The Power of the Masses: Group Influences

Three types of groups:

Primary groups - These groups are intimate, face-to face groups, such as
family or peer groups.
1. Peer group
2. Clique
3. Household
Secondary Groups - These are groups that are seen less frequently; theyre
considered more impersonal than primary groups because they interact only
occasionally.
1. Club
2. Community
3. Gang
4. Mob
5. Squad
6. Team
Symbolic groups - These are groups that you never join, but you try to take
on their values.

What groups do:

Groups provide information needed to make decisions.

Groups reward or punish behavior to encourage compliance.
Groups project shared values to influence members to behave similarly.

How consumers respond:

Comply with the groups expectation

Conform to the groups way of thinking, believing, and behaving
Internalize attitudes and behaviors that agree with their own values

These processes help develop a consumers attitude, which influences how an

individual thinks and why he acts and responds as he does.
By understanding the influences that a group has on the consumers youre
targeting, you can adapt your marketing strategy to influence a number of people
simultaneously. When it comes to your marketing strategy, word-of-mouth
information exchange can have a positive or negative effect (or both), depending on
how a group feels about your product.
Groups carry a level of social power with them. Social power is the ability of an
individual or a group to alter the actions of others. Its important to understand the
social power that groups have on consumers in order to gauge the type and amount
of influence they have on their members. This tells you how you can use the social
power of the group to influence consumers.

Individual loyalty and dedication to a group determines the strength of a groups

influence in terms of the number of people it influences as well as the level of
control it has over those people. By understanding how strong of an influence a
particular group has over its members, you can identify whether youll market to the
group or to its individual members.
An individual is attracted to a group based on the groups ability to satisfy the
individuals internal needs. An individual looks for positive ways to conform with the
group consciously and subconsciously. When working to create a marketing strategy
toward a specific group, it helps to understand the group characteristics that an
individual looks for, because then you can understand why the group appealed to
the individual and focus on those appealing characteristics in your marketing
strategy.