INTRODUCTION TO ADVERTISING

Week 4 – Target Audience: Understanding

Consumer Behaviour
 Content
• Consumer Decision Making Process
• Understanding Consumer Behaviour
• Segmenting Audiences
• Segmentation Variables:
o Demographics
o Geographic
o Psychographics
o Behaviour
o Benefit sought
• Profiling Target Audiences

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 Activity 1: How did You Make Decision to
Study at RMIT VIETNAM?
• Describe the journey of making decision of choosing RMIT as your
university:
o Who did influence your decision?
o How did you search information about RMIT?
o Were there any other options? and how did you make evaluation?
o Tell us about your evaluation and feeling at the moment.

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 Consumer Decision Making Process
• The Consumer Decision Making Process is the method used by
marketers to identify and track the decision making process of a
customer journey from start to finish.
• Marketers try to reach consumers at the moments, or touch points, when
consumers are open to influence and introduce the brand or product.

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 Consumer Decision Making Process
• “The best brands consistently win two moments of truth. The first moment
occurs when a consumer decides whether to buy one brand or
another. The second occurs when she/he uses the brand” (Lafley, A.G. –
P&G CEO).

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 Zero Moment of Truth (ZMOT)
• ZMOT is a concept coined by Google. The ZMOT refers to the point in
the purchasing cycle when the consumer researches a product, often
before the seller even knows that they exist.
• The number of consumers researching a product online prior to
purchase has been on the rise in recent years as the internet and
mobile continue to advance.

www.thinkwithgoogle.com

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ZMOT in practice

https://youtu.be/uYthLmoSuwg 7
 Customer Decision Journey Funnel
• Actually, the decision-making process is a more circular journey, with
four primary phases representing potential battlegrounds where
marketers can win or lose.
McKinsey Customer Decision Journey

David et al 2006

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 Activity 2: Review Your Journey
• Describe the journey of making decision of choosing RMIT as your
university.
• Clearly describe each stage of the journey.

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 Understanding Consumer Behaviour
• The study of how customer makes decision of buying and consuming
product or brand. Exploring factors that influence on the process of
making decision.

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 Segmenting Audiences
• A process of dividing people into homogeneous subgroups based upon
defined criterion such as demographics, geographic, psychographics,
behaviours (product usage), communication behaviours and media
use.
• Allows marketing communicators to deliver messages to target markets
and prevent wasted coverage to people who are not part of the target
market (Chitty, Barker, & Shimp 2005).

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Segmentation Variables

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 Demographic Variable
• Describes population in terms of size, structure and distribution.
o Size equals number of members.
o Structure describes aspects such as age, gender, income,
education, occupation, family structure, lifecycle stage, marital
status, ethnicity, and so on.
• These factors are influential on consumer behaviour. It is more effective
in combination with other variables.
• Demographic factors are the most popular bases for segmenting
customer groups.

Zikmund, W.G. & Babin, B., 2007, Essentials of Marketing Research, 3rd ed, Thomson, Mason

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Example: Milk for Life Cycle

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Example: Bank Services for Life Stage

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 Activity 3: Personal branding timeline
• Create a timeline moving from 0 y.o to 20 y.o in 5-year increments. For each 5-
year stage, generate a list of the brands that you ever used with that time of your
life.
• After each brand write a single sentence about what that brand meant to you at
that time.
• Discuss what factors are influencing your choices: familiarity, aspiration, current
use, personal or family associations, trends, even your parents bought for you and
so on.

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 Geographic Variable
• May include city, district, region of the country, countrywide, areas of
similar weather patterns, density of population, etc.
• Often used in conjunction with demographic, psychographic or
behavioural variables to produce a more powerful segmentation of
audience. E.g.: geo-demographic mapping technology.

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 Example: Urban vs. Rural
• People who live in the same areas tend to share demographic and
lifestyle similarities.

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 Psychographic Variable
• Measure values & attitudes such as perceptions, motivations, personality,
memories and emotions, life style.
• Attempt to relate behaviour to the feelings on which it is based, e.g. the
wishes, sentiments and intentions of people. That is, why the buyer acts in a
certain way and not in another.
• Psychographics complement demographics and geographic and enhance
the connections and provide deeper understanding.
• “Get inside the head” of consumers with a greater degree of accuracy than
just knowing where they live or how many kids they have. Covers important
factors such as activities, interests and opinions and has the potential to
identify people who would be likely to have an interest in a product category.

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 Motivation: Hierarchy of Needs
• Maslow hierarchy of needs postulates 5 basic levels of human needs;
the arrangement based on their importance:
o Physiological: The basic level of primary needs for things required to sustain
life such as: food, water, sleep, and, to an extent, sex.
o Safety: Seeking physical safety and security, stability, familiar surroundings,
and so forth are manifestations of safety needs.
o Belongingness: Belongingness motives are reflected in a desire for love,
friendship, affiliation, and group acceptance.
o Esteem: Desires for status, superiority, self-respect, and prestige are examples
of esteem needs. These needs relate to the individual’s feelings of usefulness
and accomplishment.
o Self-Actualisation: This involves the desire for self-fulfilment, to become all
that one is capable of becoming.
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 Example: Volvo vs. Jaguar
• Advertising campaigns can be designed to show how a brand can fulfil
these needs. Advertisers can recognise that different market segments
emphasize different need levels. E.g. Volvo ad (security need) and
Jaguar ad (self actualisation need).

Safety for life Fulfilment for whole life

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Motivation: Hierarchy of Needs

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 Attitudes: Think – Feel – Do
• Attitudes are either a positive or negative predisposition towards a
person, an object or an issue.
• Three components of attitude: Cognitive (Think), Affective (Feel),
Conative (Do).
• Attitudes:
o are learned
o are relatively enduring
o influence behaviour

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 AIO Components
• Activities, Interests, and Opinions (AIO) is mainly used to define an individuals
psychographic profile. It tells a marketer of what a consumer likes, what are
her/his interests and how does her/his thought process work.
• The use of AIO in communication that help advertisers can definitely make some
decisions regarding promotional plans as well as advertising message.

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VALS 2 (Values and Lifestyles)

Chitty, Barker, and Shimp, 2005; see

also Wells et al 2011
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 VALS 2 (Values and Lifestyles)
Three Primary Consumer Motivations:
1. Ideals Motivation (principle): These consumers are guided in their
choices by their beliefs and principles rather than by feelings or desire
for social approval. They purchase functionality and reliability.
2. Achievement Motivation (status): These consumers strive for a clear
social position and are strongly influenced by the actions, approval, and
opinions of others. They purchase status symbols.
3. Self-Expression Motivation (action): These action-oriented consumers
strive to express their individuality through their choices. They purchase
experiences.

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 Personality: Big Five Model
• Personality: the unique psychological characteristics that lead to
consistent and lasting responses to the consumer’s environment.
• Many marketers use a concept related to personality—a person’s self-
concept (also called self-image). The idea is that people’s possessions
contribute to and reflect their identities—that is, “we are what we
consume.”
• Thus, to understand consumer behaviour, marketers must first
understand the relationship between consumer self-concept and
brand.

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Personality: Big Five Model

Hawkins, D.I., Best, R.J., and Coney, K.A., Consumer behaviour: Implications for
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Marketing Strategy, 1995, 6th Ed. Chicago: Irwin.
 Behavioural Variable
• Behavioural segmentation divides audience by behaviours –
when/why/how often they buy and use, what habits they have,
different ways of interacting with the product or service etc.
o May include variables such as:
o Purchase frequency.
o Customer loyalty/usage.
o Readiness stage.
o Attitude to product.
o Methods of using or interacting with the product/service.
o Purchase occasions – birthday, Christmas.

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Example: Chocolate Usage

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 Benefit Sought Variable
• Specific problems solved by the product.
• Specific benefits offered.

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 Profiling Target Audiences
• Demographics: age, sex, income, geography, etc
• Psychographics: traits that are emotional, psychological, cultural; what
lifestyle do they lead?
• Attitudes towards product category: need to know so you can deal with
what is already in their minds.
• Behaviours towards product category.
• What are benefits of product they are looking for?
• Media consumption habits: context and nature of media viewing.
• BUT seek out reliable, accurate information and data - don’t rely on
guesswork

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 Profiling Target Audiences
• Look at the whole person, not just
one demographic characteristic
• Avoid stereotypes – beware even of
‘positive’ stereotypes
• Laugh with them, not at them
• Make relevant ties to their special
causes
• Test your ads on a member of the
target audience
• Show diversity in your ads (but not
tokenism)

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 Activity 4: Describe Target Audience
• Work in group to describe target audience of Pandora

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K--cnDx0Eng 34
 Course Resource
• Belch, G.E. & Belch, M.A. (2018) Advertising and Promotion: an Integrated Marketing Communications Perspective. McGraw-Hill
Education: New York. P.174.
• Chitty, Barker and Shimp (2008) Integrated Marketing Communications 2ed, Cengage Learning Australia, pp 2–8.
• Drewniany B.L and Jewler A.J. (2008) Creative Strategy in Advertising 9ed, Wadsworth Cengage Learning Australia
• Jones J.P. (1999) The Advertising Business, Sage, pp 325–355.
• Keller, L.K. (2013) Strategic Brand Management 4th Ed, Pearson Publications, Australia.
• Hackley, C. & Hackley, R.A. (2018) Advertising & Promotion 4th Ed., Sage Publications, Australia.
• O’Guinn, Allen, Semenik (2009) Advertising & Integrated Brand Promotion, 5ed South-Western Cengage Learning.
• Schultz, Don E., Tannenbaum, Stanley I., and Lauterborn, Robert F. (1993) Integrated Marketing Communications. NTC Publishers:
Chicago. P.29.
• Smith, P. R. , Author, and Chaffey, Dave. Digital Marketing Excellence : Planning, Optimizing and Integrating Online Marketing. Fifth
ed. London (Online access via RMIT Library).
• Wells W., Spence-Stone R., Moriarty S. and Burnett J.(2015) Advertising Principles and Practice, Australasian 3rd, Pearson Australia.
• Wells W., Spence-Stone R., Crawford, Moriarty S. and Mitchell (2014) Advertising Principles and Practice, Australasian 3 ed, Pearson
Australia.
• Yeshin, T. (2006) Advertising, Thomson.
• Zikmund WG and d’Amico M (2002) Effective Marketing, 3rd ed, South-Western Thomson.

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