Communication strategy and Consumer Behavior

Communication Strategy is part of the marketing and business process

“Corporate Strategy concerns questions relating to where to compete in terms of industry, markets, and geography”
“Business Strategy concerns the question of how to compete”
“Functional Strategy concerns the question of how to implement a chosen business strategy”
Marketing Plan – Implementation and operationalization of the business and marketing strategy

Business
Strategy
(business´s long- Strategic Tactical marketing
run objectives)
marketing plan plan
 Target  Product
Marketing marketing features
plan (mainly on
product/brand  Value  Promotions
level) proposition  Merchandising
 Market  Pricing
opportunities  Sales channels
Strategic Tactical
marketing marketing
plan plan

⸸ The marketing plan is the central instrument for directing and coordination the marketing effort
⸸ The Strategic marketing plan lays out the target markets and the firm´s value proposition, based on analysis of
the best market opportunities
⸸ The tactical marketing plan specifies the marketing tactics, including product features, promotion,
merchandising, pricing, sales channels, and service
10 Types of entities that marketing covers:
 Organizations  Services
 Information  Ideas
 Persons  Goods
 Properties  Events
 Experiences  Places
Types of communication strategies
Push: “A push strategy uses the manufacture’s sales force, trade promotion, money and other means to induce
intermediaries to carry, promote, and sell the product to the end users”
Pull: “A pull strategy uses advertising, promotion, and other forms of communication to persuade consumer to
demand the product from intermediaries”
Profile: “intended to influence a wide range of stakeholders, not just customers and intermediaries”
The 3 dimensions are not mutual exclusive and should have a strategic balance. The strategies could be altered and
combined, as it´s need
Developing Effective Communications

Identify target Determine Design

Select channels
audience objectives communication

Manage
Decide media
Establish budget Measure results integrated
mix
communication

1
Identify Target Audience
Definition: “potential buyers of the company´s products, current users, deciders, or influencers, and individuals,
groups, particular publics, or the general public”

 The target audience is a critical influence on the communicator´s decisions about what to say, how, when,
where, and to whom
“It is imperative that the strategy be geared to the communications needs of the target audience”
 Target – Examples  Local – Region – City – Country – Continent – Worldwide
The way to your target audiences:
1. STP Modell to identify and segment your target audience
2. Describing your target audience:
a. External sources
b. Internal sources
c. Target group descriptions
Segmentation Targeting Positioning (STP)
 The formula segmentation, targeting, positioning (STP) is the essence of strategic marketing
 Segmentation – Targeting – Positioning (In the last two you have usually the Communication Strategy)
 You have one big group and segmentation cut it in to pieces to found good targets and make it easier to work
 “Market segmentation divides a market into well-defined slices. A market segment consists of a group of
customers who share a similar set of needs and wants”
 Segmentation
o Descriptive characteristics
» Geographic
» Demographic
» Psychographic (sports-oriented, outdoor-oriented, …)
o Behavioral Consideration (in what people are interested in)
» Focus on consumer-response
» Eg Regular occasion, special occasions
» Eg Ready to change to a new service
 However, you do segmentation, just find identifiable and distinctive groups with common characteristics and
similar response to marketing actions
 Sozio-demographic factors are a good start for segmentation (it helps when you don’t know where to start,
because they are easy to look for them). For example, for making advertising in Facebook you have the options
of age, gender, location, etc
 Target group segmentation based on market research companies, mix of a lot of factors. From there you have a
lot of types of segments and you can take the better for your brand. Important to work with a description/ a
profile of a person more than numbers, because that make thing harder when you need to translate that
information into a communication strategy. The highest definition profile of the consumer the best
 Generations defined is just a starting group
 Targeting, which of these segments you define is the one you choose for making advertising and
communicating?
 Targeting of customers by relevant factors business and communication success:
o Status (existing vs. New clients) o Usage situation (how, when, why using the
products)
o Sales potential
o Income
o Costumer-level (new/existing, return-rate)
o By consumer lifestyle (early/late adapter)
 Effective segmentation criteria
o Measurable – The size, purchasing power and characteristics of the segments can be measured
o Substantial - The segments are large and profitable enough to serve
o Accessible - The segments can be effectively reached and served
o Differentiable - The segments are conceptually distinguishable and respond differently
o Actionable - Effective programs can be formulated for attracting and serving the segments
 Positioning: different brands for each target, you can have more than one positioning depending on your
interest in each group
 Define a position in the mind of the target group and deliver them some central benefits
 Positioning is not about the product but what the buyer thinks about the product or organization
 Positioning is a think of perspective, how people see you and that is important for the communication strategy.
You need this to know how to plan de strategy
 The task, therefore, is to actively manage the way in which audiences perceive brands. This means thar
marketing communications strategy should be concerned… that the target audience understands what the brand
does, what it means (to them) and can ascribe value to it
 Strong connection to communication strategy because the communication is based on the position of the
brand/service/product
 Defining target audience based on external and internal information
o External
Company/Brand
External
o Sozio-demographic factors
o Market size Internal
o Market trend
o Potential markets
o Market research – learn about each group and take good information
o Social listening – you listen in social media how people is talking about you, in what is connecting, in which
context. It only works if you are in social media
o Internal
o Current consumers
o Cross-selling consumer
o CRM (Loyalty programs…)
 o Social listening
 Current vs Intended (desired) target group: you have to adapt the intended target to the current one, because
usually what you think it would happen is not the real situation. With communication you can move the current
consumer to the intended target – WRONG?

 Intended (desired) target group:

o More sales potential o Position within corporate portfolio
o Regrowing consumers o Re-shift to original position
o New market segment
 Describe and illustrate your target group ; because it´s Easier to work with; easier to explain to other and a good
point of reference
 Target groups are a combination of factors, to identify the relevant factor for your target group
 Reality check: blurred target audience
o Not clearly measurable
o Heterogenic group
o Large group
o New target audience
o Lack of information
Checklist:

 Targeting and positioning is important for communication strategy

 Which information do we have? What do we really know?
 Current target audience (who are you talking to) = / ≠ desired target audience?
 How could we get more information? (Research, testing, …)
 Know your targets: what do we know and how we get them?
 Describe your target audience
 Relevance of target audience for the communication strategy:
o Development of communication idea (what to say to out target group: message, tonality…)
o Type of communication campaign
o Media channels (where and when we reach our target audience)
o Budget (investment and split of budget)
o Integrate consumer insights
Determine objectives
⸸ Which button of the consumer do
we push?
⸸ What kind of communication we
want to do?
⸸ What is the briefing to the creative
agency?
 The business goals define
communication objectives
 Business goals: Sales volume, Market share, Profits, return on investment, enter a new market. These ones
define your communication objectives
Communication objectives: Develop brand awareness, increase product demand, change consumers attitudes,
enhance purchase action, rise re-buy rate, increase sales, increase market share, a quire new customer
 Marketing plan as the “man in the middle” between business and communications
Business goals Marketing plan Communication objectives

 Marketing plan  Implementation and operationalization of the business and marketing strategy
 The communication objectives are in the marketing plan that is divided into Strategic marketing plan and Tactical
marketing plan
 Start to determine the communications objectives by analysis of the current marketing situation
 What is our current situation?  How do we react on this situation? (Define objectives)
Market/Category leader  Stay top of mind
We are a new product in the market  Raise awareness
EG New competitor in our market  Stay top of mind
Online sales declined by 10%  Online sales campaign
Brand awareness declines  Brand campaign
 Analyse the market share, who is aware of the products, how many people tried it and if they are satisfied or not.
And with that info you can get what type of reactions you have

Type of communication objectives:

Category need
 Category need: “the buyer’s perception of requiring something (a product or service) to remove or satisfy a
perceived discrepancy between the current motivational state and the desired motivational state”
 “Products are made in a factory, but brands are created in the mind”
 Informative advertising aims to create 1. Brand awareness and 2. Knowledge of new products or new features of
existing products  New products/brand will always begin with a communications objective of establishing
category need
 Explain what is, why you need it, in what context you use it, etc. People usually don´t know how that works or
what is that, or nothing at all
Brand awareness
 Fostering the consumer’s ability to 1. Recognize (easier to achieve; more important at POS – [inside store, search
results]), know it when you see it or 2. Recall the brand within the category, in sufficient detail to make a
purchase (more difficult to achieve; more important outside POS [remember a brand when searching online]) —
Recall is to search for the exact name, knowing it
 POS: point of sale
 Top-of-mind bran d strategy
o Create awareness of the focus product/brand in association with the product category
o More relevant for low engagement context
o “Recognition and recall of brand names and corporate images are felt … to be sufficient triggers to stimulate a
behavioral response”
  Is important connecting to branding/corporate identity
Brand attitude
 Helping consumer evaluate the brand’s perceived ability to meet a currently relevant need
 Relevant brand needs may be 1. Negatively oriented (problem removal, problem avoidance, incomplete
satisfaction, normal depletion) or 2. Positively oriented (intellectual stimulation, social approval)
 Fulfill consumers need
o Need level: “Do you see this product solving a problem or filling a need for you?” The stronger the need, the
higher the expected consumer interest
o Gap level: “Do other products currently meet this need and satisfy you?” The greater the gap, the higher the
expected consumer interest
Brand purchase intention
 Encourage consumers to make mental commitment to buy a product
 Promotional  Sales
 Reinforcement advertising (post-buy-process: advertising intended to reassure purchasers. The purpose is to
maintain market share)
 Reminder advertising (“hey buy/use-us-again”: which is a type of targeted advertising focused on existing
customers and keeping the name of an established brand. E.g., Coca cola
 Connection to Re-Targeting/online Advertising
 Situation: High costs of acquisition of new customers  Goal: We want to hold out customers. It´s expensive and
it takes a lot of effort to get customers; so you want them to stay with you, because if that doesn´t happen you
are loosing time and money in communication
Additional brand related objectives
 Brand image
 Brand credibility
 Brand engagement
 Preference
 Sense of brand community
 Brand feelings
 Brand related work is a marathon without a finish line
Communication objectives could be:
҉ Short or long term (tactical sales/long time brand building)
҉ Altered and combined
҉ Fulfill various goals: per target group unit, per business unit, with different objectives per media channel
Acting SMART – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound
Communications objectives = Defining the focus of company communications
҉ Ensure that the communication goals are based on the company’s strategic objectives.
҉ Define communications objective (creating awareness, building preferences, purchase…)
҉ Setting the communications benchmarks (quantitative, temporal) =>SMART
҉ Consider the budget and the organizational resources to achieve the communication objectives
Design Communication
1. Message strategy (what to say?)
 Define the topic our communication
 Reflects 1. Business goals and 2. Brand position
 Related to communication objectives:
o Product or service performance (e.g., “Best quality in the market”)
o Brand-related aspects (e.g., “Communicate the brand as being contemporary”)
2.Creative strategy: Definition and theoretical background (how to say it?)
 Translating a message into a specific communication
 Communication effectiveness depends on how a massage is being expressed (“How it looks/what it says”)
 Creative strategies are the way marketers translate their messages into a specific communication. It´s
classified as either  1. Informational or 2. Transformational appeals
 2 types of appeals
o Informational appeals:
 Elaborate on product or service attributes or benefits
 Informal appeals assume strictly rational processing of the communication on the consumer’s part
 Logic and reason rule
o Emotional appeals:
 Elaborate on a non-product related benefit or image
 Transformational appeals often attempt to strip up (positive/negative) emotions that will motivate
purchase
3. Message source (Who should say it?)
 Consider wide range of sources: media (TV, online…), Persons (testimonials, influencers, celebrities, experts),
Situation (eg. Sport sponsoring, etc)
 Factors for credibility of a message source: 1. Expertise, 2. Trustworthiness, 3. Likability
 Messages delivered by attractive or popular sources can achieve higher attention and recall
Communication as part of a holistic consumer experience  “In reality, your customers don´t distinguish between
your product lines, service staff, call center, website, or social feeds. They experience your brand as one entity and
their impressions and associations of that one entity will determine whether they want to use your product or
service”. “The customer experience changes over time, moving from incidental exposure to a brand for which they
have no need and little interest in, to an intimate understanding of what your brand has to offer”
Crafting the communication  Communication should generally:
» Resonate with consumers rationally and emotionally
» Distinguish the brand from competitors
» Be broad and flexible enough to translate into different media, markets, and time periods (=> communication
platform)
» A good ad normally focuses on one or two core selling propositions.
Select Channels
We have two very general categories of channels Notes:
͐ If a person is talking to you, you will trust
1. Personal Communications Channels
more than for TV. Human communication
͐ Personal communications channels let two or more persons
͐ Someone recommends something – We
communicate face-to-face or person-to-audience want that
͐ Effective cause of individualized presentation and feedback (eg ͐ They use this a lot for lawyers and doctors
direct and interactive marketing, word-of-mouth marketing,
͐ When you don´t know if something is good
personal selling)
or not →personal relation→ Experts
͐ Information received directly from personal influence channels is
͐ Salesperson – B2B – Someone comes to you
generally more persuasive and trustful than information received and explain it
through mass media
͐ Personal influence carries especially great weight:
o When products are expensive, risky, or purchased infrequently
o When products suggest something about the user´s status or taste
͐ Examples for personal recommendations: doctor, plumber, hotel, lawyer, insurance agent, interior decorator,
financial consultant
͐ Further distinction of personal communication channels – It´s a work of mouth, people talking about it
o Advocate channels: Company salespeople contacting buyers in the target market
o Expert channels: Independent experts making statements to target buyers
 o Social channels: Neighbors, friends, family members, and associates talking (online) to target buyers
͐ Steps to stimulate personal communication from brand side:
1. Identify influential individuals and devote extra effort on them (early adaptors, influencers, …)
2. Create opinion leaders by supplying possible opinion leaders with the product on attractive terms
(influencers, journalists, …)
3. Use influential or believable people in testimonial advertising
4. Develop word of mouth publicity by requesting satisfied clients to promote their product among their
friends (“Recommend us to a friend using this promo code…”)
5. Establish online discussion groups and communities
͐ Online media could combine personal and mass communication channels, because you can go from one to
the other fast by this media
o Website Possibility to start a direct chat
o Youtube/Twitch/SoMe  using comments/interactions to start a personal conversation
2. Nonpersonal (Mass) Communications Channels (e.g., TV, Billboards)
͐ Nonpersonal channels are communications directed to more than one person
͐ Include advertising, sales promotions, events and experiences, and public relations
͐ Mass communications affect personal attitudes and behavior though a two-step process
1. Ideas often flow from online, TV, print, etc. to opinion leaders (early adaptor)
2. And from these to less media-involved population groups
 The mere presence of mass-media advertising might influence sales: Consumers might believe a heavily
advertised brand must be of good quality. Basically, investing money in communication tell something about you
as a company/brand
Personal and Nonpersonal Communications Channels are use in:
 Short-term/Temporary Communications channels
o Temporary over well-defined tome periods
o Here we use communication strategy more
o E.g., advertising, sales promotion, public relations, event communication, direct marketing
 Long-term Communications channels
o Long-term, more permanent character (10 years view)
o E.g., Color, brand, look, brand/product, and packaging/store design (you don´t change this easily)
Owned-Earned-Paid

Direct
communication
Paid Media: everything you paid for
 Covers all paid media space: Advertising, Sponsoring, etc.
 Advantage: established process of planning and buying, predictable and calculable
 Advertising (TV, Print)
 Sponsoring
 Paid Digital (display ads, sponsors Posts)
 Pay per click
Earned media: you try to initiate a conversation; you don´t paid for this; you need to achieve it with good ideas
 Earned media means to get your brand into free media rather than having to pay for it through advertising
 Consumer becomes the channel
 Earned media is built on brand interaction in free (online) media (not paid context)
 Listen and respond to positive and negative interactions (comment, discussions, etc.)
 Try to stimulate earned media through word-of-mouth marketing
 Trustworthy to consumers
 Link between paid and earned: initiate an interaction (online) in paid media and hope it continues in earned
media. E.g.:
o Online: User generated content (“Share your photo with…”), challenges on TikTok, reviews,
shares/comments
o Offline: Media Coverage (Red-Bull space jump)  generating non-paid media attention
 High values consumer interaction!
 Risk: communication is not managed by brand/marketer, difficult to predict the outcome
 Online:
o Sharing
o Mentions
o Re-Pots
o Challenges
 Offline:
o Word-of-mouth
o Public relation
Owned Media: the media you can control (you can do whatever you want)
 Owned media are the channels the brand could control
 Owned media is split into two channels:
o Fully owned media (e.g., brand website, newsletter, packaging)
o Partially owned media (e.g., Facebook fan page or Twitter account). It´s not 100% on your control, you must
follow the rules of the app
 Owned media could create brand portability. That means you can extend your brand´s presence from your own
web site to other places across the online world
 Advantage:
o Detailed targeting
o Good control
o Easy to scale media investment
o Testing of communication assets
 Goal: direct consumer-interaction on fully owned media (own brand communication ecosystem)
 Online:
o Website
o Social Media Channels
 Offline:
o Shops
o Brochures
Marketing Communications Mix – Types of communication
Advertising Advertising is any paid form of nonpersonal presentation and promotion
Mobile communication Online/mobile marketing and messages can take many forms to interact
Online and social media marketing with consumers
Event and experiences are company-sponsored activities and programs
Events and experiences
designed to create brand-related interactions with consumers
Public relations and publicity Influence company/product image
Packaging Long-term, intense touchpoint
Personal selling is a typically face-to-face process in which a seller tries to
Personal selling
convince a buyer to purchase a particular product or service
 Involves the use of mail, phone, e-mail, online messaging, or in-person
Direct marketing
interaction to communicate directly
Word of mouth involves the passing of information from person to person
Word of mouth
by oral communication
Advertising:
 “Advertising” as a very wide generic term with different forms and uses
 Typically, the advertiser purchases media time (in case of television and radio advertising) or space (in the case of
print advertising) in order to convey the company´s message to its target audience. It´s a large group of persons
 Advertising typically reaches geography dispersed buyers. It could build long term brand image and boost short-
term sales
 Television advertising
o Strengths:
1. Vividly demonstrate product attributes and consumer benefits
2. Portray user and usage imagery, brand personality, etc.
3. Tap a captive audience during live programming (World cup, super bowl, etc.)
4. Reaches a broad spectrum of consumers
o Drawbacks:
1. Message and brand may be overlooked
2. Lots of clutter in overload of media channels
3. High volume of competitive advertisements
4. High costs
o The Generation gap, generations are big groups. You use it depending on who you want to address
 Print Advertising
o Print media (Newspapers, Magazines) is more passive medium
o Could be used both for 1. Brand image advertising and 2. Detailed product information
o Newspaper loose relevance
o Magazines (especially special interest) still relevant
 Online Advertising
o Advantages:
1. Can trace effects by unique visitors clicks on page/ad
2. Enables companies to test different messages and creative solutions  on going optimize the advertising
campaign
3. Contextual placement
4. Can place advertising based on user behavior/interests (search engine keywords, etc.)
5. Direct action possible (e.g., link to online shop)
o Drawbacks:
1. Consumers can screen out most messages
2. Ads can be less effective than they appear (ads-fraud, brand safety)
3. Rise of online channels challenge marketers
 Effectiveness of print advertising vs. Online advertising
o Current studies show that people remember print ads better than digital ads after one week
o Print advertising can be more effective – even if they are more expensive
o Study results:
1. People spent more time looking at print ads, their pupils dilated more, and their biometric measurements
indicated greater interest
2. Immediately after exposure, there was no difference in how much people remembered print vs digital ads
3. But when measured a week later, people remembered the content of print ads better and there was
greater brain activity in the memory regions
 Radio advertising – Radio as a pervasive medium
o Flexible: radio stations are very targeted, ads are relatively inexpensive to produce and place, and short
closings for scheduling them allow for quick response
 o Very local/Regional medium. Allows balance between broad and localized market coverage
o Lacks visual images
 Place Advertising = Out-of-home (OOH/OoH)
o This is a starting point
o “…outside of home and where consumers work and play”
o Billboards/out-of-home (fixed and temporary)
o Product placement (movies, e.g., James Bonds)
o POS Advertising = All media at a POS
o POS means point of sale; it is relevant for some type of products
 Events and Experiences
o Events and experiences offer many advantages as long as they are engaging and implicit, meaning that they
involve indirect soft sell
o Becoming part of a personally relevant moment in consumer´s lives through sponsored events and
experiences can broaden and deepen a company´s or brand´s relationship with the target market
o Daily/regular encounters with brands may also affect consumer´s brand attitudes and beliefs
o Long-term engagement raises effectiveness
o Reasons for sponsoring an event:
1. To identify with a particular target market or lifestyle
2. To increase the salience of a company or product name
3. To create or reinforce perceptions of key brand image associations
4. To enhance corporate image
5. To create experiences and evoke feelings
6. To express commitment to the community or on social issues
7. To entertain key clients or reward key employees
8. To permit merchandising or promotional opportunities
 Word of mouth: Powerful personal communication
o Passing of information from person to person by (oral) communication (trustful, credible)
o Social media can be viewed as a specific instance of word of mouth, where personal communication occurs
online and could be observable by others
o Marketers can influence naturally occurring word of mouth as well as help to create word of mouth by
“seeding” a message that is likely to the company and its offerings
 Publicity:
o The primary goal of publicity is to attract attention to the company or its offerings without using paid
advertising
o Involves securing editorial space, as opposed to paid space, in the media to promote a product, service, idea,
place, person, or organization
o Downside: lack if predictable outcome
 Public relations:
o Actively Manage the overall reputation of the company and its offering among the relevant stakeholders,
while building relationships with the community. Not just attention (in contrast to publicity)
 Types of media: press kits, speeches, seminars, annual reports, charitable donations, publications, community
relations, lobbying, identity media, and company magazines
 The appeal of public relations and publicity is based on its high credibility: news stories and features from third
party are more authentic and credible to readers than ads
 Publicity can achieve multiple objectives:
o Builds awareness by placing stories in the media
o Builds credibility by communicating the message in an editorial context
o Boost sales force and dealer enthusiasm with stories about a new product before it is launched (“Everyone is
talking about…”)
o Boosts enthusiasm
 o Reduced promotion cost
 Publicity plays an important role in a variety of tasks:
o Launching new products
o Repositioning mature products (e.g., “I love NY” campaign in early 1980s)
o Building or rebuilding interest in a product category
o Defending products that have encountered public problems (e.g., managing crises)
o Building the corporate image in a way that reflects favorably on its products (e.g., Apple Keynote speeches)
 Public relations functions:
o Provide press coverage by presenting news and information about the organization in the most positive light
o Manage corporate communications by promoting understanding of the organization through internal and
external communications
o Engage in lobbying
 Packaging
o Packaging is usually perceived during a buyer´s first contact with the product
o Shape the buyer´s subsequent evaluation of the product and the final purchase decision
o Highly effective communication touchpoint (frequency and duration of usage, presence in consumers daily
life)
o Core principles:
1. Visibility
2. Differentiation
3. Transparency (ingredients, information about the product and the brand)
 Online Communication
o Online marketing and messages can take many forms to interact with consumers. From 1. Active search mode
to 2. Just browsing and surfing online
o Company websites for as main information and sales hub
o Owned media
o Driving online traffic. Ideally to the company´s own media ecosystem
1. SEO: Search engine optimization
2. SEA: Search engine marketing
3. Newsletter
4. Amazon Advertising
 Social Media
o Social networks (earned media, influencer marketing, etc)
o Online communities/forums
o Blogs
o Customer reviews
 Factors for planning the media channels
o Budget
o Communication objectives: What we want to achieve?
o Type of market (type of product market, consumers ready to take a purchase)
o How we could reach our target group
o Advantages/disadvantages of media channels
o Organizational aspects (availability, timing)
Media selection
Def: Media selection is finding the most cost-effective media to
deliver the desired number and type of exposures to the target
audience
Desired number  Reach/Frequency
Type of exposures  Type media to fulfill communication objective
(e.g., brand awareness vs. interaction)
Media mix along customer journey and buyer readiness

Role of an external media agency:

͐ Media agencies develop a media strategy, buy, and organize the media channels for your communication
campaign
͐ Mostly for paid advertising
͐ Specialized agencies: influencer, industries (pharma, fashion)
Interaction between media channels and creative ideas:

Budget
Establish the total marketing communications budget  One of the most difficult marketing decisions is
determining how much to spend on marketing communications
Four (4) common methods for determining the communications budget:
1. Affordable method
2. Percentage-of-sales method
3. Objective and task budgeting
4. Competitive-parity budgeting
Factors for determining the communications budget:
 Stage in product life cycle (New or established brand? Mature, declining brand?)
 Product differentiation (commodities or highly differentiable products)
 Market share
 Type of market (product or brand driven market)
 Message complexity (complex customer decision making? Non-homogeneous customer needs?)
 Reach/Frequency (How many contacts we want to have in which period of time competitive communication)
 Available resources (budget and organizational)
Measure results
Measuring marketing and communication results
1. Introduction to measuring marketing and communication results
2. Essential Marketing KPIs
3. Examples of working with KPIs
1. Introduction to measuring marketing and communication results
Metrics vs. KPIs
 Marking KPI
 Focus on specific areas of performance
 Marketing metrics
o Evaluate and follow any given process by definable metrics Marketing Key Performance
o Evaluate marketing efficiency Metrics: e.g., Indicator: e.g.,
Analyze website number of clicks on
o Obtain several measurements to create a value traffic registration button
Key Performance Indicators  Standard, Specific, non-individual metrics
1. Measure impact, results and progress
2. Measure impact, results, and progress
a. Become better marketer
b. Inform senior management
3. Justify and secure our job
a. Cover our back
SMART Framework
 Specific
 Measurable In order to influence newsletter subscriptions for our weekly newsletter I
 Achievable want to reach 5k potential new subscribers with a two-week Social Media
 Relevant campaign
 Time-bound
Setting KPIs
 Set KPIs before you start with the communication (ex-ante)
 Choose relevant (SMART) KPIs for project, marketing department or/and company
 Start with focus on one main KPI
 Only KPIs you could influence
Measuring KPIs depending on their importance and relevance:
 Weekly  very important project and strategy could be changed fast
 Monthly  tracking growth rates over time (to reduce variations over time)
 Quarterly  check overall strategy in a large context (e.g., SEO strategy, consumer satisfaction)
Marketing and Communication Results Measure the impact and results depending on type of communication
Valid and easy  Complicated and uncertain
Online advertising (technology advantage) Brand and corporate image
Direct marketing and sales promotion Public relation
Short-term and focused Lack of budget/resources to measure
Marketing-related business and consumer side KPIs 
Business  Measure available business data
» Sales results
» Marketing spending  Marketing Efficiency
» Consumer related (consumer lifetime value, buying frequency, etc.)
Consumer  Measure consumer side reactions to communication
» Action/Behavior (number driven)  Click, response, shares, purchase, etc.
» Attitude:
͐ Brand Awareness, Brand Attitude, Brand Image, etc.
͐ Recommendation, Satisfaction, etc.
Business-side: Media channel-related Metrics and KPIs
Paid media:
» Cost per Click
» Budget per campaign
Earned media:
» Online: Number of shares
» Offline: Number of mentions in press articles
Owned media:
» Online: Website Traffic
» Offline: Shop Visitors
Consumer Side  Testing
» Measure consumer side reactions to communication
» Testing as part of establishing (Pre-Phase) and evaluating (Post-Phase) KPIs
o Connecting to Market Research
» Pre-Test:
o Consumer Market Research (various methods)
o Define Status quo (awareness, likability, satisfaction)  zero measurement to define point of reference
o Test and optimize campaign before start
 Laboratory test: measure physical/psychological reactions (eye-tracking)
 A/B-Testing (mainly online)
» Post-Evaluation: Business and Consumer Side
o Overall impact of a campaign/communication action:
 Sales results, Clicks, Shares, etc.
 Change of pre-tested factors (awareness, likability, satisfaction)
 Effect of campaign to achieve the object
 Cost: overall cost, cost-per-click, cost-per-acquisition, cost-per-thousand contacts, cost-per-whatever
 Elements of the campaign worked well/not so well
2. Essential Marketing KPIs
Common marketing KPIs:
» Sales revenue
» Cost per sales (cost to generate one “sale”)
» Cost per lead (costs for one potential customer, one e-mail subscriber)
» Conversation rate (People do an action out of a group of people the communication addresses)
» Brand awareness
Common brand KPIs (consumer side):
» Brand awareness
o Recognition
o Recall
» Brand consideration (brand familiarity as indicator to make a purchase)
» Action (purchase intent)
Common brand KPIs  Brand Equity Index
» Measure the value of a brand ( relevant for value of a company/brand as a crucial asset)
» Brand equity is strategically crucial, but famously difficult to quantify
» Various approaches to measure brand equity
Common marketing KPIs  Customer Lifetime Value (CVL)
» How much a customer is worth to us
» Important when we wish to hold an ongoing relationship with a customer (customer-centric businesses)
» Important to know to cluster customer and e.g., focus on high-value-consumer
Common marketing KPIs  Simple CLV
» Simple CLV = Average Transaction Size x Number of Transactions x Reaction Period
» Example simple CLV Coffee shop = 4eur (average sale) x 100 (annual visits) x 5 (years) = 2 eur
Common marketing KPIs  Complex CLV
» CLV = Margins, Discount rates and retention rate mix in a formula
Common marketing KPIs  Cost of Customer Acquisition
» Cost of Customer Acquisition (COCA)  Cost associated in convincing a prospective customer to buy your
company´s product or service
Online KPIs
» SEO Ranking/Traffic
» Result of performance (banner) campaigns
» Google Analytics
» Quality score: the quality and relevance of your paid search landing page
» Click-through rate (CTR): how well your keywords and ads are performing by how many visitors click on the ads
» Impressions: the number of times the ads/website are being viewed by searchers
» Average position: determines how your ad typically ranks versus other ads
» Conversion rate (CT): how many people who click on your ad go through to perform a desired action on your site
Industry Benchmarks for Online Campaign
» Industry benchmarks helps to evaluate if your campaign is a success
» Use industry benchmarks if the company have no internal points of reference
Selection of website KPIs
» Total traffic: macro view of how the campaign has driven traffic to the site
» Traffic by channel: traffic to the site segmented by main media/campaign channels
» Bounce rate: percentage of visitors who leave before performing a desired action
» Conversions: quantifiable measure of how visitors have performed a desired action
» Data capture: the quality of data obtained from visitors arriving at your site
Social Media KPIs
» Each platform defines the KPIs and metrics
» Organic vs. paid KPIs (e.g., number of followers vs. click on paid ad-post)
o Organic = Overall “performance”, more brand related
o Paid = Temporary and campaign based
» CPM (cost per mile – the amount an advertiser pays a website per one thousand visitors who see it
advertisements)
» CPVV (cost per valued view)
» Percentage of target audience reached – how effectively your ads are reaching the right people for your
campaign
» Frequency: the time ads served to someone across different channels
» View-thru-rate: a measure of the percentage of the video fully watched
» Positive earned media: where people shared your content positively
» Social sentiment:
o Social sentiment: measuring the emotions behind social media and other mentions (positive, negative,
neutral)
o Focusing on context (tone of conversations, comments, and mentions). Not on absolute numbers
o Not a real KPI, more a soft metric to interpret absolute numbers
o As long as the majority of customers have neutral to positive feelings toward your company, your overall
social sentiment will be positive
» Visualizing KPIs  Marketing Dashboard for reporting
Manage integrated communication
Develop and manage integrated communication
WHY » Concept of “Integrated marketing communications” (IMC)
» Marketing communications planning framework
HOW » Process of developing communication
» Overview of agency world
Integrated Marketing Communications:
» An approach to managing a communication campaign through a coordinated use of different communication
tools that work in concert (to act in harmony and conjunction) and reinforce one another to enable the company
to achieve its strategic goals
» 360 Degree view on the company itself and the consumer
» IMC requires coordination of all media activities (on/offline, personal/nonpersonal channels)
» Attempt to establish a permanent and efficient contact with both potential consumers and with actual
consumers
» Integrated Marketing Communication must be seen as a systemic process, which involves the consumer´s going
through a sequence of stages which ends with the desire to make the purchase
» Support of integrated advertising agencies
» Advantages:
1. Stronger message consistency across channels
2. Unify brand image and message along communication
3. Consistency leads to better results (branding, favorability, purchase intend, persuasion)
4. Built brand equity (on the longer run)
5. Force company to thing in a holistic way about communication and how to address the consumer consistent
at every touchpoint
» Drawbacks:
1. Managing (huge) number of channels/communication platforms (e.g., on/offline, above/below the line)
2. Reluctant interests in the company (e.g., brand building vs direct sales). Focus on internal organization instead
of focus on consumer
3. Complexity: develop and organize creative assets, managing media channels
Advantages of IMC – Two exemplary findings from research
1- Consistent messaging across channels improves branding
⸸ In comparison to single-channel campaigns, multi-channel campaigns positively affect explicit (aided)
measures brand recognition, recall, attitude
⸸ Similar messages presented in separate media will be encoded differently, developing a broader, more
complex memory network
2- Consistent branding improves favorability
⸸ Multimedia campaigns are evaluated more favorably when retrieval cues (slogans, visuals, symbols) remain
consistent across channels
⸸ Additional finding: while consistent content characteristics may lead to higher favorability or likeability, it may
negatively influence recall recognition due to lack of cutting through
3- Importance of consistency
⸸ Consistent communication message is crucial part of communication success!  Consistency is king
⸸ Balance between consistency and adaption to media channels and variation over time
⸸ Consistency is difficult to reach (internal focus on main message) and challenging to manage (number and
format of media channel)
Communications planning framework
 The 8 Steps of Kotler
 Strategic balance between push, pull, profile strategy
 Brand positioning
 Competitive market conditions
 Business perspective (goals, needs)
 General factors in setting the marketing communications mix
o Type of product market: consumer vs business markets, high vs low involvement good
o Buyer-readiness stage: type of communication tool, cost-effectiveness of tools
o Product lifecycle stage
o Positions of the company/brand in the market
The interrelationships of communication elements The marketing communications planning framework

Communication and probability

“To increase the odds for a successful marketing communications campaign, marketers must attempt to increase the
likelihood that per step occurs” Kotler
“Anyone who says, “yes and no”, who says “definitely and definitely not”, who says “this will work, and this will not”,
is full of shit, because they don´t know. Understanding that we are dealing with likelihoods and probabilities is one of
the deep insights that marketing people need to get” Bob Hoffman
Why should an advertiser use an advertising agency?
 Experience: An agency is able to think beyond the parameters of the company who often are too close to their
own business to “to see the wood from the trees”
 Outsourcing “Creativity”, creativity as agencies “special discipline”
 Credibility: making professional advertising
 Value: optimizing communication for maximum impact in the market
Types of advertising agencies
 Network agencies, integrated communication agencies “full service”
 (Independent) Boutique agencies, focus on one aspect (e.g., creativity, political communication, lobbying) or with
special approach (culture)
 Industry focused agencies (pharma, fashion)
 Local to global level
 Service: market research, media buying
 Customized agencies (working for only one client)
 In-house agencies
 Various types of agencies
o Advertising o Event
o Design/Branding o Direct sales
o Media o POS
o Public relation o Social media
o Online
Creative brief as the main starting point for developing communication
 Why?  Foundational document of brand communications
 The creative brief is the foundation of a client-agency project (organizational aspect)
 Creative brief summarizes what it is the agency supposed to do
 Summarize the communication task from the creative perspective
 Distilling the communications strategy/task as short as possible
 Inform and inspire the creative team
The creative brief isn´t the answer. It´s the starting point
Example

Six key elements (from agency perspective)

Single Minded
Goal Target Audience Problem Insight Action
Proposition
The information
that changes how
The group of
The business goal Why don´t we our target The one message The business goal
individuals we
of a campaign. It achieve our goal audience looks at that we want to from consumer
want to engage to
should be SMART yet? the tell our audience POV
achieve the goal
problem/product
/etc.
How does the
What could we
What attributes What is stopping brand/product What do we want
What is the client tell them to look
bond this group the company help use this the consumer to
business try to at the
of people from achieving insight to get think/feel/do to
achieve? problem/product
together? the goal? around the reach our goal?
in a new light?
problem?
Other elements (from agency perspective)
 Background (additional information about company, industry, etc.)
 Measurements
 Reasons-to-Believe (Why a consumer should buy/trust what they see)
 Mandatories (organizational matters, use of certain design elements)
 Channels (which media channels should be used considered)
Common mistakes (from agency perspective)
 Goal  Defining to many goals
 Target audience  Confusing end user and target audience / Too broad or unclear
 Problem  Addressing only the business problem and forget the human problem
 Insight  Confuse insight and observation / Make it clear and inspiring, and truly single-minded
 Action  Not clearly define what customers should think or do
Aspects for planning a communication strategy:
1. Balance of objectives  Balance between short- and long-term
objectives
⸸ Although long-term effects always produce some short-term
effects, the reverse is not true and long-term effects are not
simply an accumulation of short-term effects
⸸ A balance of brand (long-term) and activation (short-term)
elements are needed, as well as a clear understanding of what
constitutes each
⸸ The context influences the balance of long- and short-term
elements
⸸ Ideally, a campaign will be designed around an idea (or
“communication platform”) that can elastically accommodate
brand and activation ideas
2. Planning for well-organized marketers
 ⸸ A good marketing plan…
» Has max 20 PPT Slides and could be presented in 60 min
» Follow three phases: Diagnosis/Strategy/Tactics
» Is pretty similar to a brand plan (focus depending on corporate brand strategy)
» Disclaimer: subjective, but practical, assessment
⸸ Diagnosis:
» Segmentation: “The clue is in the name “market segmentation”. It has nothing to do with your organization
and everything to do with the market”
⸸ Strategy:
» Targeting: “Focus on where you can win, where the wins are big and where the victory fits within the
broader remit of long-term business strategy”
» Portrait: “The portrait should capture the challenge. More reality than wishful thinking”
» Position: “Positioning is just the intended brand image. It is what we want the target consumer to think
when they think about our brand”
» Objectives: Which marketing level do you need to pull? 3-4 SMART Objectives
⸸ Tactics: How do we do it? In practice
» Gannt: Project management/Timing tool
» Budget: “…when we get to the budget slide everyone of any importance gets super fucking interested, super
fucking quickly”
Digital marketing communication
Everything should be Mobil-suitable
Overview and introduction to online communication
 Holistic digital marketing. What is relevant and what not?
 Using digital technology to help reaching target consumers. Our customers are
there
 Online communication is part of IMC and the media mix. Don´t split it
 Channels of online communication establishing new rules, mechanisms, and
processes. You need to know each platform (rules, know-how, processes, etc.)
 Consumer behavior changed in online channels compare to offline channels (available information, interaction,
pace, etc.). Change systematically; so you have to pay attention. People have more invo
 Focus on interactive elements, encouraging consumers to participate in the marketing process
 Online communication builds a direct connection between communication/advertising and sales  e-commerce
 Always- on user and communication
 Emerging ethical and regulatory issues (manipulation, privacy)
 Data-driven marketing  Big data analytics
 Comparison of offline and online channels:
> Offline communication  “Bowling approach”
͐ “Traditional” one-way communication
> Online communication  “Pinball approach”
͐ Social media communication
 Benefits through digital marketing
> Global reach (communication not necessarily bound to a specific geographic area)
> Low cost of entry (certain aspects of digital marketing can be achieved with a small investment of time and
resources). Off-line marketing is much more expensive
> Measurable marketing – ROI
> Improved targeting
> Dynamic adaptability (flexible, adaptable)
> Immediate connection with (potential) costumers
> Building relations with your (potential) costumers
> Cost can be tailored to each specific business (digital marketing strategy for every budget)
 Online funnel and the relevance for communication
͐ A digital marketing funnel describes the different stages that a user goes through from a
marketing/sales perspective
͐ Ways to do a funnel  Describing the process (stages) consumers go through. The funnel helps to
explain the idea
͐ Based on the hierarchical “AIDA” model (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action)
͐ This process is represented graphically as a funnel so that we can see that everyone enters at the
top of the funnel as prospects, but only some of them will come out the other end (as customers)
͐ We could use the funnel/stages to plan communication
͐ Idea: Marketers start with catching as many “leads” as possible and slowly bring prospective
customers down the funnel to purchase
͐ Sales funnel = Marketing funnel
͐ Intuitive and simple framework to help explain how digital advertising and sales works along the
customer journey
͐ Sales/Marketing funnel vary per brand, product, market, and individuals
͐  See it as a framework for orientation and structuring a dynamic process
͐ Funnel: Goal → Define and tailor the best communication for the objective per stage of the funnel
⸸ Brand Marketing → Engagement → Performance-Marketing/Re-enforce advertising
⸸ Awareness  Attract visitors. First contact of the consumer
⸸ Consideration  Convert visitors into clients. Process to make them do what we want them to do
⸸ Evaluation  Who buy from you repeatedly?
⸸ Purchase  Convert the clients into ambassadors. They do that
⸸ Short sale process = Short funnel
 Easier to convert web visits into
purchases
 Low-cost, fast-buying goods/services
⸸ Long sales process = Long funnels
 More effort to convert web visitors into
customers expensive, high-involvement
goods/services
⸸ Goal from communication perspective:
Fulfil communication needs and goals from
consumers POV
͐ Other perspective: McKinsey´s loyalty loop
⸸ 1-2-3 Like the other funnel
⸸ 4- Post purchase: examples, videos,
explanation
⸸ Then you need to bring them back
͐ Critical review on the online funnel
⸸ The funnel is seen as a sales tool from (AdTech) platforms to sell their products ( ad space)
⸸ It is not a data or science-led framework
⸸ It is not accurate in describing how advertising or consumer decision-making works
⸸ Funnels are too linear, reality is more non-linear
⸸ It doesn´t cover post-purchase or loyalty aspects
Inbound and outbound strategies
> Outbound marketing:
o Outbound marketing is a newer term for traditional marketing
o In outbound marketing, the marketer initiatives contact with the customer through methods such as TV,
radio, and digital display advertising. It is often used to influence consumer awareness and preference for a
brand
o Paid  Outbound  Push
 o Outbound strategies:
 “Pushing” people to the top of the funnel with ads/communication
 Easier to measure performance very accurately
 Example in online communication:
͐ Digital display advertising
͐ Sponsored posts in SoMe
͐ Pre-roll-ads
o Channels: Offline campaigns (radio, press, tv, telemarketing); social media (Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube);
Search engine marketing***; Advertise online in display and video format*; Programmatic**; Remarketing/
Retargeting; Email marketing****; Influencer Marketing
> Inbound marketing:
o Inbound marketing is marketing in which customers initiate contact with the marketer in response to various
methods used to gain their attention (e.g., email marketing, event marketing, content marketing)
o Offering (attractive and valuable) content (information, solutions to problems) to:
 Attract attention
 Start a communication process
 Establish the brand as valuable and trustful source
 Fostering customer trust and loyalty
o Earned  Inbound  Pull
o Inbound strategies:
 Any form of creating and distributing content can be referred to as inbound
 Examples:
͐ Blogs
͐ Videos on YouTube
͐ Q&As
 You shouldn’t expect immediate results
 When done well, it could attract high quality traffic in a sustainable way over time
o Channels: SEO, ASO, Content marketing (social media, blogging, newsletters), Public relationships
Online channels
*Display advertising:
» How it works: Set of designated spaces where Google can display ads on a website (Google display network –
largest network of ad space in the word)
» Displaying millions of ads in its search results, google can also do the same on designated space of different web
pages
» Used both for building awareness and loyalty
**Programmatic advertising:
» Automated way of buying ads online. Programmatic marketing means distribution of ads when humans aren´t
directly involved in process
» Programmatic display advertising involves automated bidding on display advertising inventory in real-time, for
the opportunity to show an ad to a specific customer type, in a specific context
» Allows to publish ads on many different advertising networks in a simple and highly segmented way
» Automatic system for placing online ads
» Pay only for relevant impression that users actually receive
» Sign up for a minimum number of impressions or a minimum budget  makes digital advertising more flexible
» Buy digital media across publishers, which reduced administration costs
Search Marketing***
» Search Engine Marketing  Paid → SEA
o SEA: Digital marketing strategy used to increase the visibility of a website in search engine results pages
o Often associate SEM with Google search
 o But refers to all existing search engines. Amazon, Google Maps, YouTube, eBay … all of these are search
engines
o SEM is paid in Pay per Click/Cost per Click
o Easy to implement, no minimum investment needed
o Close connection to consumer decision making (search as starting point)
» Search Engine Marketing  Organic → SEO
o Search Engine Optimization: methods of making sure thar the address of a website is shown near the top of
the list of results of an internet search
o SEO: achieving top placement in the search results themselves
o Easy to track and update
o Search engine optimization:
 On-page → make your own website findable from Google
 Off-page → make your own website more relevant for Google with links from other websites
o “If you don´t know it, you google it”  Consumer behavior
o Search results as first “touch point”
o Keyword marketing involves placing a marketing message in front of users based on the specific keywords and
phrases they are using to search
o Observe what people google:
 What key words they use?
 Which words they combine?
 Which spelling mistakes make people?
o Generating insides for your website
o Discover need, trends, and relevant topics
o = Nonpaid content using the free tools provided by platforms themselves
****Email Marketing:
» Deliver any kind of content (advertising, promotion, brand content) directly to the user/costumer  Direct
contact
» Full control as an inexpensive owned media channel (content, timing, frequency)
» Good engagement rate and highly effective (depends on quality and relevance of the content)
» E-mail marketing is not a stand-alone tool, it is part of the communication mix and works best in conjunction
with other communication tools
» Targeting of different costumer groups with personalized content: new clients by region, etc.
» Based on the quality of the available date
» Type of e-mail depending on objective:
o Announcements o Welcome email
o Product update o Onboarding for new members
o Newsletter o Holiday targeting
o Event invitations o Internal communication
o Promotional Activities/Sales related content
» Technical aspects
o Marketing automatization for sending/planning newsletters
o Privacy aspects (double opt-in)
o Mobile first approach for content (always on mobile e-mail)
o A/B Testing of e-mail concepts and content
o KPI: sends, delivery rate, opening rate, reading rate, click-through-rate, unsubscribe, list growth
o E-mail marketing as part of a content-plan
Social media strategies
User - Centricity  Mobile first + relevance
» General aspects about communication on social media
 o We talk about social media  engagement of the audience
o Choosing the right channel for your brand and for your objective
o Go where your target group are
o Follow the idea of the channel
o Play the game of the channel (suitable content and mechanisms)
o Connect channels and think along the whole user journey/funnel
» Why social media is important for your communication strategy?
o 61% are likely to trust recommendation from a friend, family member or influencer on social platforms
o Only 38% are likely to trust recommendations from a brand on social platforms
o 82% have either purchased, researched, or considered purchasing a product or service after seeing friends,
family, or influencers post about it
o 42% of US Customers Use Ad-Blocking Technology
o Key takeaway: don´t need to be on all platforms at the same time in order to reach the majority of a
audience
o If reach is the primary objective, focus on just one or two of the larger platforms to have a potential reach of
99 percent of social media users
» Paid and organic content in social media
o Paid
 Paid social includes any advertising actions taken on platform (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn)
 Reach larger audience
 More targeting options
 Drives leads and conversation
 Plannable and measurable
 “Pay to play” – Increasing role of paid ads
o Organic
 Nonpaid
 Promote quality content
 Relationship building
 Customer service
 Algorithm updates have made organic social media highly competitive
 Interaction with involved users
» Benefits of PAID social media Ads
o Enormous reach
o Segmentation
o Performance, with different cost models
o Highly conversion oriented
o Despite being outbound/push/intrusive advertising, engagement is higher because the is interaction
o It allows the marketer to “accompany” the customer throughout the entire funnel and impact them on
different occasions for different reasons
o Very easy to use platforms
o No minimum investment required
» Goals of brands in social media
o Generate brand confidence (sharing insights from your brand and success stories on social media)
o Connect on a personal level with a brand´s audience (humanizes your brand to raise engagement and collect
information)
o User-generated content (content produced and sent in by customers used in brand communication)
» Viral Ads
o Achieves a high level of
awareness due to share and
exposures on social media
networks, without paid
support
o Champions league and holy
grail in online marketing
o “Viral” content reaches far
and beyond owned networks,
raising brand awareness in
previously unexplored markets
o Gaining a lot of earned media with engaging content for free
o Using people´s tendency to mimic popular behavior and be a part of a group activity results in viral trends
» How to plan viral Ads?
o Who is the target audience or buyer persona?
o What social channels are they active on?
o The biggest factor in going viral is quality
o Viral rarely grow by themself, you have to seed them
» How to plan viral Ads?  Seeding strategy
o Place your “viral” content in native environment (blogs, SoMe channels) to
 Create attention
 Deliver engagement
o “Paid-push” in the beginning to spread the content
» Goals of viral Ads
o Word-of-mouth
o Website visits
o Push search (connection to SEO/SEA)
o Push Purchase » Understanding social media — User-
Influencer marketing Centricity
» Influencer marketing is the act of identifying trusted individuals with an » Organic for the people that are
engaged audience and directing marketing activities towards these already following you
influencers to receive publicly visible endorsements of a brand, service, or » Paid content is for the ones that are
product not following you
» Influencers  Online word-of-mouth » Benefits of paid social media ads –
» Micro to macro influencers (depending on number of followers) Exam info
» Valuable tool to help brands with customers in a authentic, empathetic, » Seeding is to paid to share content,
and personal way the one that you need to make ads
» Choosing influencers fit to the product and the style of your brand viral
» Effective tool because it shows up in a new feed they selected » Search: KPI ´s framework at a glance
» Influencers have strong hold on consumer, particularly younger objectives and levels of KPIs
Main KPIs brand social media channels
» Number of followers
» Channel growth rate (long run orientation driven by quality content)
» Engagement rate (most important metric in social media)
» Reach the number of potential people who could see your content/almost
always depends on engagement
Daily business social content
Content types
Structures of online content:
“Mountains of content”
1. Always on Content: “Being Present-Content”, be always there showing something
2. Campaign Content: S-L Content — Campaigns of various objectives and size. The larger the mountain more
people should see it, is more important, you invest more money

Content planning
» Using content plan: what´s being posted, better alignment across planned campaigns/activities
» L-M content for different channels
» S content focus on one channel
» Always on content vary from channel to channel
Content consistency → Consistency is King
» Visuality is how it looks
» Tone of voice is how we are talking (you can adapt between the channels more than visuality)
o Character: friendly, warm, inspiring, playful, authoritative, professional
o Tone: personal, humble, clinical, honest, direct, scientific
o Language: complex, savvy, insider, serious, simple, fun
o Purpose: Engage, educate, inform, enable, entertain, delight, sell, amplify
» You have to be consistent with the two of them. Balance between consistent (to be recognize) and variation
» Post Content: Different channels have different expectations from people
Post Frequency: is important to consider how much persons want to see you, not too much, not too less. Is different
between channels

Post timing: this has a relation with the algorithms when people are more with their phones
Community Management:
 Community managers are responsible for managing your social channels, posting content, respond and answer
to users’ feedback
 Communication from “user to user” not from brand to user, finding the right tonality of your brand and the
platform
 Monitoring, listen and responding users activities. You have to know how fast you need to react
D-to-C: direct to consumer brands – D-to-C does not stand only for sales to consumer. It means direct, one-to-one
conversations with consumers about products/brands
Making online advertising more effective: Ongoing optimization (funnel)
1. A/B – Testing (creative assets/target groups)
 A/B Testing a method to optimize conversion rate and test digital assets
 Efficient and cost-effective marketing strategy to
o Optimize marketing campaigns (what works?)
o Better understand their customer base (How is clicking?)
o Develop more relevant content (Which content works?)
o Improve return on investment (Result of whole process)
 A-A Testing goal of an A/A test is to check that there is no difference between
your control and variation versions. (Same results?)
 What can you test? Literally everything, every single piece of your digital
marketing assets
 Testing assets (which color is better?) or Testing/Building target groups
(which one is more interested?)
 This is to test the flow of a website
2. Targeting and Re-Targeting (leads)
 Advantage: online and social media communication allows a detailed and precise targeting
 Challenge: balance between detailed targeting options and handling communication effort and data
 Not every targeting and re-targeting is used in one channel and across channels
 Targeting and re-targeting is used in one channel and across channels
 Addressing leads/potential consumers repeatedly with ads or other form of communication
 Aims to reignite an existing or previous relationship between a user and a product
 Consumers often consider re targeted ads-the banner ads that seem to follow users around the internet after
they visit an advertiser s website – to be annoying. But is effective: “… retargeted ads caused 14,6% more
users to return to the website within four weeks (findings in research vary over studies)”
 We address people that already know us, we are trying to bring people back to the funnel (Hey you were
interested come back!!). You annoy people to make them remember. You recognize a potential consumer and
you don’t know why they go out, so tell them to come back
Additional topics:
 Particular channels for online communication:
o Amazon as an advertising channel: it’s not only an online shopping
» Searching on Amazon → Most likely have the intention to buy a product
» Anyone who actively searches for a product is already in the customer journey and will soon be at the final
destination
» The awareness phase is behind the user in every sales funnel, and they are much closer to the purchase
» Rather than investing advertising budgets in the early stages of the customer journey, Amazon is in the
unique position to reach potential customers exactly when they are ready to buy
» With Amazon Advertising you can target and reach your potential customers in every phase of the customer
journey
o In-game-advertising
» Where you find games, you find advertising
» Console and PC space, mobile gaming, multiplayer online games
» Divers target group (50% of those who played games are woman, about 46% are over the age of 40)
 » Various forms of advertising in games: display ads, in-game product placement, In-game ads for free-to-play
titles
» Sponsorship in e-sports environment
» Advergaming (free downloadable computer games appear on websites; often as pop-ups) to advertise a
company or product
o App-store-advertising
» Promoting apps → Objective = Downloads
» Advertising in the App-store
» Relevance:
 Digital mobile age
 Apps and mobile phone as direct and personal consumer touch point
 Businesses with apps as main touch point (e.g., online grocery shopping)
 Available data for targeting
» App Store optimization (ASO) is the process of improving app visibility within the app stores. Basically, same
method like SEO
» App Store advertising (ASA) is ad-space in the App Store. Address a broad public and users that couldn’t be
reached organically
» Over 70% of store visitors use organic search to find an app
o Review on critical aspect in online marketing (ad-fraud, brand safety, corporate responsibility)
» Brand safety
» Ad-fraud
» Critical role of social media
 Critical aspects in online marketing:
o Brand safety – bad company for your brand (is your brand in a safety place online)
» Ad-space in context of harmful content and online disinformation as a problem for brands and their
reputation
» Brand safety: avoid any placement or context that could potentially harms the advertiser’s brand or
reputation
» Reputation and trust as important aspects of brand concept
» Control of marketing automatization (programmatic advertising, social ads)
o Ad-fraud
» A type of scheme where fraudsters manipulate online advertising conversion flows to falsely obtain
advertising budgets. CPM, CPA, CPS, and other advertising models are manipulated by generating fake
impressions, clicks, sales, and even users
» Ad-fraudsters will try to present low quality placements (sensitive context) as ones of higher quality
» Recent estimates vary from $6.5 billion to as high as $19 billion of annual cost the advertising industry
» Marketers lost budget and receiving no or less quality ad-space (consumer contact). Risk of losing brand
reputation
o Critical role of social media
Planning online communication
 Same checklist as we do in general communication planning (objective, target group)
 Digital communication as part of IMC (holistic view)
 Online: combination of always-on communication and campaign
 Social media: quality beats quantity, choose right channels
 Keep critical aspects in mind
Challenges in online communication
 Break through the new marketing clutter and fatigue (“over-channelism” / banner blindness)
 Communication in a fast pace digital environment challenging the marketing organization
 Find the right tone-of-voice for each SoMe channel (“Tone of post”)
 Creating effective and valuable communication
Summary:
 Same checklist as we do in general communication planning (objective, target group…)
 Funnel: structure the consumer journey and define the right, value-adding communication for each step
 Using inbound and outbound techniques (exam information)
 Content follow channel-rules and user expectations (use your experience or investigate in what people are
interest to make they pay attention)
 Social media is effective and important to engage with (potential) consumers
 Social media: paid and organic content
 Online communication facing challenges
 Online communication is technology driven
 Ongoing testing and optimization

Consumer Behavior
 How consumers influence the field of marketing and how marketing and communication influence consumers?
 How consumer behavior influences communication strategies?
 Introduction and overview consumer behavior

Here is where Communication

Audience Business Strategy start
Needs Needs

What is Consumer Behavior?

“The study of the processes involved when individuals or groups select, purchase, use, or dispose of products,
services, ideas, or experiences to satisfy needs and desires”
“Consumer behavior is more than buying things, it also embraces the study of how having (or not having) things
affects our lives and how our possessions influence the way we feel about ourselves and about each other – our
state of being” (Solomon)
“Consumer behavior is the study of consumers choice during searching, evaluating, purchasing, and using products
and services that they believe would satisfy their needs” (Schiffman)
This involves many different actors:
1. A consumer is a person who identifies a need or desire, makes a purchase, and then disposes of the product
during the three stages in the consumption process
2. The purchaser and user of product might not be the same person. A separate person might be an influencer. This
person provides recommendations for or against certain products without buying or using them
3. Consumers may be organizations or groups (in which one person may make the decision for the group or a large
group of people may make purchase decisions) E.g., families or companies
Introduction:
 Our choice as consumers relates in powerful ways to our lives and marketing activities exert an enormous impact
on individuals
 Consumers interact with products and other aspects of the marketing system
 For marketers to best meet consumer needs, they need to be able to understand their behavior
 Consumers use products to help them define their identities
 Change of consumer behavior (e.g people more aware of what they are eating; different in that process
depending in where they live; how society adapt to trends; change with the context)
Consumer identity as an aid to marketers
→ Consumers segmented by demographics and psychographics (interest)
→ Brands target consumers using market segmentation strategies to target only specific groups
→ Consumers choose brands that match their own identities
Consumer behavior is a process
» In the early stages of development, researchers referred to the field as buyer behavior ( “Exchange theory”)
» Marketers now recognize that consumer behavior is an ongoing process, and the entire consumption process is
relevant for marketers
» A consumer may purchase, use, and dispose a product, but different people may perform these functions
differently
» Consumers as role players who need different products to help them play their various parts
Need: Want:
 A basic biological motive  One way that society has taught us that the need
 Something a person must have to live or achieve a can be satisfied
goal  Specific manifestation of a need that personal and
cultural factors determines
» Traditional approaches to consumer behavior focus on the abilities of products to satisfy rational needs
(utilitarian motives)
» Hedonic motives (E.g., the need for exploring or for fun) also play a key role in many purchases’ decisions
» Needs are never fully satisfied
» A given need may lead totally different goals
» Consumers have multiple needs
» People often buy products not for what they do but for what they mean
Needs and marketing strategy
o Identify the needs and goals of the target market
o Use knowledge of needs to segment the market and to position the product
o Use knowledge of needs to develop communication strategy
o Reduce motivational conflict (the one that is in the middle of a purchase decision; try to take them out to sell.
(Make consumers feel confident to buy, because they are not sure if something is good or not for example. I do
that by providing information)
Consumer-Brand Relationship  Fulfillment of needs could create loyal customers
 Consumers may develop relationships with brands over time (to fulfill their needs)
 When a product succeeds in satisfying consumer´s specific needs or desires it may be rewarded with many years
of brand loyalty, a bond between product and consumer that is difficult for competitors to break
 These relationships could influence behavior
Ethical question of marketing
 Marketing commonly criticized as trying to convince consumers that they need something when they really don’t
 Marketing perspective: the need already exists in the consumer, but marketers recommend ways to satisfy the
need
 Advertisers simply do not know enough about people to manipulate them (failure rate for new products rangers
from 40% to 80%)
 Advertising communicates the availability of products (economic perspective: advertising reduce the cost to
searching for information)
“Consumer Research is a big tent” Solomon
» Consumer research represent virtually every social science discipline, plus a few from the physical sciences
» Where do we find consumer researchers? Just about anywhere we find consumers
» From this blending of disciplines comes a dynamic and complex research perspective
» Rapidly changing field
Consumer behavior stems from four disciplines:
1. Psychology: which is the study of the human mind and the mental factors that affect behavior
2. Sociology: which is the study of the development, structure, functioning, and problems of human society
3. Anthropology: which compares human societies ‘cultures and development
4. Communication: which is the process of imparting or exchanging information
5. Consumer behavior involves many different disciplines Micro consumer behavior (individual focus) to Macro
consumer behavior (social focus)
Two major perspectives on consumer behavior research: There are differing perspectives regarding how and what
we should understand about consumer behavior
1. Positivist/modernism approach:
͐ Everyone thing the same about one thing as this is not what really happen, we use more the interpretivism
approach
͐ It emphasized that human reason is supreme, and that there is a single, objective truth that can be discovered
by science
͐ Positivism encourages us to stress the function of objects, to celebrate technology, and to regard the world as
a rational, ordered place with a clearly defined past, present, and future
2. Interpretivism approach:
͐ Interpretivists stress the importance of symbolic, subjective experience and the idea that meaning is the mind
of the person
͐ Consumer culture theory (CCT) refers generally to research that regards consumption from a social and
cultural point of view rather than more narrowly as an economic exchange
Assumptions Positivist Approach Interpretivist Approach
Nature of reality Objective, tangible, single Socially constructed, multiple
Goal Prediction Understanding
Knowledge generated Time free. Context-independent Time-bound. Context dependent
View of causality Existence of teal causes Multiple, simultaneous shaping events
Research relationship Separation between researcher and Interactive, cooperative with researcher
subject being part of phenomenon under study
Internal influences on consumer behavior
> Each of us are some degrees “self-contained” (independent) in terms of receiving information about the outside
world
Perception → The way we absorb and interpret information about products and other people from the outside world
 Products and commercial messages often appeal to
our senses, but because of the profusion of these
messages we don ´t notice most of them
 Perception is a three-stages process that translates
raw stimuli into meaning (if you see or not, and
what you do with that; if you perceived or not, or
you don´t care) – We receive external stimuli →
1. Sensation is the immediate response of our sensory receptors (eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and fingers) to basic
stimuli (light, Color, sound, door, and texture). How people feel with that? How they react to my
product/experience?
> The sensory experiences we receive from products and services play an increasingly key role when we choose
among competing options
> Field of sensory marketing: where companies think carefully about the impact of sensations on our product
experiences
> Senses help us decide which products appeal to us
Stage 1: Exposure
> Sensory threshold: What a person is capable of receiving is stimuli within a person´s sensory threshold
> Absolute threshold: minimum amount of stimulation a person can detect on given sensory channel. The absolute
threshold means that the stimulation used must be sufficient to register
> Differential threshold: the ability of a sensory system to detect changes in or differences between two stimuli
> Just noticeable difference: the minimum difference we can detect between two stimuli
> Weber´s law: the amount of change required for the perceiver to notice a change systematically relates to the
intensity of the original stimulus. The stronger the initial stimulus, the greater a change must be for us to notice it
Stage 2: Attention  Create stimulus
→ Attention is the extent to which processing activity is devoted to a particular stimulus
→ The allocation of processing activity can vary depending on the characteristics of the stimulus and the recipient
→ Consumers experience sensory overload (far more information than we can process)
→ Marketers need to break through the clutter of information and thousands of advertising messages each day
→ How to get attention?
» Brain´s capacity to process information is limited
» Consumers are selective about what they pay attention to
» Personal selection factors: depend on the person itself. How we process stimuli
> Experience as a result of acquiring and processing stimulation over time
> Perceptual filters (=our past experience what er decide to process)
͐ Perceptual vigilance (Consumers are more likely to be aware of stimuli that relate to their current
needs)
͐ Perceptual defense (People see what they want to see- and don´t see what they don´t want to see)
> Adaption (The process of adaption occurs when we no longer pay attention to a stimulus because it is so
familiar)
> In addition to the receiver´s mindset, characteristics of the stimulus itself play an important role in
determine what we notice and what we ignore
> Understand these factors to create messages and packages that will have a better chance of cutting
through the clutter
» Stimulus selection factors: how the marketing message is made?
> We are more likely to notice stimuli that differ from others around them
> Stimulus selection factors: Characteristics of the stimulus itself → How we do advertising? Make people
look
͐ Size
͐ Color
͐ Position
͐ Novelty: Stimuli that appear in unexpected ways or places tend to grab our attention (new things, the
brain is not used to it, so it pays attention). A study indicates that novelty in the form of interruptions
intensifies our experiences: Distraction increases our enjoyment of pleasant stimuli because it amplifies
our dislike of unpleasant stimuli
Stage 3: Interpretation
→ Interpretation refers to the meaning we assign to sensory stimuli, which is based on a schema (set of beliefs)
→ In a process called priming, certain properties of a stimulus evoke a schema
→ People compare stimulus to other similar ones encountered in the past
→ Identifying and evoking the correct schema is crucial to many marketing decisions because this determines what
criteria consumers will use to evaluate the product, package, or message
→ The stimuli consumers perceive are often ambiguous. It´s up to them to determine the meaning based on their
past experiences, expectations, and needs
→ Understanding consumers experiences, expectations, and needs help us to make more efficient communication
→ Connection between a stimulus (Mc Donald’s Logo) and meaning of that sign (=better tasting fries)
→ We interpret the stimuli to which we do pay attention according to learned patterns and expectations
→ Consumer’s don´t attend to a stimulus in isolation. They classify and organize it
→ As we´ve seen, when we try to “make sense” of a marketing stimulus we interpret it in light of our prior
associations
→ Symbols help consumers make sense of the world by providing them with an interpretation of a stimulus that
others often share
→ The degree to which the symbolism is consistent with the previous experience affects the meaning people assign
to related objects
→ Interpretation of brands – Perceptual Positioning
» Brand perceptions = functional attributes (price etc.) + symbolic attributes (brand image)
» Evaluation of a product by consumers typically is the result of what it means rather than what it does
» Perceptual map: a map of products locations in the perceptual space of consumers. (Axis: Trendy-Classic;
Accessible-Exclusive). Where brands are currently perceived to determine future positioning
» Used to determine how brands are currently perceived to determine future positioning
 → Blank spaces on perceptual maps indicate gaps in the market. Gaps typically indicate:
» A true opportunity in the market that we might be able to pursue
» A combination of attributes that nobody actually needs or wants, which is why there is no competitor there
» A combination of attributes that is impossible to deliver to the consumer without the development of new
technology/service
→ Evoke a schema = It means something (e.g., light blue means something is healthier)
→ How do I send a signal to make people feel or identify something as what I want?
2. Perception is the process by which sensations are selected, organized, and interpreted
Learning and Memory
→ How we store information
→ How it adds to our existing knowledge about the world
→ In marketing/communication context:
» How people “learn” new products/brands/new services?
» If we understand how people learn and store memory, we can “teach” them our communication goal
→ How do we learn?
» Learning is a relatively permanent change in behavior caused by experience
» Learning is an ongoing process constantly updates of knowledge
» The experience can be direct, or it can be observed
» Incidental learning: The learner need not have the experience directly. We can also learn when we observe
events that affect others. We learn even when we don´t try
Theories of Learning  two direction of learning concepts
→ Behavioral learning theories focus on simple stimulus-response connections (connections between actions and
consequences)
» Behavioral learning theories assume that learning takes place as the result of responses to external events
» Behavior is response to stimulus
» Elements of conscious thoughts are to be ignored
» Consumer does not act, but reacts
» Behavioral Learning: Types of Behavioral Learning Theories
> Classical conditioning:
 A stimulus that elicits a response is paired with another stimulus that initially does not elicit a response on
its own.
 Over time, this second stimulus causes a similar response because we associate it with the first stimulus
Components  Learning results when a meaningful object (unconditioned stimulus), is paired with another (conditioned
stimulus). The unconditioned stimulus has a known response called an unconditioned response
 Over time, the pairing leads to the response, without the original unconditioned stimulus, which is called
the conditioned response
 Classical conditioning is less effective for old, familiar brands than for new, less familiar brands (building
new conditions)
 Result → The advertisers hope to condition consumers to feel positively (amusement, joy) about the brand
(conditioned response)
Issues  Repetition → Conditioning effects are more likely to a occur after the conditioned and unconditioned
stimuli have been paired a number of times
 Stimulus generalization → Stimuli similar to a conditioned stimuli may evoke similar responses
 Stimulus discrimination → conditions may also weaken over time, reactions weaken and will soon
disappear
 Extinction of conditions, the conditioning is not activated because it is not reinforced by a stimulus
> Marketing applications of repetition
 Repetition increases learning
 More exposures = Increased brand awareness
 When exposure decreases, extinction occurs
However, too MUCH exposure leads to advertising wear out
> Applications of stimulus generalization
 Stimulus generalization tendency for stimuli similar to a conditioned stimulus to evoke similar,
unconditioned responses
͐ Family branding ͐ Licensing
͐ Product line extensions ͐ Look-alike packaging
 The process of stimulus generalization is critical to branding and packaging decisions. Capitalize on
consumer´s positive associations with an existing brand or company name
 “Halo effect”:
͐ If a brand judged favorably on one key attribute, it must be good on other attributes
͐ React to other, similar stimuli in much the same way responded to the original stimulus
 Classical Conditioning Principle  Brand equity → a brand has strong positive associations in a consumer’s
memory and commands a lot of loyalty as a result
 Advertisements often pair a product with a positive stimulus to create a desirable association, e.g., humor,
music
> How does instrumental conditioning occur?
 Instrumental conditioning occurs when we learn to perform behaviors that 1. Produce positive outcomes,
and 2. Avoid those that yield negative outcomes
 Classical conditioning involves the close pairing of two stimuli, instrumental learning occurs when a learner
receives a reward after performing the desired behavior
 Instrumental conditioning deliberately (aware/conscious) to obtain a goal
 We may learn the desired behavior over a period of time as a shaping process rewards out intermediate
actions
 Instrumental conditioning occurs in one of three ways:
͐ Positive reinforcement: The environment provides positive reinforcement in the form of a reward,
strengthening the response and we learn the appropriate behavior
͐ Negative reinforcement: Showing how a negative outcome can be avoided
͐ Punishment: We learn not to repeat these behaviors
 Positive reinforcement in marketing. E.g., after-sales communication
> Marketing applications of instrumental conditioning
 Frequency marketing rewards regular purchasers with prized that get better the more they spend (e.g.,
airline frequent flyer programs)
 Positive or negative reinforcement
 Frequency connected with “gamification” elements
→ Cognitive theories focus on consumers as problem solvers who learn abstract rules and concepts when they
observe what others say and do
» Behavior is directed at goal achievement (people as problem solvers)
» Cognitive learning theory stresses the importance of internal mental activities
» Observational learning occurs when we watch the actions of others and note the reinforcements they receive
for their behaviors. In these situations, learning occurs as a result of various rather than direct experiences
» Complex process, people store observations in memory as they accumulate knowledge and then they use this
information at a later point to guide their own behavior
» The process of imitating the behavior of others is called Modelling
» The modeling process is a powerful form of learning
» Cognitive learning theory
> Observational learning → We learn about products by observing others´ behavior
 >
»How do we learn to be consumers?  Consumer socialization
> Parent´s influence directly and indirectly by different styles when they socialize their children
> Brand preferences and product knowledge that occur in childhood could persist into the later stages of
consumers ‘lives
» Five stages of consumer development
> Within the first two years, children request products they want
> By about age 5, most kids make purchases with the help of parents and grandparents
» Marketing applications of cognitive learning principles:
> Consumers´ evaluations of the people they model go beyond simple stimulus response connections. They
evaluate a complex combination of many attributes of the model
> The degree to which a person emulates (imitate) someone else depends on that model´s level of social
attractiveness
> Attractiveness comes from several components, including physical appearance, expertise, or similarity to
the evaluator
Memory is a process of acquiring information and storing it over time so that it will be available when we need it
 From the marketing perspective our brains process information about brans to retain them in memory
 Data in our mind are input, processed, and output for later use in revised for. We integrate new knowledge with
what is already in memory and “warehouse” it until it is needed
 Types of memory

 Associative network
o Recent research suggests that long-term memory and short-term memory are interdependent systems
o Depending on the nature of the processing task, different levels of processing occur that activate some
aspects of memory rather than others
o These approaches are called activation models of memory. The more effort it takes to process information,
the more likely it is that information will transfer into long-term memory
o Activation models of memory
 Activation models of memory: incoming piece of information gets stored in an associative network that
contains many bits of information
 These storage units are knowledge structures, line a complex spider web filled with pieces of data
  Incoming information gets put into nodes that connect to one another
 Spreading activation in marketing
o This involves the idea of one memory “triggering” another one
o A marketing message may trigger/active our memory of a brand directly or indirectly
o If the marketing message actives a node, It will also activate other linked nodes
o The process of spreading activation allows us to shift back and forth among levels of meaning
o The way we store a piece of information in memory depends on the type of meaning we initially assign to it.
This meaning type then determines how and when something activates the meaning (e.g., brand or ad
related)
 What makes us forget what we learn? And how marketers try to avoid it
o Familiarity and recall  familiarity makes a message more likely to recall vs. extreme familiarity can result in
inferior learning and recall
o Salience and recall  in psychology, a stimulus is salient when it attracts the decision maker´s attention
“bottom up”, actually and involuntarily.
 The salience of a brand refers to its prominence or level of activation in memory
 Stimuli that stand out in contrast to their environments are more likely to command attention and
increases the likelihood to recall
 Von Restorff Effect: technique that increases the novelty of a stimulus which improves recall
 Unusual advertising/distinctive packaging tends to facilitate brand recall
 Salient stimuli attract the consumer´s attention
 Salience is likely to be important in low involvement, habit driven categories where consumers are less
likely to make comparative assessments
 “Consumers rely on mental shortcuts or heuristics when they make their brand decisions. One such
heuristic is to assign greater importance to things that have ready mental availability, the effect of which is
to choose the most salient brand”
 Heuristics usually simplify decision making, or the “rules of thumb” by which decisions are made. For
example, “buy the cheapest brand” is a choice heuristic that would simplify purchase
 “…Brand salience as the brand´s propensity (tendency) to be noticed or come to mind in buying situations.
Brand salience reflects the quantity and quality of the network of memory structures buyer´s hold about
the brands”
 Role of (brand) communication → developing a number of different memory links in buyers’ minds
(memorable and distinctive brand assets) and make these permanently visible
 Measuring memory for marketing stimuli
o Recognition versus free recall. Recognition scores are almost always better than recall scores because is a
simpler process and the consumer has more retrieval cues available
o Problems with memory measures
 Response biases (yes responses to questions regardless of the question)
 Memory lapses (forget information or retain inaccurate memories)
Motivation and Affect
Motivation  The driving force within individuals that impels them to action
> Produced by a state of tension due to an unfulfilled need
> Which leads to conscious or subconscious attempts to reduce the tension
> Motivation refers to the processes that lead people to behave
as they do

The motivation process:

Two types of needs:
1. Utilitarian  desire to achieve some functional or practical benefit, e.g., a person loads up on green vegetables
for nutritional reasons
2. Hedonic  an experiential need, involving emotional responses or fantasies, e.g., a person feels “trendy” by
drinking raw kale juice
Needs and motivation
͐ Needs may be utilitarian or hedonic
͐ The desired end state is the consumer´s goal
͐ The degree of arousal is drive magnitude of the tension it creates determines the urgency the consumer feels to
reduce it
͐ Type of motives
 Rational motives → Goals chosen according to objective criteria (e.g., price)
 Emotional motives →Goals chosen according to personal or subjective criteria (e.g., desire for social status)
 Latent motives → Motives that the consumer is unaware of or unwilling to recognize, harder to identify
 Manifest motives → motives that the consumer is aware of and willing to express
͐ The specific path to reduce tension a person choose is influenced both by her 1. Unique set of experiences and
by 2. The values his or her culture instills
͐ Personal and cultural factors combine to create a want, one manifestation of a need
͐ Motivation is described in terms of 1. Strength and 2. Direction
Classifying Consumer needs
͐ Specific needs
 Need for Affiliation → to be in the company of other people
 Need for Power → to control one´s environment
 Need for Uniqueness → to asserts one´s individual identity
Motivational strength  Degree of willingness to expend energy to reach a goal
͐ Drive theory:
o Biological needs that produce unpleasant states of arousal (e.g., hunger)
o Behavior, which attempts to reduce or eliminate a unpleasant state and return to balance
͐ Expectancy theory:
o Behavior is pulled by expectations of achieving desirable outcomes (positive incentives)
o We choose one product over because we expect this choice to have more positive consequences for us
Levels of needs in your life

Motivational Conflicts
͐ Consumers experience different kinds of motivational conflicts that can impact their purchase decisions
͐ Consumers direct their behavior toward goals they value positively and avoid negative goal
͐ There are motivations to avoid a negative outcome rather than achieve a positive goal
͐ Purchase decision can involve different motives, both positive and negative, conflict with one another
͐ Marketers attempt to satisfy
͐ Marketers attempt to satisfy consumers´ needs by providing possible solutions to these dilemmas
͐ Approach – Approach:
o Two desirable alternatives
 o Cognitive dissonance
o Choose between two desirable alternatives
͐ Approach – Avoidance
o Positive and negative aspects of desired product
o Guilt of desire occurs
͐ Avoidance – Avoidance
o Facing a choice with two undesirable alternatives, when the
consequence of buying an object is unpleasant, but the purchase does
not lead to any pleasure
Cognitive dissonance model  Our actions are not consistent with our
beliefs. How overcome dissonance? Changing behavior or changing attitude
What is Affect?
͐ Consumers experience a range of affective responses to products and marketing messages
͐ Affect = Raw reaction/emotional responses to products, advertising, etc. (In context of marketing)
͐ Types of affective responses
o Mild → Evaluation (low levels of arousal)
o Moderate → Moods (medium levels of arousal)
o Strong → Emotions (high levels of arousal, often relate to a specific trigger)
͐ Positive affect  Our feelings can serve as a “source of information” when we weigh the pros and cons of a
decision
o Happiness
o Love mark: passionate commitment to one brand → “brand evangelists”/concept of “love brand”
͐ Negative affect  Marketing could use negative emotions too
o Disgust
o Envy
o Guilt
o Embarrassment, driven by a concern for what others think about us, socially sensitive products
How social media tap into our emotions?
͐ Content on social media reflects affective responses that people post. Rich source of information for marketers
to gauge how consumers feel about their brands (→ social sentiment analysis)
͐ Happiness economy: wellbeing is the new wealth, and social media technology is what allows us to accumulate it
(Instagram)
͐ Stronger emotions works/click better on social media
Concept of consumer involvement
> Different consumers may approach the same choice situation from very different perspectives. One reason is the
consumer´s level of involvement in the decision
> Involvement: The level of personal relevance that a consumer seed in a product
> A person´s degree of involvement is a continuum that ranges from absolute lack of interest in a marketing
stimulus at one end to obsession at the other
> Higher involvement = Higher perceived risk of the purchase, stronger emotional response
> Types of involvement
1- Enduring involvement → Long-lasting involvement that arises out of a sense of high personal relevance.
Hobbies, profession, life situation
2- Situational involvement → Short-term involvement in a product of low personal relevance
3- Cognitive Involvement → Rational level involvement in products that are considered to be major purchases.
Insurances, cars, house, laptops
4- Affective Involvement → Emotional level involvement in products (e.g., bridal dress)
> Factors leading to high involvement
1- Level of perceived risk (social, financial, or physical)
2- Level of personal interest in product category
 3- Probability of making a mistake or buying the wrong product
4- Extent of pleasure in buying and using a product
5- Number and similarity of competitive brands available
6- Brand loyalty
> Conceptualizing Involvement

> Involvement and marketing strategy

1- Choose media according to level of involvement
 Print media, website, YouTube, for high involvement
 Television, banner-ads, for low involvement
2- Choose messages according to level of involvement
3- Find ways to raise level of involvement, e.g., explaining the relevance of a product
4- Factors to increase product and message involvement:
 Mass customization
 DYI (Do it yourself)
 Co-creation
 Novel stimuli, celebrity endorsers
 Spectacles where the message is itself a form of entertainment
The Self and Gender Identify
Self-Concept:
> The self-concept, a very complex structure, strongly influences consumer behavior
> Self-Concept: the beliefs a person holds about his/her own attributes, and how he/she evaluates these qualities
> Products play a key role in defining the self-concept
> Cultural aspect: unique nature of the self in Western societies vs. Eastern cultures stressing the importance of a
collective self
Real and ideal selves
1. Ideal self: our conception of how we would like to be
2. Actual self: out more realistic appraisal/judgement of the qualities we have
a. Buying products can:
i. Help us reach ideal self (status products,)
ii. Be consistent with actual self
b. Impression management: we work hard to “manage” what others think of us
Multiple selves
> People as “actors” of different roles
> Each role has its own script, props, and costumes
> The self has different components, or role identities, and only some of these are active at any given time
> Marketers pitch products needed to facilitate active role identities
> Example: Women, Pro athlete, Wife, Sister, Mother, Friend, etc.
You are what you consume:
> Social identify as individual consumption behaviors:
o Question: Who am I now?
o Answer: To same extent, your possessions
> A consumer´s possessions place her/him into a social role which helps to answer the question, “Who am I now?”
> People who have an incomplete self-definition may complete the identity by acquisition
Self/Product congruence
> Consumers demonstrate their values through their purchase behavior
> Self-image congruence models: we choose products when attributes match the self
> Self-image = Product Usage/Attributes (cognitive matching)
The Digital Self
> Roles in social media channels (profile pictures)
> Images of yourself in social media
Gender differences
> Gender roles vary by culture, but the roles are changing
> Many societies still expect more traditional roles
o Agentic roles: men are expected to be assertive and have certain skills Stereotypes!
o Communal roles: women are taught to foster harmonious relationships
Body image and appearance
> The way we think about our bodies, and the way our culture tells us we should think, is a key component of self-
esteem
> A person´s physical image is a large part of his or her self-concept
> Body image refers to a consumer´s subjective evaluation of his physical self
Ideals of beauty
> Virtually every culture has a beauty bias
> Preferences for some generic features are generic rather than cultural
> Marketing influences how we talk and perceive concepts of beauty
Sex-typed traits and products:
> Sex-typed traits: characteristics we stereotypically associate with one gender or the other. They tale on
masculine or feminine attributes and consumers associate them with one gender or another
> Sex types of products: take on masculine of feminine attributes – Color of telephones or toy´s color
Consumer´s personality
> The concept of personality refers to a person´s unique psychological makeup and how it consistently influences
the way a person responds to his or her environment
> A consumer´s personality influences the way he or she responds to marketing stimuli
> Efforts use personality information in marketing contexts meet with mixed results
Brand personality: “If a brand was a person, how would they be…”
> A brand personality is the set of traits people attribute to a product as if it were a person
> Consumers assign personality qualities to all sorts of products
> A brand creates and communicates a distinctive brand personality stands out from its competition, earns brand
equity, and inspires years of loyalty
> Brand storytelling emphasized the importance of giving a product a rich background to involve customers in its
history or experience
> Marketers need to be vigilant about maintaining the brand personality, because the attribution by the consumer
can change over time
> A desirable brand personality often is key to building brand loyalty
From personality to lifestyle:
> A lifestyle defines a pattern of consumption that reflects a person´s choices of how to spend his or her time and
money, and these choices are essential to define consumer identity
> Consumption constellation is used to define, communicate, and perform social roles
> Symbolic meanings of different products relate to one another
Lifestyle and consumer identity:
> Consumers define themselves by more or less distinctive lifestyles
> Lifestyle marketing perspective:
o People sort themselves into groups based on the things they like to do,
how they like to spend their leisure time, and how they choose to spend
their disposable income
o A lifestyle marketing perspective look at patterns of behavior to
understand consumers
> Consumption style
o People, products, and settings result in an expressed consumption style
which can be used as a cue (trigger/signal)
o People often purchase a product or service because they associate it with
a constellation that they link to a lifestyle they find desirable
> Lifestyle-segmentation/Psychographics:
o Segmentation based on lifestyle differences: group consumers in terms of their AIO´s (Activities, Interests
and Opinions)
o Psychographics go beyond simple demographics to understand and reach different consumer segments
o Psychographics is the study of personality, values, opinions, attitudes, interests, and lifestyles
> Psychographic analysis
o Lifestyle profile: differentiate between users and nonusers of a product
o Product-specific profile: profiles a target group on product-relevant dimensions
o General lifestyle segmentation: homogeneous groups based on similarities of their overall preferences

Decision making
Introduction
 Research suggests that consumer made approx. 35.000 decisions a day
 At the end of the day, we forgot nearly all the choice situations, short-term memory in action
 What is a “decision” depending on person´s very own decision making. Conscious choice or unconscious reflex?
Not all decisions may be important
 Consumer decision making is a central part of consumer behavior
 In fact, every consumer decision is a response to a problem. The type and scope of these problems varies
enormously: from simple needs (thirsty) to hedonic wants (buying your 28 th pair of sneakers)
 Some purchase decisions are more important than others, the amount of effort we put into each differs
 Sometimes the decision-making process is almost automatic (daily groceries). At other times it takes days or
weeks (buying a house, deciding for a master program)
 Consumers making some decisions thoughtfully and rationally as they carefully weight the pros and cons of
different choices
 In other cases, they just let their emotions guide them to one choice over another
 Consumers facing often “hyperechoic” situations  too much options for the same product or the same brand;
choice situation, this make people really stress so with the communication you should guide the consumer
through that
Three factors influencing the decision-making process
1- Involvement
2- The marketing messages
3- The purchase situation
Three categories of consumer decision making  The 3 “Buckets” of consumer decision-making
Overlapping between this thee. Depending
on which type of product you have
1- Cognitive* → deliberate, rational, sequential. Actively thinking
2- Habitual*** → behavioral, unconscious, automatic
3- Affective → emotional, instantaneous
Consumers make decisions in different ways. Some of the decisions are highly rational (cognitive). Others are made
by habit. Still others are based on emotions (affective)
Affect = Raw reaction/emotional responses to products, advertising, etc.
The buckets of decision-making don´t necessarily work independently of one another
*1- Cognitive Purchase decision  A cognitive purchase decision is the
outcome of a series of stages that results in the selection of one
product/service over competing options
For basic steps in the decision-making process:
1- Problem recognition  Occurs when a consumer sees difference
between current state and ideal state
 Need recognition: Actual state declines
 Opportunity recognition: Ideal state moves upward
 Shifts in actual or ideal states


2- Information search
 Once the consumer knows they have a problem, they search out
how to solve it
 The process by which the consumer survey the environment for appropriate information/data to make a
reasonable decision
 Prepurchase or ongoing search
 Internal or external search
 Online search and cybermediaries
 Internal search: Retrieving knowledge from memory or genetic tendencies
 External search: Collecting information form peers, family, and the marketplace
 When motivated by an upcoming purchase acquisition tales place on a relatively regular basis,
regardless of sporadic purchase needs, it is known as ongoing search
 The different external source of information include:
In-Store Out of Store
Personal Sales personnel Family and friends
Other shoppers Coworkers
Experts, opinion leaders, and influential
Internet forums and bulletin boards
Impersona Product labels Advertising
l Store signage Catalogs
Point-of-purchase materials (e.g., Magazines
displays, advertising circulars) Television and radio shows
Websites
 Directed learning: existing product knowledge obtained from previous information search or experience
of alternatives
 Incidental learning:
 Mere exposure over time to conditioned stimuli and observations of others
o Just because you see something more you trust it, you start to pay attention to it
o People tend to like thing that are more familiar to them, even if they were not that keen on them
initially
o Positive effects for repetition even in mature product categories: Repeating product information
boosts consumers ´awareness of the brand, even though the communication says nothing new
o Risk of habituation, whereby the consumer no longer pays attention to the stimulus (familiarity vs.
variation)
 We learn about information because over time we experience exposures to brand information (low-
dose advertising)
 More passive consumer action
 What consumers search for?
 Alternatives (brands, offerings) referred to as the external search set
 Criteria that include attributes addressing price, quality, convenience, performance, popularity, eco-
friendliness, etc.
 Amount of information search and product knowledge: Cost-Benefit perspective determines how much
people search, when the perceived benefit of the new information is greater than perceived “cost”
 Inverted-U relationship between knowledge and external search effort


 Factors that increase search:
 Product factors: long periods of time between successive purchases, frequent changes in product
styling, frequent price changes, volume purchasing (large number of units), high price, many
alternative brands, much variation in features
 Situational factors
 Experience: First-time purchase; no past experience because the product is new; unsatisfactory past
experience within the product category
 Social acceptability: The purchase is for a gift; the product is socially visible
 Value-Related Considerations: The purchase is discretionary rather than necessary; all alternatives
have both desirable and undesirable consequences (e.g., family members disagree on product)
 Consumer Factors: demographic, etc.
 Personality traits: One´s degree of dogmatism, willingness to accept risk, product involvement and
novelty seeking
 Search is not always rational
 Symbolic offerings like jewelry, perfume, or fashion require more subjective search
 Mental heuristic: It means we take the less energy to take a decision, not rational, because rational
thinking take a lot of effort and energy. The mind is lazy
  Brand signaling is a Mental heuristic used for ambiguous choices, lowers the consumer´s information
search cost. Put the brand in the front to reduce effort
 The more symbolic of our identity a product is, the more search we will tend to do
 Variety seeking is used to choose new alternatives over more familiar ones, even if the brand we
formally choose still meets our needs
 Biases in Decision-Making:
 Mental accounting: framing a problem in terms of financial gains/losses influences our decisions.
Mental accounting refers to the way consumers code, categorize, and evaluate financial outcomes of
choices. “The tendency to categorize funds or items of value even though there is no logical basis for
the categorization”. Giving different “cost/value” to the same things in different context for example
 Sunk-cost fallacy: We are reluctant to waste something we have paid for or where we already “invest”
in. Could be financial, emotional, or time related. In marketing communication, it reminds customers
what they already invest (to stay) or how easy it is to switch (to acquire)
 Loss aversion: We emphasize losses over gains, people hate losing things more than they like getting
things
 Prospect theory: Describes how people make choices. It defines the utility in terms of gains and
losses. “Prospect theory maintains that consumers frame their decision alternatives in terms of gains
and loses according to a value probability and underweight very high probabilities”
 Physical cues “prime” us to react even when we are not aware of the impact. Cues in the environment
that make us more likely to react in a certain way even though we´re unaware of these influences. A
prime is a stimulus that encourages people to focus on some specific aspect of their lives
 Framing is how we pose a question to people or what exactly we ask them to do. Decision framing is
the manner in which choices are presented to and seen by a decision maker. Types of framing:
o Gain: this type of framing highlights all the potential benefits that can be gained from using a
particular product
o Loss: it is human nature to avoid or mitigate loss as much as possible. Scarcity is a particular type
of loss framing and it´s all about instilling a fear of missing out (loss-aversion)
o Emotion: to instill an emotional attachment to a brand
o Statistical: the framing of statics. Statics support and oppose your argument at the same time,
depending upon which way you look at it
**2- Habitual Decision making  describes the choices we make with little or no conscious effort. Role of
unconscious decision-making activities
3- Evaluation of alternatives
 Total Market (“Universal”) Availability Set
 Awareness set: awareness of available alternatives from internal/external search
 Evoked (“Retrieval”) Set: alternatives a consumer knows about
 Consideration Set: alternatives a consumer considering; he/she decide between this options
 Consumer often consider a surprisingly small number of alternatives
 Marketers need to identify the hierarchy is called market partitioning
 Goal: Placing a brand in the evoked set of the consumer (brand
salience)
 Brand-sets
 Inept set: Brands that the consumer excludes from purchase
consideration because they are unacceptable
 Inert set: Brands (or models) the consumer is indifferent
toward because they are perceived as not having any
particular advantages
 Decision rules for product choice can be very simple or very
difficult:
 Prior experience with (similar) product
 Present information at time of purchase
  Beliefs about brands (from advertising)
 General evaluation approaches
 Rely on preexisting product evaluations stores in memory (direct or indirect experience)
 Construct new evaluations based on information acquired through internal or external search
 Evaluation is influenced by beliefs and attitudes about the brand/product
4- Product choice  “Rules-of-thumb”/Heuristics
 We often fall back on well-learned “rules-of-thumb” as Heuristics to make choices
 Heuristics help us to make efficient decisions
 Product signals: product signal communicates an underlying quality
 Market beliefs: assumptions we have about a company or product. The beliefs the guide our decisions
 Country or origin: Switzerland for precision in watches, France for wine, etc.
 Different examples of heuristics → higher prices as indicator for quality/Golden packaging as an indicator
for exclusiveness
 Heuristics of “Market Beliefs” → Choosing familiar brand names
 Tendency to prefer a #1 brand to the competition
 Consumer inertia: the tendency to buy a brand out of habit merely because it requires less effort
 Brand loyalty: repeat purchasing behavior that reflects a conscious decision to continue buying the
same brand
5- Post-purchase evaluation
 The consumers experience the product or service they selected and decide whether it meets (or maybe
even exceeds) their expectations
 Validate/verify the buying-decision
 Consumers evaluate their choice after making it and this evaluation affects future choices
 How to deal with cognitive dissonance:
 Consumers try to reassure themselves that they made wise choices to resolve the tension
 Rationalize the decision as being wise
 Post-purchase communication to support consumers decision
 Sharing your opinion/product-review  remind people to give a good review
 Post-purchase-use and how to dispose the product (sales frequency and re-buy situation)
 E.g., “change old vs. new”/subscription-models to influence upcoming purchases
Online decision making
 Cybermediary
 Intelligent agents: software use filtering technologies to learn from past user behavior to recommend new
purchases (“If you buy A, then you may like B”)
 Search engines/Search engine optimization
 Consumer reviews
 Social commerce → Influence of 1. Social media, 2. E-commerce, aspect of social proof
 “Hyper choice” situations
Consumer search on the internet

 Internet/Online search words or phrases used by consumer fall into Consumer
three categories: Decision
Making
o Generic terms: representing brand categories
o Specific retailers like Amazon
o Specific products like iPhone, Beats Headphones, Nike
athletic shoes
 Cybermediaries
o The web delivers enormous amounts of product
information in seconds
o It helps filter and organize online market information
o Example booking.com for hotels
Different models to describe the Consumer Decision-Making Process
High involvement context: usually expensive products

Low involvement context:

Marketing communication approaches for the two levels of involvement:

Response hierarchy Models:

⸸ Micromodels of marketing communications concentrate on consumers´ specific responses (=Behavior) to
communication
⸸ The response Hierarchy Models explains the consumer responses and behavior to the advertising process
⸸ All these models assume the buyer passes through:
o Cognitive → Affective → Behavioral  (habitual) stages
o Learn → Feel → Do
⸸ The sequence influences the consumer behavior and the communication strategy
⸸
⸸ Best-known response hierarchy models

⸸
⸸ “The Customer Journey, Updated”
o Important role of social influences on customers
o Most customer journey are takes in a social context, with other people influencing them at some or all of
the stages in the journey
o Social others can become so integral to the journey that it becomes a joint journey
o Technology (social media, Reviews, SEO) has changed the nature, frequency, and volume of these
influences

People are always influencing

us; we are asking friends and
family or influencers in social
media. Their opinion is
involved in your choices. You
are always making people part
of most of your purchase
decision
o
⸸ Factors on consumer behavior
o Shopping and time-of-purchase (Shop-design, context, social context)
o Branding and packaging design
o Decision making in B-to-B industries
o Consumer decision-making is a big tent