Consumption Meanings

Chapter 4 and Chapter 16 as assigned

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Learning Objectives

Explain why meaning is an important issue for marketers. Describe the basic process of semiosis and the semiotic triangle. Have a working knowledge of the meaning transfer model. Explain why spokespersons are important and describe the link between spokesperson selection and marketing success. Recognize the kinds of meanings that consumers value. Know why questions of meaning are important in cross cultural contexts. Recognize the significance of collecting, impulse buying, gift-giving, and self-gifts for consumers and marketers.
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Consumer Meaning

Marketing communications are a source of meaning Marketed products are a source of meaningful possessions Many of peoples most meaningful possessions are not marketplace commodities Loss of Meaning: Success of global markets system tends to homogenize meaning and value of products. Both marketers and consumers face the problem of unsatisfactory meaning
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Meaning Transfer Perspective

Individuals are motivated to acquire things symbolic of their lives we use things to communicate to ourselves and to others who we are Semiotics studies meaning

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Semiosis

Semiosis is the science of meaning; process of communication by any type of sign.

A sign is anything that stands for something else.

Members of a communications community agree, more or less, on meanings because they share significant cultural knowledge.

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Exhibit 4.1 Semiotic Triangle

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Product Meaning is Changeable

Product meaning changes with time.

Product meaning is unstable across market segments. Product meanings are contested by social groups and market segments. (e.g., team mascots, package labels, etc.)
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Types of Meanings

Utilitarian meaning

perceived usefulness of a product in terms of its ability to perform functional or physical tasks.

Sacred and secular meanings

Sacred meaning: adheres in those things that are designed or discovered to be supremely important. Secular meaning: secular properties of things are the reverse of sacred ones.

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Sacred Qualities

Belong to a different order of reality Stand apart from what is ordinary. Feel a focused emotional attachment Often concretized in a representational object Ritual surrounds contact Cannot be bought and sold or meaning is lost

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Sacred Possessions: Your Perspective?

Sacred

Sites: Sacred Times: Tangible Things: Intangible Things: Persons or other Beings: Experiences:
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________________ ________________

________________
________________ ________________

________________

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Types of Meanings (continued)

Hedonic meanings

products associated with specific feelings or to facilitate feelings. consumers brand equity involves the accumulated history and sentiment attached to particular brands. negative emotional meanings of consumption include addiction, compulsive consumption, terminal materialism (greed).

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Exhibit 4.4 A Model of Hedonic Meaning

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Types of meaning (continued)

Social meanings

People communicate statements about who they are, what groups they identify with, and those from which they are different primarily through consumer goods. Others see what people consume as expressions of who those people are.

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Brand Equity

Derives from social meaning attached to a brand Involves the accumulated beliefs, history, sentiment, and value consumers attach to particular brands Comprises the sum of the brand image meanings plus consumers confidence in and loyalty to the brand Enduring

Crucial asset for firms due to proliferation of products especially in the Triad nations
Evidence that consumers evaluations of brand quality positively affect company stock valuations.

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Movement of Meanings: Origins of Meaning

Meaning transfer model (Exhibit 4.5)

Consumer meanings move between three locations:

the culturally constituted world, the good (product, service or experience), and groups of consumers.

Meaning moves in a trajectory between world and good, and good and consumer or consuming unit.

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Exhibit 4.5
Meaning Transfer Model

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Linking Cultural Meanings and Product Meanings

Marketing communications are a vehicle for connecting cultural meanings to consumption objects.

persona: the spokesperson depicted or implied within the advertisement itself.

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Advertising Model of Meaning Transfer

WITHIN-TEXT

SOURCE

Sponsor

Author

Persona

MESSAGE

Autobiography Implied

Narrative/ Lecture

Drama Actual

Sponsorial

CONSUMERS
Source: Adapted from Barbara A. Stern (1994), A Revised Communication Model for Advertising: Multiple Dimensions of the Source, the Message, and the Recipient, Journal of Advertising, 23 (June), 5-15.

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Celebrity Endorsers
Celebrity

endorsers transfer meanings to brands because of the multiple roles for which the celebrities are known
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Linking Cultural Meanings and Product Meanings

Visual Conventions and Consumption Meanings

selection and combination of visual symbols to achieve persuasive effects.

Characters and Consumption Meanings

Meaning movement and the Endorsement Process

Research shows that the meanings attributed to previously unendorsed products changed dramatically when they were linked to celebrity endorsers.

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Linking Product Meanings and Consumption Meanings

Consumers provide products or their advertising images with meaning through their recognition of what they stand for, what they symbolize, at least within the space of an ad. By using particular products, consumers differentiate themselves from other people who consume different products with presumably different meanings.

There is a sense in which consumers allow themselves to be created by ads and products.
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Models and Rituals of Meaning Transfer

Special

behaviors consumers use to transfer meaning include possession, grooming, exchange, and divestment rituals.

Possession rituals: customizing, decorating, personalizing, cleaning, discussing, displaying, and photographing. Grooming behavior: form of body language communicating specific messages about an individuals social status, maturity, aspirations, conformity, and morality. Arnould et al. slide
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Eliminate the Penny?

Recent study asked Americans whether to keep the penny as part of our exchange currency

65% Keep it 32% Eliminate it 3% Dont know

How can you explain these results? What is your opinion? What does the penny mean in the everyday lives of consumers? To American culture?

The French have eliminated the franc (penny) from their currency why do you suppose they did that?

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Malleability and Movement of Meanings

The meanings of products and services are highly malleable. There is considerable variation in the extent to which consumers share meanings.

Product meaning is a multilevel construct, with four types of meaningful associations:

tangible attributes cultural associations subcultural associations unique, personal associations

Marketers work to change meanings at each of the four levels to align their products with the desires of target markets.
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Collecting and Museums

Collecting is the selective, active, and longitudinal acquisition, possession, and disposition of an interrelated set of differentiated objects (material things, ideas, beings, or experiences) that contribute to and derive extraordinary meaning from the set itself.

What do collections mean to consumers?

control, magical power, evocation of other times, people, places, legitimization for materialism, an expanded sense of self, hedonic pleasure.
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Collecting and Museums

Collecting is a behavior characteristic both of individuals and institutions. Institutions/Firms reinforce the social and economic significance of collecting behavior by pre-packing the experience for consumers and providing the comforting assurance of authenticity.

Museum shops and catalogs are an important part of the growing collecting industry.
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Impulse Purchases

Impulse purchases occur when consumers experience a sudden, often powerful, and persistent emotional urge to buy immediately. Impulse purchases also entail a sudden mental match between the meaning of a product and a consumers self-concept.

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Outcomes of Impulse Buying

When people are making the purchase they have little regard for the consequences One study found:

75% of people felt better after making the purchase 16 % no different 8% guilt or ambivalence

May lead to financial problems, disappointment, or disapproval from others

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Impulsive Buying Related to Other Concepts

Some impulse buying is related to general acquisitiveness and materialism Marketing factors support impulse buying and may decrease self-control (credit cards, ATM machines, long shopping hours, placement in stores, etc.) Impulse buying varies based on personality e.g., risk aversion versus variety seeking

In some cases, impulse purchase behavior is compulsive and represents a darkside of consumer behavior.

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Gift Giving

The importance that consumers attach to gift giving provides many opportunities for marketers. The norm of reciprocity describes the fact that receiving a gift often creates a strong sense of obligation to make a return gift. Interpersonal gifts are provoked by specific conditions, including structural or emergent.

Structural occasions include territorial passages, rites of passage, and rites of progression. Emergent occasions include means by which to initiate, repair, and/or intensify relationships.

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Exhibit 16.5
Interpersonal Gift Giving

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Self-Gifts

Consumers give gifts to themselves. Often occurs in in the context of personal accomplishment, distress, or holiday occasion. Two types: reward therapeutic Form of personal, symbolic selfcommunication. Self-gifting can positively enhance self-concept, consistency, or esteem.

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Topic Takeaways

Marketing activities create and reflect meaning (see meaning transfer perspective) Products (goods, services, experiences) are an important source of meaning (utilitarian, sacred, secular, hedonic, social) in consumers lives Semiotics is the study of meaning and can be used to inform the development of positioning strategies Brand equity comes from the social meanings attached to a brand Celebrity endorsers (and other endorsers) help transfer meaning to brands

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Topic Takeaways 2

Products and their meanings help differentiate the consumers who use them from other consumers Ritual processes help transfer meanings to products Collecting and impulse purchasing share the characteristic of a sudden mental match between a buyer and an object Gift giving is based on the notion of reciprocity Self gifts are purchased for reward and/or therapy

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