Personality

Personality can be defined as a "dynamic and organized set of characteristics possessed by a person that uniquely influences his or her cognition's, motivations, and behaviours in various situations" (Ryckman, 2004).

“Self-concept: the beliefs a person holds about his or her own attributes & how he or she evaluates those qualities” (Solomon, 1999)

The five core dimensions and their facets are:

SINCERITY (down to earth, honest, wholesome,cheerful)

EXCITEMENT (daring, spirited, imaginative, up-to-date)

COMPETENCE (reliable, intelligent, successful)

SOPHISTICATION (upper dass, charming)

RUGGEDNESS (outdoorsy, tough)

Beginning of the lesson was unusual because Ruth asked us to draw a pig on a empty peace of the paper. After a drew we were asked about some details like: where we drew a pig was a top, middle or bottom of the paper, how long was a tail, how big was a nose etc. all the details were associated with distinct feature. Lots of different personalities questionnaires we can find on a Internet. one of that questionnaires we had fill out before a lecture and it was:
Which Simpson’s character are you aligned with? After fell out the questionnaire result was I am aligned with Mr Burns which means I am strategist.

Strenght - not threatened by conflict or criticism. Able to leave relationships which should be ended.

Weakness - May be insensitive at times. Tendency to be unwilling or unable to accept blame.

Next part of lesson was talk about Freud's theory. He proposed that the psyche could be divided into three parts: id, ego and super-ego.

The id is the only component of personality that is present from birth. This aspect of personality is entirely unconscious and includes of the instinctive and primitive behaviors.
The ego is the component of personality that is responsible for dealing with reality. According to Freud, the ego develops from the id and ensures that the impulses of the id can be expressed in a manner acceptable in the real world. The ego functions in both the conscious, preconscious, and unconscious mind.
The superego is the aspect of personality that holds all of our internalized moral standards and ideals that we acquire from both parents and society--our sense of right and wrong. The superego and provides guidelines for making judgments.

Last part of lecture was about three images which are:
self-image, ideal-self, self-esteem.
Self-image says how people see themselves. Who am I? Ideal-self says what would you like to be? And the last one self-esteem says how much do you like yourself?

Making a good adverts advertisers should use ideal-self, because they can give example to people and help them to make good decision who they want to be and feel them good with that.

Segmentation

What is segmentation?

Segmentation "the subdividing of a market into homogeneous (or similar) subsets of customers, where any subset may conceivably be selected as a target market to be reached with a distinct marketing mix" (Kotler, 2000),

“Segmentation is based on the observation of evolution of demand and represents a more precise and rational adaptation of the product and the marketing effort to meet customer or user demands” (Smith, 1957),

or finding out what different groups of people want!

The STP Marketing Process

Segmenting dividing up the market into distinctive group
↓
Targeting
selecting a specific segment to target
↓
Positioning
developing a marketing strategy which positions the product in relation to rivals in order to appeal to target segments.

On this lesson we talk about profiling. Profiling is a really good source and helps to get information about customers. That information is very valuable for many companies because it helps to try understand the needs of purchaser and sometimes what they want. Good example companies who use profiling are Boots and Tesco. They have Boots and Tesco cards to keep in their database the most important information about clients such as: what they like to buy, how often, how many or how much? From my experience i have been asked couple of times in a shop about my post code - that is profiling too, because we as a customers we giving information what type of people we are and what kind of particular products we purchasing. http://www.upmystreet.com/ is one of the websites where you can find lots of information about your area of living.

Advertising agencies know what ads should look like. Also they know there is loads of different types of people. Some of them are for man some of them are for woman.


http://pl.youtube.com/watch?v=0g8H1FcFAOw


That ad is for man.


http://pl.youtube.com/watch?v=_VGW7vX629I




That ad is for woman


Have you ever think about how many different kinds of shampoo is on a market? The answer is simply an amount is huge. There are for long hair, for blond, for men, for damaged hair etc.
Have you think what will happen when you wash you hair shampoo for long hair and your hair are short? Answer: nothing, because the difference is not the shampoo but the packing. Everything is about how you see the product not what is inside. How much would be a cost of a shampoo if there were only one for all the types of hair, for long AND short AND blond AND damage AND etc. It would be very cheap. We pay more for some of the products because we think they are better but the truth is they are this same but adverts and marketing makes that products look different.


That is the reason why advertising is important and plays one of the main roles in our lifestyle.

Perception

On this lesson we had to presented our experiments. One of the experiment was about chocolate and about the question is the quality good as the price? There were 5 different chocolate bars. We had to taste them and try to guess which one was the cheapest and witch one the most expensive. Nobody could guess but everybody agreed that the taste one of that chocolate was horrible. On the end of the experiment we find out that horrible chocolate was second most expensive. After that everybody confirm: good quality not always goes with a expensive price.

Me and my group done experiment about package of perfume. we asked female and male from 3 groups of people what they think about the colour, pictures on the boxes, bottles etc., and how they should look like. First one was teenagers, second was student and adults and the third elderly people. after collect all the information we could say elderly people like not much complicated shapes of bottles and boxes, the colour must be not to bright and not to dark. teenagers like very bright colours and the package have to be eye-catching lots of pictures on boxes and unusual shapes. men like dark colours as black, blue or grey and women completely opposite. pink yellow orange are woman's colour. both group said the package is not very important have to has simply look. main thought of those experiments is perception and everything what is going with is very important in a branch of advertising and marketing. we are surrounded by adverts everywhere. Daily we encounter about 3000 different ads. adverts should be simple, easy to understand and unique so the customers can quickly associate ad with a product and product with a ad.


The individual develops a persistent & deep rooted way of perceiving, thinking & believing (Vernon 1955) “we get set in our ways”


Second part of the lecture was very interesting because we talked about Gestalt's Psychology. Is a theory of mind and brain that proposes that the operational principle of the brain is holistic, parallel, and analog, with self-organizing tendencies.

Looking on this picture not many people could find young woman and a man with a stick. most of them seen just the bald head of old man.

There are two main theories of Gestalt. The first one is grouping( proximity and similarity). We tend to group together objects that share similar physical characteristics – hence health and beauty brands sticking to certain colours and bottle shapes. Proximity is a very useful and effective form of expression in almost every medium of artistic and graphic communication. Whether it be clever in advertisement or poorly communicated through over stimulation its importance should not be ignored. Just as all of the principles discussed in this theory, the better understanding we as designers have of them, the more effective and well communicated our messages will be. Similarity between concepts is a function of the distance between the concepts in space. Concepts represented by points that are near to each other are more psychologically similar than are points that are conceptually distant.

Next theory is closure. We tend to see an incomplete picture as complete – we need to fill in the gaps – we do it automatically.

On this picture we can see either a man who is playing on horn and a face of young woman.

The last theory we talked about is stimulus ambiguity. A stimulus is said to be ambiguous when it does not correspond to an immediately recognisable shape or form. We need to find a context in order to interpret it.

Perception

What is perception?

“Perception is the process of sensing, selecting & interpreting consumer stimuli in the external world” (Wilkie 1994)

“… is how we see the world around us” (Schiffman & Kanuk 2003)


Today we talk about perception and how people understand the things. Everybody is different and their minds perceive differently then others.



Reference:
http://tutor2u.net/business/marketing/buying_stimulus_model.asp


In the above model marketing and the others stimuli put the customers in the middle and produce certain responses. Marketing management must try figure out what is going on in the customers minds. The first stage of understanding buyer behaviour is to focus on the factors that determine the buyer characteristic in the middle. These can be showed as follows:







Reference: http://www.marketingteacher.com/Lessons/lesson_consumer_buying_behaviour.htm

The second part of the lecture was discussion about five senses which are: touching, smelling, seeing, hearing and taste. We had a couple of experiments. on a first one the shown to us ad and we had to guess who are the receivers and why? Second experiment was association with a pictures on a books' covers and the third shown how much is important the music in a advertising. i will show you my favourite ad where the music is great. Enjoy!

http://pl.youtube.com/watch?v=7F2DF6W7qsw

Those experiments were very interesting because we find out what kind of ads are passed to males and females.

Men prefer clear, straight ads with dark colours - they doesn't like to think about it to much, women in turn to men like bright colours, something have to be in a background and they need time to analyse and find out the meaning of the advert.

Women and men as a potential client have to make some steps before they decide if they want to buy a product or not. To show what kind of steps they use i will use a scheme:

Reference: http://tutor2u.net/business/marketing/buying_decision_process.asp

Next week will be even more interesting because we have to do own experiment and represent to the group.

We are what we have

Today we had the first day with Ruth Hickmott and she teach us how to understand customer and everything around us. Beginning of the lecture was very interesting because we had a guest which nobody knew and had to say about her the most important things such as: where she lives, is she married, does she work, what is her favourite show, etc. It was really good fun because we guessed most of this things. Our next activity was even better everybody from a group brought their favourite thing and we had to guess who that thing belongs to. Every human have some goods or things which likes and is missing them when they lost or stolen.

“…Possessions are an important component of sense of self. The most direct form of evidence is found in the nature of self-perceptions. Additional, especially striking evidence is found in the diminished sense of self when possessions are unintentionally lost or stolen. More evidence in the role of possessions in sense of self comes from anthropological studies of the way possessions are treated ritually and after death.” - Russell W Belk

My impression is really positive after the first lesson. The most important is communicate and understand not just the clients and the customers but all the people because without that we cant act and live. Subject is really interesting and I'm sure that from lesson to lesson a will enjoy more and more.