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Fundamentals Of Communication In Marketing
CHARACTERISTICS OF OPINION LEADERS
Roger developed a number of generalization about opinion leaders’ characteristics:
1) Opinion leaders conform more closely to social system norms than the average member
of a group.
2) There is little overlapping among the different types of opinion leaders. An opinion leader,
in one subject area, is quite often not an opinion leader in another. Each member of a group
may have some opinion leadership in a certain subject area.
3) Opinion leaders are more cosmopolitan than their followers. They are in contact with more
sources outside their group than are opinion followers.
4) Opinion leaders use more impersonal, technically accurate, and cosmopolitan sources of
information than do their followers. They are more exposed to mass media than the people
they lead.
5) Opinion leaders must be accessible to their followers. They have more social participation
than their followers.
6) Opinion leaders are not necessarily the power holders or the formal leaders in
their communities.
7) Opinion leaders have higher social status than their followers.
8) Opinion leaders are more innovative than their followers.GROUP COMMUNICATION AND MARKETING STRATEGY
The manner by which a new product is accepted, or spread through a market, is basically a group
phenomenon. The importance of opinion leadership varies from product to product and from target
market to target market. Thus, the initial step in using opinion leaders is to determine through research,
experience, or logic, the role opinion leadership has in the situation under consideration.
Once this is done, marketing strategies can be devised to make use of opinion leadership in the promotion
of the product. The process of using opinion leadership involves these steps:
- IDENTIFYING OPINION LEADERS: Some techniques that can be used include
sociometric, key informants, and self-designating questionnaires. - MARKETING RESEARCH: Since opinion leaders receive, interpret, and relay marketing
messages to others, marketing research should focus on opinion leaders rather than
representative samples in those product categories and groups in which opinion leaders play
a critical role. Thus, product-use tests, pre-tests of advertising copy, and media preference
studies should be conducted on samples of individuals likely to be opinion leaders.