Gift giving

During the whole year one of the most wonderful times is Christmas. It is a time of celebration when family and friends have enough time to sit and talk. Christmas is the time of fantasy and magical atmosphere. The smell of the turkey cooking the lights on the Christmas tree and though of what Santa Clause may bring - gifts. This brings the same problem every year, what to buy. Ii is hard to interpret the dreams of family and friends, and many people are unaware that we follow the hint giving by marketing special thru the media. Present may be:

functional – utilitarian,

symbolic – status symbols

and hedonistic – for fun.

Gershoff (University of Michigan) claims that personal preferences may cause a problem, because the more we like something can influence a conduct during buying a gift.
"This difference leads us to make more exaggerated predictions that people like the same things we do, compared to predictions that people will dislike the same things that we dislike” said Gershoff.

Peoples shopping habits have changed considerably in recent years. One of the most dramatic changes has been purchasing the goods via the internet. This is now the second most important venue for giftware shopping.

Danziger (2004) claims that:
-Gift giving is about emotionally connecting giver and recipient
-Emotional shopping – the goal is to achieve a special feeling
-The gift communicates a message
-Problems can occur when the giver and the recipient’s values differ.

In conclusion every single gift is proof of an affection to the gifted person. The value of the present is irrelevant compared to the act of giving.

Heuristics memory and nostalgia

The main subject was how to trick people out of their buying habits for example the purchase of everyday items are often tied to a known brand and with no thought to looking for a different brand due to the fact that the product satisfied all needs.








Low to high involvement as shown above indicates more thought and investigation. Is carried out when purchasing irregular large items. Price is sometimes an important factor.

Fast and frugal heuristics – making quick decisions when there is a lot of choice (Williams 2001).

This process starts with a search for info i.e. cost and suitability arriving at a decision to purchase. These are heuristics mental shortcuts.
We discussed Fast and Frugal heuristics of which there are 4 kinds:
• Recognition (you are more likely to buy the one you know than a new model) Branding
• Minimalist (recognition plus one random criteria – works for low involvement e.g. recognition plus nice label) Advertising
• Take the Last (uses the last criteria applied to a similar situation) Habit
• Take the Best (assesses the options in order of perceived importance of criteria – still only uses one reason) Branding/USP

Now I am going to show there are two main learning theories.
Behaviourist Approach – approaching a problem without any previous conceptions - stimulus response connections
• Classical conditioning (Pavlov)
• Operant conditioning (Skinner)
Cognitive Learning – a process of listening, watching, touching or experiencing – consumers as complex problem solvers
• Latent Learning
• Observational Learning

We also talked about nostalgia which is strongly associated with memory.

"A wistful desire to return in thought or in fact to a former time in one's life, to one's home or homeland, or to one's family and friends; a sentimental yearning for the happiness of a former place or time: a nostalgia for his college days". (dictionary.com)

An example of nostalgia is a song by Wham - Last Christmas which is repeated every year during the Christmas period and invokes happy memories. This promotes nostalgia.

http://pl.youtube.com/watch?v=3354flS1KJs

In the lesson two more ads were watched relating to nostalgia.
1. Marks & Spencers ad. This was an associated with nostalgia by going back to 1960s.
2. Another Marks & Spencers ad. Uses a group of women meeting in the afternoon. This reminds women on how afternoons used to be spent.

In conclusion this lesson raised some important aspects of adverting. The idea is often to trick a person in to accepting new ideas/products. This is often related to nostalgia. Sometimes with romantic overtones which tend to take peoples memories back through time.

Vive la difference

The lesson was about charity advertising associated with gender response to direct mail. There were 3 charity ads.
Number one was an ad for Dr. Bernardo’s charity, number two was for a cancer research and number three was an ad about giving blood.

The first is about small lonely girl, which showed a small girl with sad eyes which obviously played on individual emotions. Coupled with the voice over this portrayed a little girl lost without a future.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blWd3iixIJc


The Cancer Research UK charity was structured in an such a way to show happy people who were previous cancer sufferers, followed by a happy event in the girls life which was showing her emotions at the thought of her mother who was absent due to affect of cancer. The words used “My mum should be here” showed the emotions she was experiencing during her most important day during her life. I consider that ad was most touching of the ads we reviewed.


http://pl.youtube.com/watch?v=RMwt28P_xSQ


The last ad was based on “Do something amazing, give blood”. Once again showing people giving gratitude for the fact anonymous people had possibly been touched by the advert to give blood thereby saving someone’s life. It is known fact that many people give blood regularly. This advert is designed to encourage even more people to give blood on a regular basis.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tijSx_fwoM0&feature=related



These ads are made in a such a way to appeal to peoples minds, and shock their feelings in to action.

http://pl.youtube.com/watch?v=m4NtYHKGRQ0

Adverts are designed to impact on peoples feelings, and as such are made with dramatic events which when viewed cause uproar and sometimes result in the ad being banned. This still made people discuss and take action so achieved the original aim of generating funds for the charities.

The best way to understand the charity advertising sector is to work within a charity and gain experience of producing a dramatic eye-catching ad with as small amount of expenditure.

The second part of our task was to observe a picture taking in as many details as possible. This showed that males and females have a different approach to how they perceive an advert. Males are responsive to ads that show psychical strength and portray ambition. Women respond better to softer ads that stress, beauty and youth.

In conclusion, the biggest challenge for advertisers is to produce a charity ad at the lowest possible price at the same time using all the tricks available so that it grabs the most media attention, appealing to both genders to gain most attention.