Group conformity, opinion leaders and peer pressure

Definition: 

“A collection of individuals who have regular contact and frequent interaction, mutual influence, commonwork together to achieve a common set of goals.” (www.businessdictionary.com Accessed: 26/04/2011)

In my words:

A group is a set of people (two or more) who share a set of common interests; these include sets of social norms, experience co-dependent behaviours and have role relationships.

People who are a part of a group can sometimes feel pressurised by their group members and can react negatively to this type of pressure. The main ways in which they react to this type of pressure includes, Internalisation and identification, Counter conformity and Compliance.

Studies into group conformity:

One study which looks into group conformity is an experiment conducted by Asch (1958) in which a group of people were shown different line lengths and asked to match them with another on a card. All of the people gave the wrong answer as this was a part of the experiment, the person who was being tested also conformed to the rest of the group and gave the same answer. (www.age-of-the-sage.org Accessed: 26/04/2011)

In consumer behaviour a lot of people are influenced by how others react to a certain product or service. Even if they do not originally agree with the idea, if the majority of a group around them agrees then they will also conform to the idea weather they internally agree or not.

Opinion leaders

Definition:

“People who are knowledgeable about products and whose advice is taken seriously by others” (Solomon Pg 407)

Opinion leaders are those who influence other people around them easily. They often change their attitudes and behaviours. These types of people are those who tend to be the initial people to buy a latest product. This then encourages other people to also buy the particular product or service as they think the person who originally bought it is right to do so.

Opinion leaders can not be generalised as there are different types of opinion leaders depending on the product or service and their expertise on different topics are varied. For example one opinion leader for electronics, and another for fashion/retail.

These are very important in marketing as they are the basis in what makes a product or service successful and encourages others to also purchase. A lot of trends in buying often originate within city centres and then are spread across the country.

I think this is one advert where opninion leaders has been used and really caught my eye. The use of celebrities encourages people to also want to give blood, I know it's for a good cause and a lot of people would give blood regardless of the celebrities being in the advert but I think this may have encouraged a lot more people to also give blood.

This advert is one which also uses celebrities to enhance its products and encourages others to also use it. Celebrities are very common opinion leaders to use in marketing as they are key people who encourage consumers to purchase.

References: 

1.   http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/group.html ( Accessed: 26/04/2011)
2.    http://www.age-of-the-sage.org/psychology/social/asch_conformity.html ( Accessed: 26/04/2011) 
3. Consumer behaviour: A European perspective: Fourth Edition:2010      Michael R.Solomon, Gary Bamossy, Soren askegaard, Margaret K. Hogg