Basic Marketing: A Global Managerial Approach

Perreault−McCarthy: Basic
Marketing: A
Global−Managerial
Approach, 14/e

14. Promotion −
    Introduction to Integrated
    Marketing
    Communications

Text © The McGraw−Hill

Companies, 2002

413

The early majority have a great deal of contact with mass media, salespeople, and

early adopter opinion leaders. Members usually aren’t opinion leaders themselves.

The late majorityare cautious about new ideas. Often they are older than the

early majority group and more set in their ways. So they are less likely to follow

opinion leaders and early adopters. In fact, strong social pressure from their own

peer group may be needed before they adopt a new product. Business firms in this

group tend to be conservative, smaller-sized firms with little specialization.

The late majority make little use of marketing sources of information—mass

media and salespeople. They tend to be oriented more toward other late adopters

rather than outside sources they don’t trust.

Laggardsor nonadoptersprefer to do things the way they’ve been done in the

past and are very suspicious of new ideas. They tend to be older and less well edu-

cated. The smallest businesses with the least specialization often fit this category.

They cling to the status quo and think it’s the safe way.

The main source of information for laggards is other laggards. This certainly is

bad news for marketers who are trying to reach a whole market quickly or who want

to use only one promotion method. In fact, it may not pay to bother with this

group.^18

Late majority

is cautious

Laggards or

nonadopters hang on

to tradition

Promotion Blends Vary over the Life Cycle

A new product concept seldom becomes a spectacular success overnight. The

adoption curve helps explain why. Further, the adoption curve helps explain why a

new product goes through the product life-cycle stages described in Chapter 10—

market introduction, market growth, market maturity, and sales decline. During

these stages, promotion blends may have to change to achieve different promotion

objectives.

Stage of product in its

life cycle

Do You Hear That Buzz, and Where Is It Coming From?

Computer viruses can spread like wildfire. Some

marketers are trying to get attention for their products

by promoting the same kind of “viral” spread of word-

of-mouth promotion from a small set of opinion

leaders to other consumers. For example, BMW com-

missioned famous movie directors to create a series

of short (about 5 minutes each) action films that show

BMWs in high-performance chase action. The films

are available for online viewing at http://www.bmwfilms.com.

It would be impossible to show all of the dangerous

stunts in TV ads. But car enthusiasts who hear about

the site love the action and tell their friends to go

check it out. It’s all a well-planned effort to create

more buzz about BMW as the ultimate driving

machine.

Lee Dungarees used a complicated viral marketing

campaign to try to build a cooler image among youth-

ful males. Lee’s agency e-mailed 200,000 computer

game fans a trio of grainy video clips. The videos

were supposedly intended to draw people to web-

sites about three quirky characters. But the clips were

so bad that they were funny. That was intentional.

Many guys who received them forwarded them to

friends. Little did they know that the odd characters in

the videos would later be featured in an online com-

puter game created by Lee. Gamers who figured out

the connection with the videos passed the word and

the popularity of the game spread across the Web.

But to win at the game guys had to enter a secret

code, which could only be found on Lee’s jeans labels

and required a visit to a store.

It’s clear why a marketer might want target con-

sumers to hear the buzz about a product from their

coolest friends—and not just dismiss it as some com-

mercial pitch. But often the intent is to mislead

consumers about where the buzz starts. Some say

that makes it unethical; others say that the marketer

is only planting a few seeds and that it really is con-

sumers who spread the word. Of course, this can

backfire. Sony, for instance, got bad publicity for fab-

ricating favorable movie reviews and portraying them

as coming from movie critics.^17

http://www.

mhhe.

com/

fourps