The document discusses how generational cohorts have different attributes that impact their perceptions of brand authenticity, exploring this idea in the context of technological brands. It provides background on generational cohorts like Baby Boomers, Generation X, and Millennials and how they differ in terms of experiences, values, and relationships with technology. The goal is to understand how brand authenticity is viewed across cohorts to help companies better target and appeal to different generations.
The document discusses how generational cohorts have different attributes that impact their perceptions of brand authenticity, exploring this idea in the context of technological brands. It provides background on generational cohorts like Baby Boomers, Generation X, and Millennials and how they differ in terms of experiences, values, and relationships with technology. The goal is to understand how brand authenticity is viewed across cohorts to help companies better target and appeal to different generations.
The document discusses how generational cohorts have different attributes that impact their perceptions of brand authenticity, exploring this idea in the context of technological brands. It provides background on generational cohorts like Baby Boomers, Generation X, and Millennials and how they differ in terms of experiences, values, and relationships with technology. The goal is to understand how brand authenticity is viewed across cohorts to help companies better target and appeal to different generations.
The document discusses how generational cohorts have different attributes that impact their perceptions of brand authenticity, exploring this idea in the context of technological brands. It provides background on generational cohorts like Baby Boomers, Generation X, and Millennials and how they differ in terms of experiences, values, and relationships with technology. The goal is to understand how brand authenticity is viewed across cohorts to help companies better target and appeal to different generations.
FROM TARGETING TO CRM CONDUCTING MARKETING RESEARCH
Generational Cohorts and the
case of Apple S.PATTUGLIA ADVANCED MARKETING NOV. DEC. 2017 1 New Trends
Series of trasformations that are all having a profound impact on:
olifestyles oconsumption behaviour operceptions about brands
• New challenges and opportunities
• The quest for authenticity (brand authenticity, BA)
• Interpretative nature of BA consumers may perceive the same brand as authentic or inauthentic
• No research on hi-tech sector!
• New segmentation using generational criteria and targeting brands according to generational cohorts’ specific features (demographics + spending power + psychographics + lifestyles)
S.PATTUGLIA ADVANCED MARKETING NOV. DEC. 2017 2
What’s the point?
From the companies’ point of you:
Exploring the perceptions about brand authenticity of technological brands
across generational cohorts
In particular:
1. Do different typologies of consumers share the attributes that make a brand
authentic? 2. Which similarities? Which differences? 3. Which managerial decisions can be taken across different generations?
S.PATTUGLIA ADVANCED MARKETING NOV. DEC. 2017 3
What is Brand Authenticity?
FROM Being traditionally tied to an object (Bendix, 1979)
TOWARDS • Being socially constructed by multiple stakeholders’ perceptions. • Thus, consumers may differ in their evaluation, perceiving the same brand as authentic or inauthentic. • Call for studies that investigate the effect that individual and personal differences across consumers have on BA perceptions.
There is only one study that investigated age-related consumers’ perceptual differences on brand authenticity.
Companies are increasingly segmenting their market using generational criteria and targeting their brands according to generational cohorts’ specific features
Sources: Rose & Wood, 2004; Beverland & Farrelly, 2010; Napoli et al., 2014, 2016; Moulard et al., 2015.
S.PATTUGLIA ADVANCED MARKETING NOV. DEC. 2017 4
Generational Cohorts
Mannheim’s vision about generation (1928, 1952)
“A generation is a group of people who share a time and space in history that lends them a collective persona (…). The spam of a generation is roughly the length of a phase of life”.
Generational Cohort Theory (GCT), was developed by Inglehart in 1977.
GCT is based of 2 assumptions
Adults’ basic values reflect the socioeconomic conditions of childhood and adolescence (the socialization hypotheses) and place the greatest subjective value on the socioeconomic resources that were in short supply during their youth (the scarcity hypothesis).
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Generational Cohorts
Generations Authors Year of Publication Baby Boomers Generation X Millennials Harmon et al. 1999 1946-1964 1965-1976 Howe & Strauss 2000 1982-2000 Jorgensen 2003 1946-1962 1963-1978 1977-1988 Littel et al. 2005 1946-1964 1965-1975 Heaney 2007 1965-1977 1977-1995 Reisenwitz & Iyer 2007 1946-1964 Kumar & Lim 2008 1946-1964 1980-1994 Reisenwitz & Iyer 2009 1965-1976 1977-1988 Pentecost & Andrews 2010 1946-1964 1965-1975 Twenge et al. 2010 1982-1999 Moore 2012 1943-1960 1961-1981 1982-2004 Eastman & Liu 2012 1946-1965 1966-1985 1986-2005 Gurau 2012 1961-1980 Parment 2013 1945-1958 Loroz & Helgeson 2013 1946-1964 1977-1994 Thomas 2013 1978-1994 Burnsed et al. 2015 1946-1964
S.PATTUGLIA ADVANCED MARKETING NOV. DEC. 2017 6
Generational Cohorts: Features (1)
Baby Boomers (1946-1964)
• The economic value of brands drives Boomers’ satisfaction, affected by factors such as quality and more objective, pragmatic brand-related characteristics • Largest generation • High spending power • Individualistic • Politically active • Living social and economic trasformations • Dealing with technology, without mastering it
Millennials (1982-2000) • Generation Y • Internet generation • Digital generation • Natives • Immigrants • dot.com generation • Nintendo generation • Kipper (Kids in Parents Pocket Eroding Retirement Savings) • Echo boomers • Boomlet • Sunshine Generation (Canada) Sources: Howe & Strauss, 2000; Wilson & Gerber, 2008; Raines, 2002; Tannar, 2010; Bolton, Parasuraman et al., 2013; McCrindle, 2014; Pew Research, 2014; Sahittal et al. 2015.
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Generational Cohorts: Features (3a)
• The new “Great Generation”
• The first high-tech generation Being the highest technologically savvy cohort they tend to share both delightful and bad brand experiences through their social networks • Making daily use of technology • Digital and social media • Shaped by • the Era of internet, • by mass marketing and • pop culture, • by the 9/11 trauma, • the globalization and by • environmentalism • They prefer innovative products or services Sources: Norum, 2003; Moore, 2012; Gurău, 2012.
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Generational Cohorts: features (3b)
- “Special”, as they feel to be smart and they are “cool” because “they are” - Confident, adaptable and flexible - Sheltered and family oriented - Teamwork oriented and committed to the community volunteering and no profit - Driven by some conservative values, such as moral consciousness and civic duty - Lead by a “Just do it” philosophy of acting and behaving - Better educated, more affluent and ethnically diverse - Technologically fluent, multitasking and simultaneously connected - “Hyper-communicators” - Grown up in e-commerce with great tech advances - Confident with changes, globalization and global perspectives - Globally connected and opened to new businesses and challenges - Possessing a high level at sociability, morality, high value relationships S.PATTUGLIA ADVANCED MARKETING NOV. DEC. 2017 11 Generational Cohorts: Features (3c)
• This is the first generation that “contributes, shares, searches
for and consumes content plus works and plays on social media platforms” • They are more affected by brand image and by brand extravagance • The emotional value of a brand has a stronger effect on satisfaction than economic value • They want brands mirroring their personality
• 1976 • 1984 • 1997 Brand Value 107,1 mld $ Vision: «We believe that we are on the face of the earth to make great Mission: products and that’s not changing. We are constantly focusing «Apple designs Macs, the best on innovating. We believe in the simple not the complex. We personal computers in the believe that we need to own and control the primary world, along with OS X, iLife, technologies behind the products that we make, and iWork and professional participate only in markets where we can make a significant software. Apple leads the digital contribution. We believe in saying no to thousands of projects, music revolution with its iPods so that we can really focus on the few that are truly important and and iTunes online store. Apple has meaningful to us. We believe in deep collaboration and cross- reinvented the mobile phone pollination of our groups, which allow us to innovate in a way with its revolutionary iPhone that others cannot. And frankly, we don’t settle for anything less and App store, and is defining than excellence in every group in the company, and we have the future of mobile media and the self- honesty to admit when we’re wrong and the courage to computing devices with iPad.». September, 29th 1997 change. And I think regardless of who is in what job those values «Think different» are so embedded in this company that Apple will do extremely well». S.PATTUGLIA ADVANCED MARKETING NOV. DEC. 2017 13 The study
Apple was the brand selected for this study for three main reasons:
1.High brand awareness (Interbrand, 2016)
2.There is no research on the authenticity of technological brands
3.Technology usage represents one of the main characteristics differentiating the behaviour of generational cohorts
A convenience sample of mobile phone users in almost all regions of Italy were interviewed by a questionnaire (email, social media FB, whatssapp - 797 usable responses: 172 (21%) Boomers, 165 (21%) GenXers and 460 (58%) Millennials)
The questionnaire was based on pre-existant scales (Napoli et al., 2014; Bruhn et al., 2012; Wiedmann et al., 2011)
A seven-point Likert scale was used in all cases
EFA and CFA were used to confirm the constructs in the study and PLS was used to test the proposed model
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Results (1)
From hypothesis..
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Results (2)
…To Reality!
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Implications (1)
• High brand trustworthiness and brand distinctiveness to enjoy greater brand equity and allow for price premium
• Positive relationship between brand trust and price premium (Delgado-Ballester & Luis Munuera-Alemán, 2005) especially true for hi-tech brands (Ba & Pavlou, 2002)
• If a brand is not perceived as being different, then it will have a difficult time supporting a price premium
• Brand distinctiveness positively influences technological brand performance in terms of price premium
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Implications (2)
Significant differences between generational cohorts
• Brand Trustworthiness positively affects GenXers and Millennials more than Boomers
• GenXers are disillusioned and skeptical about brand offerings (Littrell et al., 2005; Jacks et al., 2011)
• Millennials do not tolerate misalignment between the brand promise and its actual delivery (Pattuglia & Mingione, 2016, 2017)
• Brand Distinctiveness positively influences Boomers more than GenXers and Millennials
• Boomers are more loyal to one brand they regard as being unique (Parment, 2013)
• Millennials are less influenced by Brand Distinctiveness Well informed limited loyalty (Parment, 2013; Reisenwitz & Iyer, 2009)
• Legacy negatively influences the price premium for Boomers but when Legacy has an interaction effect with Brand Distinctiveness it positively influences GenXers’ willingness to pay a price premium Ambivalent Legacy: in launching new, improved or cutting-edge brands, aspects of heritage might also prove a liability, if not linked to unique and distinguishing brand elements
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Managerial Implications of the study: “to do things” (1)
• Be more targeted! (it seems obvious but it is not)
• Keep promises and be sincere with Millennials and GenXers willingness to pay a price premium
• Communicate trustworthiness and distinctiveness to support a price premium positioning
• Adopt CRM strategy in order to cluster and target consumers with generation criteria
• Follow a brand communication through new media platforms (social networks and mobile devices). Shared connections in order to maintain a great continuity – legacy – from the past and with people belonging to Millennials generation
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Managerial Implications of the study: “to do things” (2)
• Implement PR strategies (traditional and online) in order to catalize positive words-of-mouth and brand
• Connect technological relational platform to social media channels (blogging, microblogging, social networking)
• Monitor and measure influencers
• Invest also in advertising and promotion to solicit traditional customers’ price-sensitivity and emotional engagement
• Implement physical touch points (trials and demonstration) because Millennials are more skeptical compared to previous
generations (their parents) and less influenced by communication activities
