Showing posts with label brand attitude. Show all posts
Showing posts with label brand attitude. Show all posts

Saturday, February 15, 2014

Capitalistic materialism and happiness; an holistic approach



“The world says: "You have needs -- satisfy them. You have as much right as the rich and the mighty. Don't hesitate to satisfy your needs; indeed, expand your needs and demand more." This is the worldly doctrine of today. And they believe that this is freedom. The result for the rich is isolation and suicide, for the poor, envy and murder.” 

― 
Fyodor DostoyevskyThe Brothers Karamazov: A Novel in Four Parts With Epilogue


Materialism, the forgotten child of monist ontology. The nature and definition of matter have occasioned much philosophical debate, even from ancient times.  

In ancient Greece, philosophers like Thales, Epicurus and Democritus prefigure later materialists; their theory mainly suggests that all that exists is matter and void, and all phenomena result from different motions of base material particles. During the Middle Ages, Pierre Gassendi represented the materialist tradition, as opposed to René Descartes' theory, according to which natural sciences may be explained with dualist foundations. In the 19th century, Karl Marx extended the concept of materialism to elaborate an alternative conception of history based on the empirical world of human activity, thus establishing the dialectical materialism. But, how is materialism perceived today, in a global playground? There are three ways of attaining happiness, according to Sartre: by having, doing and being. Over the next decades, sociologists and psychologists began to train their sights on the study of gaining external happiness, Sartre's concepts of having and doing had become the psychosocial ideas of materialism. Materialism may be nowadays described as a way of thinking that gives much importance to material possessions rather than intellectual things. That means, materialism is nowadays considered as a sociological tool in developing an understanding of modern capitalistic culture via referring to the desire of material needs, rather than a philosophical argument or a conception of history. But, would materialism and consumerism be accompanied by greater well-being?


Materialism and wealth are many times perceived as related terms. Actually, wealth may be an elusive as well as an extrinsic goal. Many people chase money; few achieve great wealth. Are rich people happier than poor people? In order to answer these fundamental questions, we will may try to explain materialism as a construct. Materialism, as the devotion to acquisition and possession, may be described as a defining characteristic of our age which has been criticized on religious, philosophical, and social grounds. Materialism as an individual variable has been effectively defined by Richins & Dawson (1992). Their scale measures three components of materialism: acquisition as the central goal in human life, including acquisition as the path to happiness and success in life as defined by possessions. High scorers, compared to low scorers, are in general less satisfied with life, want more money, are less likely to share, and seem to suffer from poor adjustment, much like those who are preoccupied with money. High scorers also value financial security, while low scorers give priority to interpersonal relationships and a sense of personal accomplishment. On the same basis, researchers have conceptualized materialism as the consumption style that results when consumers perceive that value inheres in consumption rather than in experiences and people. 

Well-being may be easily correlated with materialism. Well-being may assessed in terms of science as subjective well-being or SWB (Diener 1984), which encompasses the cognitive appraisal of one’s life as satisfactory. Given strong motives for acquiring money, with its promises of freedom, power, and even love, the actual impact of income on life satisfaction within a society seems unaccountably meager. Academic researchers such as Ahuvia and Friedman change the focus from objective wealth to subjective appraisals. For instance, they report a strong relationship between perception of income and subjective well-being. SWB increases as income increases from below average to above average within one’s home community. The subjective approach also helps us understand why financial goals seem to have an insatiable quality: as people acquire more, they seem to want even more, with dissatisfaction persisting along with apparent success. However modest the relationship between income and SWB, once the poverty threshold is passed, it is still a positive relationship. Money matter for well-being, but that money’s influence is mediated and limited by personality buffers (self-esteem, control and optimism). Individuals’ happiness level is more or less preset, going up a bit when we experience self-esteem, control, and optimism, and going down a bit when those qualities falter. Increased income has a positive effect all aforementioned buffers, and therefore the happiness level moves toward the upper end of the range. 

Materialism and SWB may be highly correlated. Initial evidence of the relationship between materialism and well-being was provided by Belk (1985), who associated materialism with such undesirable traits as non-generosity, envy, and greed and found that these traits have a significant negative correlation with both happiness and overall life satisfaction. Subsequent studies using Belk’s scale have found that materialism is negatively correlated with satisfaction with personal finances and career accomplishments and positively correlated with social anxiety, dependency or even self-criticism.

Well-being predictors may be categorized as genetically determined, circumstantial, or intentional positive behaviors and cognitions. Genetic factors, such as genes and personality traits, account for a large percentage of the variation in between-subject well-being, but they are very difficult, if not impossible, to alter. Circumstantial factors such as income, marital status, and employment account for only a smaller percentage of the variance in well-being levels due to the phenomenon of hedonic adaptation. Thus, positive behaviors offer the best potential route to longitudinal increases in well-being since people have considerable control over these activities. Hedonic products are those “whose consumption is primarily characterized by an affective and sensory experience of aesthetic or sensual pleasure, fantasy, and fun” (Dhar & Wertenbroch 2000). We may define hedonic consumption as a consumer's regular expenditures on specific hedonic products or services. It reflects how much of the hedonic experience consumers enjoy regularly. Hedonic product usage is positively associated with consumers' well-being, and experiential purchases may even make people happier than material purchases. However, as the human race grows richer, the problems associated with hedonic consumption, may result in negative effects on consumers' well-being. In general, consumers tend to maximize their satisfaction through economic activities that consist of the exchange and consumption of goods. Consumers may enhance their well-being by recognizing their own needs and satisfying them by engaging in consumption activity and attaining consumer products. Consumption, especially of hedonic consumer products, is highly important for happiness among modern consumers, which leads highly developed economies to tend to exhibit an increased emphasis on hedonic consumption. Thus, consumption appears necessary for overall and subjective well-being in modern societies. The possession and consumption of more hedonic products represents the cultural aspiration towards personal happiness and well-being.

We should also refer to materialism and strategic consumption as a means for social affiliation. Humans have an innate need to be a part of social relationships because a social group afforded survival and safety throughout evolutionary history. It is not surprising that people have developed psychological mechanisms that help them ensure that their need to belong is being met. More specifically, exclusion heightens people’s tendency to form new social connections. Excluded people are eager to work and play with others, and they tend to view new sources of social connection in a positive, optimistic light. Consumers use the symbolic ways of consumption as a way to communicate information about themselves to others. Such communication attempts are particularly prevalent when people want to make a good impression on others or facilitate social interaction. Thus, self-presentational motives guide consumption decisions, and people may use consumption as a way to communicate specific information about themselves to others. Excluded people strategically consume in the service of affiliation. Happiness in this case, may be correlated with consumption as a way to be socially accepted and avoid social exclusion.



Let's take for granted that, for the time being, in Western societies, capitalistic materialism cannot be avoided. Brands need to sell and consumers need to consume, at least for the time being. Academic researchers, brands and marketers, having understood how crucial the situational correlation between materialism and well-being may be, need to develop a general framework of mechanisms and ethics in order to make materialistic habits better influence consumers' lifes. For instance, they could provide external stimuli and motivation for emphasizing that materialism may improve social relationships. Actually, financial aspirations are often egocentrically motivated, to get ahead in life. But they can also be sociocentrically motivated. Materialism could be actually motivated to satisfy the need for relatedness. Possessions can be important stores of social memories, tools of social protection, connection, or production. People may cherish particular possessions for such sociocentric motivations, but they may also cherish possessions in general for these motivations, and this could directly improve their social relationships. Both academic research and brand positioning on this possibility would provide new insights about the virtuous, positive sides of materialism, and it would contribute to a different, more holistic outlook on people’s material and social relationships, for a better future.

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

A Facebook for my Brand : Fan Pages and KPI's


Facebook fan pages can be regarded  as a virtual brand community. They are specialized, non geographically bound communities and they are based on a structured set of social relations among admirers of a brand. Therefore the theoretic explanations for a brand community are also suitable for explaining the fan page phenomenon. Social identity and  symbolic interactionism theories show that interaction with members of a reference group can lead to a strong feeling of belonging to this group (in this case the brand community) which in turn can lead to stronger buying behavior and positive brand attitude.

But how can we be sure that being a member of a facebook fan page has an impact on a brand admirer's buying behavior and brand attitude? Researchers from the University of Mannheim actually designed an experiment and assumed that members of the BMW fan page show stronger buying behavior and brand attitude than non-members and that within members, buying behavior and brand attitude are even stronger for active members than for passive ones.In order to carry out the experiment they conducted an online survey among 840 BMW admirers.

The BMW Fan Page Survey

Membership and interaction were expected to influence psychographic dependent variables (brand loyalty, brand commitment) and economic dependent variables (purchase intention, willingness to cross-buy and  positive word of mouth). Willingness to cross-buy was polled in three categories, which were lifestyle products (e.g. apparel), financial services (e.g. leasing or insurance offers) and original BMW spare parts. Purchase intention was polled in two categories, which were automobiles and BMW car repair services. In order to analyze the influence of membership and interaction, two separate experiments were carried out. In the first study, respondents were split into  members (n=210)  and  non-members (n=630) according to the membership of the German BMW fan page. The non-members became the control group and members became the experimental group.

Furthermore, members had to answer questions about their usage of the BMW fan page . Using these responses, a weighted interaction level was determined for each member. A cut-off value was then applied to the weighted interaction level to classify members of the BMW fan page either in passive or active members. While passive members don't or rarely interact with the fan page, active members display a higher level of interaction.


Influence of Membership

In order to analyze the influence of membership on the dependent variables,  the nonmembers and members of the Facebook fan page were compared with each other. Non-members (n=215) were recruited in BMW internet forums to make sure they are admirers of the brand. In order to be able to analyze variances of members and non-members, the groups need to be about the same size (max factor 1.5). That is why a sample of n=315 was randomly drawn out of the total number of the BMW fan page members (n=630).

Then the data was analyzed using a multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) in order to examine differences between the responses of the two groups. The mean values were calculated and compared between the groups to evaluate whether membership and interaction do have an influence on the dependant variables. The F-Values of MANOVA indicate that there are differences between the groups. These values ranged from F = 23,608 to 89,195 woth significant values of p=0.00, allowing to proceed with the interpretation of MANOVA.


A comparison of the mean values of the two groups proved that there are significant differences between non-members and members  of the BMW fan page for all 10 dependent variables. Specifically, membership has a strong positive influence on the affective variables brand  trust, brand  loyalty, brand commitment and positive word of mouth (∆ between +0.646 and +0.733, average ∆ = +0.675). Its influence on the conative variables brand satisfaction, purchase intention (for both product and repair services), and willingness to cross-buy (for lifestyle products, financial services and spare parts) is also strong (∆ between +0.395 and +0.985, average ∆ =  +0.682). The highest difference of mean values exists for  purchase intention (∆ =  0.985)  and willingness to cross-buy (∆ = 0.923).

Influence of Interaction


Having analyzed the influence of membership, the next step was to look more closely at the members of the BMW fan page, with the objective of determining whether the level of interaction on Facebook fan sites has any impact on the dependent variables. For this purpose, the four types of interaction with the fan page (writing posts, clicking the “Like” button, uploading photos or videos and sharing photos or videos with other users) were weighted to determine the level of interaction. Based on this level, members of the BMW fan page with a low level were then classified as passive and with a high level of interaction as active members.


The two groups were also analyzed using a MANOVA. Unlike the first pass, the second one did not deliver significant F-values for all 10 constructs. While most of the constructs had values between F = 4,815 to 23,668, purchase intention (for both product and repair services) and brand satisfaction failed to deliver satisfying p-values (p = 0.065, 0.758 and 0.425).


The comparison of the mean values of the two groups makes it clear that the significance of the MANOVA F-tests stem from the differences between the groups. Specifically, interaction has a positive influence on the affective constructs brand trust, brand loyalty,  brand commitment and positive word of mouth (∆ between +0.160 and +0.316, average ∆ = +0.233). Its influence on the conative variable willingness to cross-buy (for lifestyle products, financial services and spare parts) is  also positive (∆ between +0.164 and +0.379, average  ∆ =  +0.248). An influence on brand satisfaction and purchase intention (for both product and repair Services) was not observable as can be seen from the p-values. Highest mean value differences were seen in willingness to cross-buy for lifestyle products (∆ = 0,379) and brand loyalty (∆ = 0,316).

These two KPI's

The results show that being a member of a Facebook fan page has a strong influence on both affective and conative variables. Non-members show lower brand attitude and buying intention than members do. Membership as a key performance indicator can thus be used to assess intended buying behavior (conative component) and emotional affinity of customers to the brand (affective component).


Interaction has an influence on the affective dependent variables as well as partly on willingness to cross-buy. But while membership has an influence on all dependent variables, an influence of interaction on purchase intention and brand satisfaction was not observable. Interaction lacks a significant influence on the conative dependent variables. It can be assumed that interacting with a Facebook fan page does not influence such variables like purchase intention and brand satisfaction since there are other factors playing a more important role in buying a car or being satisfied with it. In the case of brand satisfaction, it is likely that whether a  customer is satisfied with the brand or not depends on the  performance  of the  brand  and not necessarily by how he interacts with the fan page. If the brand performs above the customer's expectation then brand satisfaction will follow. Interaction as a key performance indicator can thus only be used to assess emotional closeness to the brand BMW but not intended buying behavior of members.
The findings of this survey also show that membership and interaction do have a strong influence on brand admirers. The number of members of a fan page and the level of their interaction can therefore be considered as key performance indicators which actually have an economic value for the company using them. The findings also have implications for companies wanting to use a fan page on Facebook. Companies need to implement and monitor these two KPIs in order to evaluate whether their efforts on Facebook are successful or not. This means that companies need to follow these two KPIs closely when conducting a marketing campaign on Facebook in order to evaluate whether said campaign was successful or not. Companies should also focus on acquiring new members for their fan pages since it has been shown that membership has an impact on brand attitude and buying behavior.