Consumption Meanings Chapter 4 and Chapter 16 as assigned

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ConsumptionMeaningsChapter 4 andChapter 16 as
assigned
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Learning Objectives

• Explain why meaning is an important issue for
  marketers.
• Describe the basic process of semiosis and the
  semiotic triangle.
• Have a working knowledge of the meaning transfer
  model.
• Explain why spokespersons are important and
  describe the link between spokesperson selection
  and marketing success.
• Recognize the kinds of meanings that consumers
  value.
• Know why questions of meaning are important in
  cross cultural contexts.
• Recognize the significance of collecting, impulse
  buying, gift-giving, and self-gifts for consumers
  and marketers.

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Consumer Meaning

• Marketing communications are a source of meaning
• Marketed products are a source of meaningful
  possessions
• Many of peoples most meaningful possessions are
  not marketplace commodities
• Loss of Meaning Success of global markets system
  tends to homogenize meaning and value of
  products.
• Both marketers and consumers face the problem of
  unsatisfactory meaning

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Meaning Transfer Perspective

• Individuals are motivated to acquire things
  symbolic of their lives we use things to
  communicate to ourselves and to others who we are
• Semiotics studies meaning

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Semiosis

• Semiosis is the science of meaning process of
  communication by any type of sign.
• A sign is anything that stands for something
  else.
• Members of a communications community agree, more
  or less, on meanings because they share
  significant cultural knowledge.

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Exhibit 4.1 Semiotic Triangle
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Product Meaning is Changeable

• Product meaning changes with time.
• Product meaning is unstable across market
  segments.
• Product meanings are contested by social groups
  and market segments. (e.g., team mascots, package
  labels, etc.)

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Types of Meanings

• Utilitarian meaning
• perceived usefulness of a product in terms of its
  ability to perform functional or physical tasks.
• Sacred and secular meanings
• Sacred meaning adheres in those things that are
  designed or discovered to be supremely important.
  
• Secular meaning secular properties of things are
  the reverse of sacred ones.

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Sacred Qualities

• Belong to a different order of reality
• Stand apart from what is ordinary.
• Feel a focused emotional attachment
• Often concretized in a representational object
• Ritual surrounds contact
• Cannot be bought and sold or meaning is lost

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Sacred Possessions Your Perspective?

• ________________
• ________________
• ________________
• ________________
• ________________
• ________________

• Sacred Sites
• Sacred Times
• Tangible Things
• Intangible Things
• Persons or other Beings
• Experiences

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Types of Meanings (continued)

• Hedonic meanings
• products associated with specific feelings or to
  facilitate feelings.
• consumers brand equity involves the accumulated
  history and sentiment attached to particular
  brands.
• negative emotional meanings of consumption
  include addiction, compulsive consumption,
  terminal materialism (greed).

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Exhibit 4.4 A Model of Hedonic Meaning
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Types of meaning (continued)

• Social meanings
• People communicate statements about who they are,
  what groups they identify with, and those from
  which they are different primarily through
  consumer goods.
• Others see what people consume as expressions of
  who those people are.

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Brand Equity

• Derives from social meaning attached to a brand
• Involves the accumulated beliefs, history,
  sentiment, and value consumers attach to
  particular brands
• Comprises the sum of the brand image meanings
  plus consumers confidence in and loyalty to the
  brand
• Enduring
• Crucial asset for firms due to proliferation of
  products especially in the Triad nations
• Evidence that consumers evaluations of brand
  quality positively affect company stock
  valuations.

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Movement of Meanings Origins of Meaning

• Meaning transfer model (Exhibit 4.5)
• Consumer meanings move between three locations
• the culturally constituted world,
• the good (product, service or experience), and
• groups of consumers.
• Meaning moves in a trajectory between world and
  good, and good and consumer or consuming unit.

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Exhibit 4.5Meaning Transfer Model
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Linking Cultural Meanings and Product Meanings

• Marketing communications are a vehicle for
  connecting cultural meanings to consumption
  objects.
• persona the spokesperson depicted or implied
  within the advertisement itself.

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Advertising Model of Meaning Transfer
WITHIN-TEXT
SOURCE
Sponsor
Author
Persona
Narrative/ Lecture
Autobiography
Drama
MESSAGE
Implied
Sponsorial
Actual
CONSUMERS
Source Adapted from Barbara A. Stern (1994), A
Revised Communication Model for Advertising
Multiple Dimensions of the Source, the Message,
and the Recipient, Journal of Advertising, 23
(June), 5-15.
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Celebrity Endorsers

• Celebrity endorsers transfer meanings to brands
  because of the multiple roles for which the
  celebrities are known

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Linking Cultural Meanings and Product Meanings

• Visual Conventions and Consumption Meanings
• selection and combination of visual symbols to
  achieve persuasive effects.
• Characters and Consumption Meanings
• Meaning movement and the Endorsement Process
• Research shows that the meanings attributed to
  previously unendorsed products changed
  dramatically when they were linked to celebrity
  endorsers.

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Linking Product Meanings and Consumption Meanings

• Consumers provide products or their advertising
  images with meaning through their recognition of
  what they stand for, what they symbolize, at
  least within the space of an ad.
• By using particular products, consumers
  differentiate themselves from other people who
  consume different products with presumably
  different meanings.
• There is a sense in which consumers allow
  themselves to be created by ads and products.

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Models and Rituals of Meaning Transfer

• Special behaviors consumers use to transfer
  meaning include possession, grooming, exchange,
  and divestment rituals.
• Possession rituals customizing, decorating,
  personalizing, cleaning, discussing, displaying,
  and photographing.
• Grooming behavior form of body language
  communicating specific messages about an
  individuals social status, maturity,
  aspirations, conformity, and morality.

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Eliminate the Penny?

• Recent study asked Americans whether to keep the
  penny as part of our exchange currency
• 65 Keep it
• 32 Eliminate it
• 3 Dont know
• How can you explain these results?
• What is your opinion?
• What does the penny mean in the everyday lives of
  consumers? To American culture?
• The French have eliminated the franc (penny) from
  their currency why do you suppose they did
  that?

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Malleability and Movement of Meanings

• The meanings of products and services are highly
  malleable.
• There is considerable variation in the extent to
  which consumers share meanings.
• Product meaning is a multilevel construct, with
  four types of meaningful associations
• tangible attributes
• cultural associations
• subcultural associations
• unique, personal associations
• Marketers work to change meanings at each of the
  four levels to align their products with the
  desires of target markets.

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Collecting and Museums

• Collecting is the selective, active, and
  longitudinal acquisition, possession, and
  disposition of an interrelated set of
  differentiated objects (material things, ideas,
  beings, or experiences) that contribute to and
  derive extraordinary meaning from the set itself.
  
• What do collections mean to consumers?
• control, magical power, evocation of other times,
  people, places, legitimization for materialism,
  an expanded sense of self, hedonic pleasure.

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Collecting and Museums

• Collecting is a behavior characteristic both of
  individuals and institutions.
• Institutions/Firms reinforce the social and
  economic significance of collecting behavior by
  pre-packing the experience for consumers and
  providing the comforting assurance of
  authenticity.
• Museum shops and catalogs are an important part
  of the growing collecting industry.

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Impulse Purchases

• Impulse purchases occur when consumers experience
  a sudden, often powerful, and persistent
  emotional urge to buy immediately.
• Impulse purchases also entail a sudden mental
  match between the meaning of a product and a
  consumers self-concept.

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Outcomes of Impulse Buying

• When people are making the purchase they have
  little regard for the consequences
• One study found
• 75 of people felt better after making the
  purchase
• 16 no different
• 8 guilt or ambivalence
• May lead to financial problems, disappointment,
  or disapproval from others

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Impulsive Buying Related to Other Concepts

• Some impulse buying is related to general
  acquisitiveness and materialism
• Marketing factors support impulse buying and may
  decrease self-control (credit cards, ATM
  machines, long shopping hours, placement in
  stores, etc.)
• Impulse buying varies based on personality
  e.g., risk aversion versus variety seeking
• In some cases, impulse purchase behavior is
  compulsive and represents a darkside of
  consumer behavior.

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Gift Giving

• The importance that consumers attach to gift
  giving provides many opportunities for marketers.
• The norm of reciprocity describes the fact that
  receiving a gift often creates a strong sense of
  obligation to make a return gift.
• Interpersonal gifts are provoked by specific
  conditions, including structural or emergent.
• Structural occasions include territorial
  passages, rites of passage, and rites of
  progression.
• Emergent occasions include means by which to
  initiate, repair, and/or intensify relationships.

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Exhibit 16.5Interpersonal Gift Giving
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Self-Gifts

• Consumers give gifts to themselves.
• Often occurs in in the context of personal
  accomplishment, distress, or holiday occasion.
• Two types
• reward
• therapeutic
• Form of personal, symbolic self-communication.
• Self-gifting can positively enhance self-concept,
  consistency, or esteem.

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Topic Takeaways

• Marketing activities create and reflect meaning
  (see meaning transfer perspective)
• Products (goods, services, experiences) are an
  important source of meaning (utilitarian, sacred,
  secular, hedonic, social) in consumers lives
• Semiotics is the study of meaning and can be used
  to inform the development of positioning
  strategies
• Brand equity comes from the social meanings
  attached to a brand
• Celebrity endorsers (and other endorsers) help
  transfer meaning to brands

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Topic Takeaways 2

• Products and their meanings help differentiate
  the consumers who use them from other consumers
• Ritual processes help transfer meanings to
  products
• Collecting and impulse purchasing share the
  characteristic of a sudden mental match between a
  buyer and an object
• Gift giving is based on the notion of reciprocity
• Self gifts are purchased for reward and/or
  therapy