attract more advertisers hence bringing in more revenue to the publishers. As Kaiser and Wright (2006) observe, the price structure for magazines determines how many consumers will be willing to purchase the same, and consequently affects advertisers’ willingness to market their products or services on the magazine. The magazine will be circulated in all leading bookstores and book outlets and special arrangements will be made to ensure that the magazine is available in stores within universities and colleges. The magazine cover will address the packaging needs of this product. As stated by Trout (2010), the product has to visually appeal to the target market. As such, the magazine will not only strive to use pictures of successful women in Australia, it will also use women revered as role models world over as the cover models. More to this, the magazine will use capturing headlines that will specifically appeal to the target market. Personality concepts and marketing mix According to Saju (2009) personality concepts enables marketers to segment the consumer market based on the different personality traits portrayed. Since personality traits are consistent and enduring over long periods of time, Saju (2009) argues that it is the responsibility of marketers to formulate marketing strategies that appeal to the traits presented in the target market. This is mainly because marketers are not able to change the personalities presented by the consumers. Despite this assertion however, Saju (2009) notes that as part of the maturing process, women’s personality traits have been known to change. More so, women are more likely than men to acknowledge their actual self based on their present situation and their ideal self, which is a reflection of the way they visualise themselves to be in future. Based on both the actual self image and the ideal self concept, the magazine will be marketed to the target market on the basis of its content. Different columns in the magazine will address how young women can make their lives better in order to attain the ideal self. Borrowing from the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs discussed above, this magazine will seek to equip women with self-actualization tools that will not only help them wise career choices, but will also address the various issues that the modern woman who want to excel in life has to grapple with. Such issues include fashion, relationships, wholesome health (body, mind and soul), and finances. Based on the content, the target audience will eventually understand that the beauty of the magazine is not only contained in the visually appealing glossy covers, but in the valuable informative, entertaining and educative content inside the magazine pages. When formulating the marketing strategy for the magazine, the actual self of the young women in the target market was identified as studying or just-starting off career women who have dreams about excelling in their different fields in future. It was also established that excellence in women is expressed through the dressing style, one’s conduct, one’s health and one’s well being. Establishing the magazine as a reliable source of information where the young women can get pointers or read other people’s experiences on how to become the people they want to be could therefore become an influence of how the target market purchase the product. According to Saju (2009), products that promise to help consumers attain the perceived ideal-self receive more attention from the same consumers. Once the brand image of the magazine is established, this will affect consumer behaviour towards it since they will continually seek the product based on its ability to improve or maintain the self-concept. Once they are satisfied that the magazine has information that contribute to the desired self-concept, the young women in the target market will most likely find the 5 Australian Dollar an affordable price to pay for the wealth of knowledge contained in the magazine. This is inline with Bruner II (2009) observation that “people purchase products or services that promise to reduce the gap between the real and ideal self-concepts” (p. 17). The strategic placement of the magazine in newsstands and bookstores where the young women targeted by the same can see it will serve to compliment the other marketing strategies used by the publisher. Perception concepts and Marketing Mix According to Brown (n.d), “perception is the process of selecting, organising and interpreting information inputs to produce meaning” (p.1).Writing for Forbes Magazine, Trout (2010) agrees to this assertion and states that rather than marketing being a battle between quality products, it has in recent times been narrowed down to a battle of perceptions. For the hypothetical magazine, which is the subject of this essay to succeed in convincing people’s perceptions therefore, there is a need that the publisher and the marketers to attract positive perceptions from the target market from the very beginning. This is because Trout (2010) observes that once perceptions about a product or service have been created in a consumer’s mind, it becomes hard for subsequent marketing efforts to change this perception. In view of how concepts can be used to successfully market the magazine, the marketing would need to address product issues that would shape how people perceive the magazine. As indicated elsewhere in this essay, the product would associate itself with the ambitious, upward-moving, would-be career woman. More to this, the magazine would be marketed as a product whose writers understand the challenges faced by the target market. This means that the product would provide valuable lesson to the target market based on other people’s experiences of the same. Based on the content featured in the magazine, marketing efforts employed by the magazine would seek to justify the pricing of the same. Chernatony & McDonald (2005) observes that price perceptions are guided by the utility value derived from a product or service. If the consumer market is satisfied that the value derived justifies their monetary spending on the product, then prices for the same attain empirical support and instinctive appeal among targeted buyers. In the prevailing markets, consumers perceive well packaged goods as being of high quality (Aaker, 1996). To appeal to the target consumers therefore, the magazine need only have an eye-catching glossy cover, but the models used on the cover page need to resonate with the information contained inside the magazine pages. In addition, to the images, attention capturing headlines will be used in order to attract as many readers as possible into purchasing the product. Being a news media product, the magazine will be placed alongside other magazines in the market, but special efforts will be taken to stock them in stores located with university and college campuses. Proper placement of products not only helps in creating awareness but also reinforces other marketing efforts. For example, through advertising the magazine in local notice boards in the institutions of higher learning, the students would expect to see the magazine in the local stores. Failure to do so would create perceptions of unreliability on the product’s part. On the other hand, a readily available magazine would create the perception of reliability. According to Howard (2010), perceptions that the target market develops towards a product determine whether the product will be a success or not. Conclusion ‘On the move’ is a magazine targeting young women between the ages of 18 and 25 years of age. Considering the impressionable minds that most women possess at this stage in their lives, the consumer behaviour expected from the target market is not as inflexible as would be the case in an older target market. This aside, the marketing strategy seeks to the women’s need for betterment especially considering that most of them look forward to having better wholesome lives in the future. The marketing strategy is further intended to capture the urban-modern woman who is an opportunity seeker and who knows that apart from experience, one can learn from other people’s experiences. Through a combination of the product characteristics, its pricing, placement and packaging, many women will purchase the product not only because it’s cheap and available on the local shelves, but also because they derive value from the same. References Aaker, D.A 1996, Building strong brands. Free press, New York. Brown, A., n.d, What is consumer buying Behaviour? Chapter 6 class notes, Viewed 24 June 2010, http://www.udel.edu/alex/chapt6.html Brunner II, G.C., Personality, Lifestyle, & Self-concept, Viewed 24 June 2010, http://www.mktg305.siuc.edu/lectures/personality.pdf Chernatory, L. & McDonald, A., 2005, Creating powerful Brands, Butterworth-Heinemann, London. Dill, K.E., 2009, How Fantasy Becomes reality: Seeing Through Media Influence, Oxford University Press US, New York. Howard, S. 2010, Corporate Image Management: A marketing Discipline for the 21st Century, Sales Vantage, viewed 24 June 2010, http://www.salesvantage.com/article/195/Corporate-Image-Management-A-Marketing-Discipline-for-the-21st-Century Huit, W. 2007, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Educational Interactive, Valdosta, GA, viewed 24 June 2010, from http://www.edpsycinteractive.org/topics/regsys/maslow.html Kaiser, U. & Wright, J. 2006, ‘Price Structure in two-sided markets: evidence from the magazine industry,’ International Journal of Industrial Organization, 24(1), 1-28. Population Reference Bureau 2010, Australia Statistics: Demographic & Health Highlights, viewed 24 June 2010, from http://www.prb.org/Countries/Australia.aspx Saju, A., 2009, Personality & Consumer Behaviour: Theories of personality & Self-concept and how they affect one’s consumption patterns, pp. 1-32. Trout, J., 2010, The Law of perception: Tales from the marketing Wars. Forbes Magazine, viewed 23 June 2010, http://www.forbes.com/2007/01/15/jack-trout-on-marketing-oped-cx_jt_0116reality.html Read More