Today we went over family characters along with their role in making a purchasing decision. These roles include: initiator, influencer, decider, buyer, user. A peer in the class raised an interesting fact about her family’s recent decision on buying a new car. In her example, the initiator was the mother. The influencer included the mother. The decider, buy and user all in fact included the mother. Noticing that the mother played a significant role (more than that of a father and the children) in essentially every role I find this instance particularly interesting and realistic at the same time.
Most of the time, decisions on whether to buy groceries (such as milk) or new TV’s, cars or even houses, my mother play a vital role in my family, and I believe they do in most families. I believe this discovery should be valuable to corporations that employ intensive marketing campaigns. Firms need to realize that despite how much they target teens or father figures, the initiating and ultimate decision making choices are still dictated by the mother.
I have been thinking about this phenomenon. One of the reasons I think is that teens or children of the families don’t generate enough income to shop for themselves, while the father often works full time to support the family.
Therefore, the most logical method should be for firms to target their marketing towards and aim to create some value for mothers. Products and services from BabyCarrots to cereals to new BMW to children’s haircuts, need to appeal not only to their immediate consumers which may be the father or the teen in the family) but to mothers. The chances are if the mothers is convinced that the product satisfies their families’ needs, then the goods will be sold.
