Cognative dissonance in consumer behavior

Eliminating cognative dissonance is essential to developing a reliable customer base. Manufacturers have to be conscious of customer impretions weeks, months, and years after making a purchase. Most reliable products that leave customers satisfied and coming back for more are ones that meet consumer needs in a more efficient and user friendly way than competetive products. Whatever price a product is listed at must be substantially supported by product specs that are easily visible on the packaging or on website content. If there is due consideration by manufacturers to communicate this information clearly to customers there is a better chance of eliminating their cognative dissonance.

How Privacy Vanishes Online

Online social networks have become the easiest way for both criminals and organizations to track and analyze the information we provide to the public. This information can be used to draw several inferences about our daily habits, communication styles, spending habits, or in the most exteme cases even to determine ones social security number. In an article published last year researchers from Carnagie Mellon university displayed how they were able to determine the social security numbers for 8.5 percent of people born in the United States between 1989 and 2003. This is an unnerving piece of information to come across. There is talk of creating a do not track list similar to the government installed do not call list. The internet being such a comprehensive data mechanism may make it nearly impossible to fend off all attempts to access personal information. For marketers developing genomes of consumer data to identify target markets can be a key tool in gaining a competetive advantage over competition. We are all consumers in the greater scheme of things and that is why we must consider if the benefits outway the potential consequences of having our information stagnent in public view via online social networks.

Ethics and Business

Being truthful in business both with customers and with employees is critical to a total quality management strategy and maintaining customer relations. Most employees working for Johns company are sole breadwinners in there families. For them their steak in the company is very high. Even though taking the money from the development program would keep the company from going under and secure those jobs most people are not willing to sacrifice there dignity or identity to a corperation with no regard for how they aquire personal information. Moral values and ethics are critical to a firms reputation and success in business. Even if he weathered the current storm with the $8,000 from the developement program word of his decisions would eventually make it to customers and his base would fall from under him. Internal marketing is the key to determining course of action in external markets. Getting employee and stakeholder opinions would be helpful in deciding if the deal would be worth the negative implications.

Traditional vs. Cheap Tech Marketing

Advances in technology and high operating costs have led firms in the direction of electronic communication and notification to customers. This trend is a good fit for some companies targeting a "younger" tech savy generation that uses email and text messaging as primary forms of communication. For older defender style firms that have long standing customers a change in customer contact stategies can be catastrophic. Especially if old fashion "snail mail" is completely thrown out the window. Email notifications are easily scanned over and deleted by mistake when customers browse they're inboxes. I believe for many companies keeping they're traditional forms of customer contact will provide a competetive advantage when compared to the mass movement of organizations headed toward complete electronic customer communication.

In Response to Daniel Gallants 4 p's

I would agree with Dan's post on the 4p's. When entering the job market after college there are several things to consider regarding what kind of organization is a good fit for you. Things like location, the kind of values an organization stands by when conducting there advertising, and possibly most significantly the price you are willing to work for. Thinking of yourself as a product you are trying to market is a helpful perspective when trying to present your best qualities to the job market. When negotiating price I think a benefits package is one of the most important things to consider. With defender style organizations going out the window faster each day and job hopping becoming a more frequent activity it will make it harder to find companies with generous benefits packages. I know this will be a major consideration for me when I enter the job market after college.

Marketing is a comprehensive strategy to designed to establish a customer base for your product. Advertising is geared towards latching onto a particular age group of the market or some other niche. Every marketing plan includes several different advertising strategies aimed at different parts of the market. Marketing strategy first has to establish what is the target market is and then advertising schemes are put in place to obtain a percentage of that market. Propoganda can be fou nd in many types of advertising and can sometimes attract misled customers on a large scale. The "War on Terror" is a prime example of propaganda that can drive pricing for many products on the market. There is a grey line between marketing and advertising that will hopefully become clear as I read into these topics further.

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