CH5 350

Beyond Meat’s Mission and Core Challenge

Lofty mission: “By shifting from animal to plant-based meat, we can positively affect the planet, the environment, the climate, and even ourselves.”

Challenge: It must first change the long-held and deeply ingrained attitudes and behaviors of resolute real-meat-loving consumers.

Beyond Meat’s Unique Approach/Innovation

It targeted meat lovers, not vegetarians.

• It used high-tech methods to isolate the molecules that make meat taste, feel, look, and smell the way it does and replaced those molecules with the same or similar ones from vegetables (protein from peas, fats from cocoa butter/coconut oil).

Beyond Meat’s Marketing Strategy

Aimed appeals directly at meat-loving Americans with ads that employed all the sizzling, oozing visual flair for which big burger chains are famous.

• Fought to place the Beyond Burger in the meat sections of grocery stores rather than in their vegetarian or health food sections.

Beyond Meat's Current Status/Challenges (2022)

• After a sizzling start (202% annual growth rate over a 4-year period), the fad has lost headway.

• In 2022, supermarket plant-based product sales plunged 14%.

• Concerns include taste (blind taste-tests consistently distinguish substitutes from real meat), higher prices, and healthfulness (highly processed foods; similar calories/fat to a regular beef burger, but high in sodium and carbohydrates).

Consumer buyer behavior

refers to the buying behavior of final consumers—individuals and households that buy goods and services for personal consumption

Consumer market

The final consumers combine to make up the consumer market.

• The American consumer market consists of more than 336 million people who consume more than $15 trillion worth of goods and services each year.

The Central Question for Marketers

How do consumers respond to various marketing efforts the company might use?.

Model of Buyer Behavior (Stimulus-Response Model)

Marketing Stimuli (Product, Price, Place, Promotion) and Other Stimuli (Economic, Technological, Social, Cultural) enter the Buyer’s decision processing (Buyer’s characteristics, Buyer’s decision process) and result in Buyer's responses (Buying attitudes and preferences; Purchase behavior; Brand engagements and relationships).

Two Factors Affecting Stimuli Processing

1. The buyer’s characteristics (cultural, social, personal, psychological factors).

2. The buyer’s decision process (which ultimately affects their responses and behavior).

Culture

strongly affects a person’s wants and behavior

• Human behavior is largely learned; children in the U.S. are typically exposed to values like

  • individualism

  • directness

  • informality

  • achievement and success

  • financial independence

  • time and its importance

  • material comfort

  • health and fitness

"groups of people with shared value systems based on common life experiences and situations".

• Can be based on nationalities, religions, racial groups, age cohorts, and geographic regions.

Hispanic American Market Details

Nearly 66 million consumers, up by 23% over the past decade.

• Total annual buying power of more than $1.9 trillion.

• Known for its brand attachment and loyalty.

Vicks VapoRub Case Study (Hispanic Community)

The community is known to have the strongest brand loyalty of any demographic.

• The social media storm around Vicks VapoRub highlighted the community’s attachment to the brand, using it "to help in the treatment of nearly everything"

Black American Market Details

48 million consumers wielding $1.8 trillion in annual buying power.

• Average Black household spending has increased by 5% per year over the past 2 decades.

Sephora’s Black Beauty Initiative

Committed to fully supporting and celebrating Black beauty, in response to a study that revealed 2/5 retail shoppers of color have personally experienced unfair treatment.

• Specifically, Sephora dedicated 15% of its retail space to Black-owned brands and launched Accelerate (an incubation program for BIPOC-led brands).

Asian American Market Details

Now number more than 21 million, with annual buying power of $1.6 trillion.

• They are an affluent subsegment, with household incomes averaging 41% higher than the U.S. national average.

• They are the nation’s fastest-growing subcultural segment.

Hyundai’s “Hot Place” Campaign (Asian American)

Designed to appeal specifically to Asian American markets by focusing on their elevated eco-friendly consciousness and high interest in advanced electric vehicle technologies.

• The campaign illustrated creating a “Hot Place” within their neighborhood (showed how the IONIQ’s reverse charging helped a family during an unexpected power outage).

Culturally Insensitive Brand Changes

• Mars Food rebranded Uncle Ben’s Rice as Ben’s Original

• Quaker Oats rebranded Aunt Jemima pancake mixes as Pearl Milling Company products

• Dryer’s rebranded Eskimo Pie as an Edy’s Pie

• Land O’Lakes dairy cooperative removed the kneeling Indigenous “butter maid” woman from its packaging.

Reference groups

serve as points of comparison or reference in shaping a person’s attitudes or behavior, either directly through face-to-face interactions or indirectly through media such as the internet and social networks

Word-of-mouth influence

can strongly influence consumer buying behavior

• Personal recommendations of trusted friends, family, associates, and other consumers tend to be more credible than those from commercial sources.

Influencer marketing

ex) Nike signed LeBron James and Cristiano Ronaldo to lifetime endorsement deals worth more than $1 billion

Micro-Influencers (Concept and Advantages)

Smaller influencers (typically 1,000 and 100,000 fans) who boast hyper-engaged audiences, more authentic content, and more affordable rates.

• Fans view these creators as far more trustworthy than celebrities, and they often have high-single-digit or double-digit engagement rates (compared to ~1% for mega-influencers). Cost: 97% charge $500 or less per post on Instagram.

Petco’s Content Strategy

Petco runs campaigns to turn brand fans into “pet creators” who help build positive brand sentiment.

• This UGC is valued because "It’s also much easier and faster to leverage content creators than to engage an [advertising] agency team”.

Family (Importance & Shifting Roles)

The family is the most important membership group and consumer buying unit in society.

• With more than 75% of all women now in the workforce, husbands are doing much more purchasing; women today purchase more than 50% of products traditionally considered in the male domain (cars, electronics).

• 9 in 10 parents reported that their kids influenced their purchases.

Roles and Status

A role consists of the activities people are expected to perform.

• Each role carries a status reflecting the general esteem given to it by society.

• People usually choose products appropriate to their roles and status (e.g., formal wear for a brand manager role, team apparel for a fan role).

FIGS Case Study (Occupation Segmentation)

FIGS sells fashionable yet functional medical scrubs directly to medical professionals.

• It revolutionized the industry by offering slimmer, sleeker styles with proprietary fabrics (e.g., FIONx offers four-way stretch, anti-wrinkle properties, and Silvadur antimicrobial technology).

• Some products feature as many as 20 pockets.

Age and Life Stage Segmentation

People change the goods and services they buy over their lifetimes; buying is shaped by the stage of the family life cycle.

• The Claritas PRIZM Lifestage Groups system classifies every American household into 68 distinct life-stage segments (e.g., “Young Achievers,” “Affluent Empty Nests”).

Economic Situation

Marketers watch trends in spending, personal income, savings, and interest rates.

• In recent value-conscious times, the marketing watchword has been “value.”

  • Example: Target emphasized the “Pay Less” side of its “Expect More. Pay Less.” positioning promise.

Lifestyle

is a person’s pattern of living as expressed in their psychographics

• Involves measuring major AIO dimensions—activities, interests, and opinions.

• Profiles a person’s whole pattern of acting and interacting in the world.

Vans Lifestyle Positioning

People buy Vans snowboards, skates, and apparel because they are buying into the brand’s “Off the Wall” lifestyle experience.

• Vans has moved into digital experiences, partnering with Roblox to launch Vans World, an interactive skateboarding metaverse playground.

Personality

refers to the unique psychological characteristics that distinguish a person or group

Brand personality

the specific mix of human traits that may be attributed to a particular brand

• 5 Brand Personality Traits

  • sincerity

  • excitement

  • competence

  • sophistication

  • ruggedness

Harley-Davidson Personality Segment

Harley-Davidson appeals to personality segments—people who share common traits like independence, individualism, and openness to new experiences.

• Harley is the 3rd-most tattooed brand by Instagram posts, trailing only Disney and Nintendo.

Motive

is a need that is sufficiently pressing that the person seeks to satisfy it

Freud’s Motivation Theory (Subconscious)

• People are largely unconscious about the real psychological forces shaping their behavior.

• Buying decisions are affected by subconscious motives that even the buyer may not fully understand

  • (e.g., buying a sporty BMW convertible to feel young and independent again).

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (Five Levels)

Physiological needs (hunger, thirst)

Safety needs (security, protection)

Social needs (belonging, love)

Esteem needs (recognition, status)

Self-actualization needs (self-development and realization).

3 Perceptual Processes

1. Selective attention: The tendency for people to screen out most of the information to which they are exposed.

2. Selective distortion: The tendency of people to interpret information in a way that supports what they already believe.

3. Selective retention: Consumers are likely to remember good points made about a brand they favor and forget good points made about competing brands.

Subliminal Advertising

• The fear that consumers are being manipulated by marketing messages without even knowing it.

• Numerous studies have found little or no link between subliminal messages and consumer behavior.

Learning

describes changes in an individual’s behavior arising from experience

• Learning occurs through the interplay of drives, stimuli, cues, responses, and reinforcement.

• Cues are minor stimuli that determine when, where, and how the person responds.

Beliefs

make up product and brand images that affect buying behavior.

describes a person’s relatively consistent evaluations, feelings, and tendencies toward an object or idea."

• Attitudes put people into a frame of mind of liking or disliking things.

• Attitudes are difficult to change

  • a company should usually try to fit its products into existing attitude patterns.

SPANX Case Study (Changing Attitudes)

SPANX had to change basic retailer and consumer attitudes toward foundation garments.

• Founder Sara Blakely convinced retailers to place SPANX near cash registers in women’s ready-to-wear clothing departments (not hosiery), breaking established mental boundaries.

• Oprah Winfrey’s endorsement helped change attitudes rapidly, making “shapewear” the new fashion trend.

Buyer Decision Process (Five Stages - Figure 5.4)

Need recognition → Information search → Evaluation of alternatives → Purchase decision → Postpurchase behavior.

• Note: Buyers may skip or reverse some stages in routine purchases.

Need recognition

the buyer recognizes a problem or need.

• Can be triggered by internal stimuli (hunger, thirst) or external stimuli (advertisement, chat with a friend).

Information Search

related to the need.

• Consumers can obtain information from

  • Personal sources (family, friends—most effective sources)

  • Commercial sources (advertising, websites—most information)

  • Public sources (mass media, social media, peer reviews)

  • Experiential sources (examining and using the product).

Yelp’s Role in Information Search

• Goal: to connect people with great local businesses by maintaining a huge, searchable collection of candid reviews from people who’ve used those businesses.

  • Yelpers have written more than 265 million reviews.

Evaluation of alternatives

how consumers process information to choose among alternative brands

• Consumers start with a large consideration set (10+ brands)

  • narrow it into a smaller choice set (5 or fewer brands).

Purchase Decision

Generally, the consumer’s decision will be to buy the most preferred brand.

2 factors can intervene:

1. The attitudes of others.

2. Unexpected situational factors

• (e.g., economy worsening, competitor price drop, supply chain disruption causing stockouts).

Postpurchase behavior

The consumer will be either satisfied or dissatisfied.

• Satisfaction is determined by the relationship between the consumer’s expectations and the product’s perceived performance.

• Some marketers aim to “underpromise but overdeliver”.

Cognitive dissonance

discomfort caused by postpurchase conflict

• Consumers feel uneasy about acquiring the drawbacks of the chosen brand and about losing the benefits of the brands not purchased

Customer Journey

the sum of the ongoing experiences consumers have with a brand

• Marketers focus not just on what customers do across the stages but also on understanding and shaping the evolving customer experience.

• The goal is to deeply understand the journey, resulting in increased purchases, engagement, and brand advocacy.

Adoption Process

the process through which an individual passes from first learning about an innovation to final adoption

• Adoption is the decision by an individual to become a regular user of the product.

Stages in the Adoption Process (5 Stages)

1. Awareness (Consumer lacks information).

2. Interest (Consumer seeks information).

3. Evaluation (Consumer considers whether trying the product makes sense).

4. Trial (Consumer tries the new product on a small scale to improve estimate of its value).

5. Adoption (Consumer decides to make full and regular use).

Adopter Categories

Innovators (2.5% - venturesome, risk takers)

Early adopters (13.5% - guided by respect, opinion leaders)

Early mainstream (34% - deliberate, adopt before the average person)

Late mainstream (34% - skeptical, adopt only after a majority have tried it)

Lagging adopters (16% - tradition bound, suspicious of changes).

Product Characteristics Influencing Adoption Rate

1. Relative advantage: Degree to which the innovation appears superior to existing products.

2. Compatibility: Degree to which the innovation fits the existing values, experiences, and behavioral patterns of potential consumers.

3. Complexity: Degree to which the innovation is difficult to understand or use.

4. Trialability: Degree to which the innovation may be experienced or sampled on a limited basis before adopting.

5. Observability: Degree to which the use of the innovation and the potential outcomes of usage can be observed by or communicated to others.

6. Risk: The degree to which the customer perceives risk in purchasing the product

Buying center

The decision-making unit of a buying organization.

• It consists of all the individuals and units that play a role in the business purchase decision-making process.

• It is a set of buying roles assumed by different people for different purchases, and can involve 20, 30, or more people for complex purchases.

Major Influences on Business Buyers (Economic vs. Personal)

Business buyers respond to both economic and personal factors.

• Far from being cold, calculating, and impersonal, business buyers are human and social as well. They react to both reason and emotion.

Peterbilt “Class Pays” Strategy

Premium heavy-duty truck maker Peterbilt stresses performance (maneuverability, efficiency), but also appeals to buyers’ emotions.

• The slogan “Class Pays” suggests that owning one is a matter of pride as well as superior performance, selling iconic tradition, styling, and elegance.

4 Major Influences on Business Buyers

1. Environmental: (Economy, Supply conditions, Technology, Competition, Unplanned disruptions like COVID-19).

2. Organizational: (Objectives, Strategies, Structure, Systems, Procedures).

3. Interpersonal: (Influence, Expertise, Authority, Dynamics).

4. Individual: (Age/education, Motives, Personality, Buying style).

Business Buyer Decision Process (8 stages)

1. Problem recognition.

2. General need description.

3. Product specification.

4. Supplier search.

5. Proposal solicitation.

6. Supplier selection.

7. Order-routine specification.

8. Performance review.

Salesforce’s “Blaze your trail” Strategy (Problem Recognition)

Business marketers often alert customers to potential problems and then show how their products and services provide solutions.

• Salesforce ads show how it solves problems for high-profile customers like Unilever and Intuit, suggesting it can do the same for new customers.

Supplier selection (Key Attributes)

• product and service quality

• reputation

• on-time delivery

• ethical corporate behavior

• honest communication

• competitive prices

Order-Routine Specification (Blanket Contracts)

Many large buyers use blanket contracts rather than periodic purchase orders.

• A blanket contract creates a long-term relationship in which the supplier promises to resupply the buyer as needed at agreed prices for a set period.

Vendor-Managed Inventory (Concept)

Buyers turn over ordering and inventory responsibilities to their suppliers.

• Buyers share sales and inventory information directly with key suppliers, who then monitor inventories and replenish stock automatically

  • (e.g., major suppliers to Walmart, Target).

E-procurement and Online Purchasing (Vocabulary)

Online purchasing, aka e-procurement, is standard procedure for most companies today

• Benefits: Shaves transaction costs, results in more efficient purchasing, reduces time between order and delivery, eliminates paperwork, and frees purchasing people to focus on more-strategic issues.

B-to-B digital and social media marketing

have rapidly become prime space for engaging business customers

• These approaches facilitate anytime, anywhere connections between a wide range of people in the selling and customer organizations.

  • Maersk is a forward-looking B-to-B marketer, using platforms like Facebook (for broad engagement), Instagram (visualizing the brand), and LinkedIn (engaging industry influencers and experts).

    • Goal: “The goal is to use social media to get closer to our customers”.

    • AI-driven analysis helps B-to-B marketers segment their markets more effectively.

      • Predictive analytics can develop customer leads and guide sales teams to select the most promising prospects.

      • Businesses expect the same sophistication from suppliers as they use AI in their own buying processes.