Consumer Psychology - Essay Example

?Introduction To form Thomas Cook Group plc, Thomas Cook AG and My Travel Group plc had to merge back in 2007. From this remarkable transformation, the company started to embrace innovation for its service offerings and proceeded to expansion in India in the following year. In the same year, the company acquired travel-related companies, allowing it to surge its shares in the London Stock Exchange in the following year. It was in 2009 that the company featured its Boeing 767 for Condor for its efficiency when it comes to fuel consumption and reduction of carbon dioxide emission. In the next year, the company acquired Think W3, strengthening its ability to cater travel-related products online. In that same year, the Thomas Cook Group plc created a way to specialise its package holidays to turkey by acquiring Oger Tours. This year, the company continues to promote the delivery of improved service and high customer value. If one has to understand the prevailing characteristics of the company, there is rich source of information to justify how Thomas Cook would want to provide value for customers based on market and competition through the implementation of linked up competitive strategies. Concerning this, the company acknowledged the importance of tourism for economies and communities and the impact of places where they operate on the environments, communities and culture. This gives them the idea that to exercise their corporate responsibility through ‘operating responsibly’ would help them ensure maximum impact for the environment, social and economic concerns for the sustainability of their business and resources. However, Thomas Cook are not yet ready to fulfill their responsibilities towards the society, in general. This idea leads us to identify that the company would have to undergo sustainable consumption beyond market and competition. This allows us to explore further the idea in line with consumer psychology, as there is a need to integrate the idea of relationship between the consumers and the company into the entire discussion. For this reason, this paper identifies in general the actual social psychological and cognitive process linked to the consumption of services for the benefit of Thomas Cook Group. This means that the entire discussion has to elaborate more on how the company should build the relationship with the customers, rather than the pure strategic output for building its competitive advantage through performing its corporate responsibility on the ground of pure market and competition. In order to do this, first, a presentation of the memorandum to the CEO, Mr. Harriet Green is a necessity. To back up the linked recommendations to the memorandum, theoretical concepts associated with consumer psychology in building on strong relationships between the service provider and the customer are stated. Regarding this, understanding the essence of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) from the standpoint of psychological perspective would make sense prior to the understanding the concept associated with sustainable consumption. Memorandum to Organisation’s CEO To: The CEO of Thomas Cook Group, Harriet Green From: A freelancing business psychology consultant Date: 23rd April 2013 Dear Mr. Green, Before anything, I would like to express my heartfelt appreciation for your great effort concerning your desire to provide the tourism industry with utmost positive value especially for every traveler’s advantage. Thank you for sharing with us your strategies on how you could cater the tourism industry with a high quality value of service. You are not only giving us the chance to experience the benefits of your output, but your actual move for the entire company is heading us to obtain business and environmental sustainability that in the long run would pave the way for more additional advantage for everyone. We need this kind of thinking and your ideas provide the entire travel and tourism industry to adapt best practices for the benefit of its target marketplace and the whole society, in general. Your desire to operate responsibly is regarded with high appreciation. Factors associated with operating responsibly We appreciate the fact that you are looking forward to become more responsive not only to the needs of your target customers, but also to the entire community. Regarding this, it is a good idea to embark on with Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), as a way not only to ensure high value for customers and implied development of relationship, but above all, socio-economic sustainability. However, we know the fact that there is no clear evidence to support what CSR really means and what exactly drive organisations to go for this kind of corporate strategic move, if it might safe to assume as it is. In addition, it is hard to suppose that your main goal to pursue CSR would be for a pure market-driven strategy to ensure your competitive advantage and sustainable market share. However, knowing the point that as a profit organisation your company needs to ensure high market share and sustainable optimum operation, CSR might be a good strategy for that matter. I am not going against this point, but for us to make sure of the value of sustainability to the full; you might find it a good idea to look at the other side of this from the standpoint of consumer psychology, and not purely on vital marketing and business strategic perspective. Regarding this, allow me to present to you how we should consider CSR as a value creation that would further promote relationship, which could be another more sustainable approach in ensuring a greater way to help you towards the level of your responsibility to your society. Concerning this, I would like to share with you some important thoughts on this matter. What I would like to recommend you are as below: Encourage participation! 1. Please understand that everyone particularly within both external and internal environments of your organisation should participate and be part of your great plan, for it to succeed. Your organisational move requires that everyone should participate including all the stakeholders linked to your actual plan (the entire community, investors, human resource, the people, consumers, etc.). It is going to be hard for your organisation to do everything alone. Implement dynamic change! 2. You need to take into account the actual needs of everyone, but beyond all of these, you also have to understand if everyone is willing to go for change. This primarily leads you to the next step. Let everyone embrace the vision, for you to be able to create followers rather than mere subordinates. After this, you are ready to go take the lead. Handle complexities 3. Your ultimate role as a leading service provider for travel-related product and service offerings is not easy, as you are also dealing with complex things. You need therefore to learn to organise everything way beyond the primary need, but the other relevant needs of the organisations and their external environments. This will allow you to help organise your external environments and their actual responses, which will have future great impact on your primary objectives. Be innovative 4. In the context of extending your duties towards the society, taking some innovative ways would make sense. Therefore, you need to understand further the actual perception of your target stakeholders primarily the entire society towards the associated moves of every organisation concerning sustainability-related issues. At this point, you might want to promote new strategies that are way beyond the influence of a market-driven approach, but solely for relationship building to ensure sustainable connections with your target audience. Learn to evaluate 5. For corrective measures and associated actions, assessment of your essential moves is necessary because this would create vital information for you to follow in order to identify the actual response of the target stakeholders. Engagement as the catalyst for sustainable change To operate responsibly into a society would have a potential implication that it requires the need to emancipate social change (Lewin, 1947). However, social change requires effective participation of actors and engagement under a deeper set of principles (Baker, 2006). One fundamental principle could be that emotion, by which triggered by feeling, is a fundamental source of social engagement (Csikszentmihalyi, 1997). We need to understand this essential point for us to take into account that aside from purely considering the prevailing needs as a classical response to promote positive engagement particularly between the formulated relationship between a company and its target customers and other relevant stakeholders, triggering emotions could be another fundamental sustainable source for sustainable change. Motivated not only by their needs and by associated desires, humans have emotions that at the same time dictate them to do the things they do. It is therefore essential on the part of your company not only to address the needs of your target stakeholders, but also to consider the possibility of having them engaged into your plans by winning them through their emotions. If you want to implement this the right way, please consider further recommendations below. Sensitivity to the human behavior 6. Having this will allow us to evaluate what drives or motivates a person to do the things they do. In doing it, we will be able to evaluate how to effectively engage them into our plan. Encourage feedback 7. Just as there is a need for us to ensure participation and assessment, allowing feedback would be a more specific response for us to determine and understand whether a certain behavior is motivated by needs or emotion. In either way, we would still be able to identify the vital source of engagement. From the first set down to the second, these factors are essential components for us to be able to create value for our target stakeholders and promote sustainability. There is no guarantee that implementing all of these will provide you the optimum output, but your substantial consideration of each of these points would help you promote the appropriate moves with a fundamental background from the behavioural perspective together with the stakeholders. After all, the nature of your business remarkably deals with behaviours so it would make sense to dig deeper into the complex social human behaviour for this matter. For my final words, I just do not want to end this without extending to you once again my pleasure and warmest appreciation for all the good efforts you have shared with us. Consider this letter of intent proposing you my recommendations as a dynamic response towards the change you are looking forward to take place in the future. As expert in my field, I am convinced that what I just have shared with you would totally make sense. For this matter, it would be a privilege on my part to know probable outcomes in the future. Best regards, Signature Essay Background As already stated in the recommendation, there is no fundamental evidence to support what are the actual intentions of the organisations trying to promote Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). On the other hand, there is also no clear standard definition what is it in the first place (Mohanty, 2010). However, there are reasons to believe that this could also be about creation of value and sustainability, as it leads to profits that can be assessed qualitatively (Cramer and Bergmans, 2003). The bottom line would lead to our consideration of it as solely a remarkable strategic move for marketing activity and socio-economic channel of development. Concerning this point, CSR would have a potential link to actual marketing activity, which is driven by the actual needs from the standpoint of the classical perspective. The prevailing theories of motivation and emotion could substantially elaborate this point which are essential subjects stated in this essay. These are fundamental theoretical frameworks concerning on how an organisation could operate responsibly and ensure maximum engagement as a catalyst for sustainable social change. Concerning this, we would take the whole point of CSR from the perspective of psychological theories pertaining to sustainable consumption. The above recommendations show a combined approach of corporate initiatives, which will have to be strengthened via psychological concept of engagement as one of the catalyst for sustainable social change. In order for us to understand completely the entire concept particularly in the implementation of CSR, there is a need to proceed to understanding the general theory of motivation and emotion and the relevant marketing consumer behavior theories such as theories of perception and exposure. The theories of motivation In psychology, common to human social interaction is the ability to look for and meet corresponding level of needs. Needs are essential driving factors that influence human behaviour (Feldman, 2003). Organisations are able to successfully implement positive participation, implement change, handle complexities and develop innovations because of their ability to understand prevailing needs both in their external and internal environments. They are able to do this by being able to understand some prevailing thoughts on what motivates human. From the theory of instinct approach, some psychologists believe that motivations are innate and considered biological pattern of behaviours rather than taught (Bernard, 1924). However, drive reduction approach stipulates that something that is lacking to human could drive motivation (Hull, 1943). This could mean that the reason why there is a need to go for sustainability is because there is actual need for it. Arousal approach on the other hand presents that everyone requires certain level of stimulation prior to actual motivation (Berlyne, 1967). To encourage sustainable consumption in the first place based on this theory, there is a need to ignite certain level of arousal particularly to those with low level of stimulation and activity. Based on incentive approach, goals, incentives, and the desire for them could drive motivation (Petri, 1996). In the case of organisations employing CSR, this move provides them certain value, which could help explain their bottom line intention. On the other hand, thoughts, expectations and goals, which are components of cognitive response leads to motivation (Wigfield and Eccles, 2000). This links to fundamental marketing consumer behavior theories, which we will discuss later. Finally, Maslow believes that each of us has fundamental order of needs, by which each of them is placed in a hierarchy (Maslow, 1987). Considering this point, not everyone would have fundamental level of need in common, allowing us to argue that not everyone would also be motivated towards sustainable consumption. All of these theories could help us explain why humans would have the need for achievement (success), affiliation, and power (Feldman, 2003). Consequently, this could even provide us the remarkable insight behind CSR from the standpoint of both external and internal environments of an organisation. Emotion and engagement James-Lange theory of emotion suggests that sensations showing evidence of physical outcomes could be an emotional response too (Izard, 1990). Thus, one could say he is happy if he is laughing. In the same way, a person who is actively participating in the CSR and sustainable consumption could say at some point that he is happy doing it. Such happiness could be a motivating drive based on Cannon-Bard theory of emotion. The theory suggests that physiological and emotional arousal occur simultaneously at the same stimuli (Cannon, 1929). On the other hand, physiological arousal, which we defined as driving force to motivate an individual, could also help determined emotion, based on Schachter-Singer theory (Schachter and Singer, 1962). These theories therefore suggest that the link of emotion and human needs may provide complimentary effect. Marketing consumer behavior theories: perception and exposure The good thing about perception is that it is capable of triggering desire as it is about sorting out, interpretation, analysis and integration of stimuli (Feldman, 2003). Thus, the success of CSR would be determined at some point by the level of how the organisation creates appeal to unique perception. The theories of perception would therefore bring us forward to how we could effectively expose the individual to actual stimuli and produce remarkable response. Conclusion The chosen work presents how Thomas Cook Group plc should have the required skill to address its full responsibility to the society through the implementation of CSR. At some point, CSR is vague and the associated ideas behind the intention of doing it may not have sufficient empirical backgrounds. To make a remarkable output for this point, the work provides substantial recommendations with fundamental theoretical support from a pure psychological perspective in understanding needs, emotion and marketing consumer behavior theories. This approach leads us far beyond the traditional strategic approach in viewing CSR as one that might be about creation of competitive advantage, rather than sustainable consumption and enduring relationship. The latter consideration has become the focus on this work, providing us the opportunity to consider CSR as a fundamental approach that would require a point of view way beyond how one might give value for a marketing strategic function. This work provides the idea that social responsibility could become more sustainable if everything is founded by meaningful understanding of human behavior and its socio-economic impact for sustainability input. References Baker, S. (2006) Sustainable development. New York, NY: Routledge. Berlyne, D. (1967) Arousal and reinforcement. In D. Levine (Ed.), Nebraska symposium on motivation. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Bernard, L. L. (1924) Instinct: A study in social psychology. New York: Holt. Cannon, W. B. (1929) Organization for physiological homeostatics. Physiological Review. 9:280-289. Cramer, J., and Bergmans, F. (2003) Learning about Corporate Social Responsibility: The Dutch Experience. Amsterdam: IOS Press. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1997) Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement With Everyday Life. New York, NY: Basic Books. Feldman, R. S. (2003) Essentials of Understanding Psychology. 5th ed. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill. Hull, C. L. (1943) Principles of behavior. 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