Chapter Overview

The economic and social structures discussed in this chapter are the major organizational categories in societies around the world. Membership in these categories is often expressed through the purchase and use of products and services. They anchor and mold consumer preferences and consumption patterns or lifestyles, but they are dynamic. When these categories change consumer tastes and preferences will change as well. Managers find economic and socially defined groups useful, because they possess unifying characteristics that distinguish desires, choices, and decision-making styles from other groups. Often the influence of these structures on consumption choices is indirect rather than direct. As with culture, their influence is easiest to discern when we meet people whose class, ethnicity, tribe, or caste differ from our own.

Social classes are groupings involving differences in such areas as power, authority, wealth, income, prestige, working conditions, lifestyles, and culture. People of any one class tend to associate much more with one another than they do with members of other classes. A key criterion of social class is income differences. For example, in countries as diverse as the United States and Zimbabwe, people often draw socioeconomic boundaries on the basis of income differences. Throughout the first world, education, occupation, and social background are mutually reinforcing criteria that more precisely define social class than income alone. Social class has a residential dimension both at the global level and within nations and states. However, global marketing has led to the proliferation of consumer goods, services, and experiences. Technological advance has led to great communication across class boundaries and wider accessibility of goods, travel, and media by all but the poor. What really differentiates consumers in different social classes is not what but how they consume. People compete for status through economic, social, and cultural capital. Economic capital means financial resources, including income. Social capital includes relationships and social activity. Cultural capital includes practical knowledge and skills, access to consumer goods and objects, and degrees and memberships. Targeting the very affluent is not easy. Their numbers are small, they may own multiple residences, and wealth may be used to purchase some degree of anonymity. Sizable middle classes can be found in at least half of the over 200 nations of the world. Most Americans think of themselves as middle class. New middle classes represent growth opportunities for international marketers. The middle-class segment is expanding rapidly in many parts of the world including India, East Asia, Korea, Indonesia, and China. In many countries, middle classes adopt values that include education, self-improvement, upward mobility, a future orientation, and interest in material self-improvement. Working- and under-class segments constitute a majority of the population of the world. Studies both in Triad nations, as well as in some developing nations, have found that the working-class lifestyles are resistant to changes in their basic characteristics. Brand loyalty, tempered by cost consciousness, is characteristic.

Frequent patterns of association and identification with common national origins of a subgroup define ethnicity. Ethnicity involves self-identity or felt ethnicity, an individual's perceptions of him- or her-self as a member of an ethnic group. Ethnic identities today are more voluntary than in the past, and represent a creative mix of values, beliefs, and consumption styles. In developing targeting and positioning strategies to reach ethnic markets, marketers should consider a number of issues. One issue of interest for marketers is intensity of ethnic identification. Marketers must also determine whether ethnicity translates into distinct consumer tastes. Successful ethnic marketing often depends upon appealing to the desire for ethnic affiliation. Ethnicity is not a static demographic characteristic, but varies with individual felt ethnicity, situation, and stage of life cycle.

Age, gender, and religion are three additional social structures that impact consumer behavior and affect marketing strategy. Consumers' preferences vary with age as does their access to resources. Age-related life transitions stimulate demand for specialized products and services, and age cohorts often share similar values and consumer preferences. Children's consumer demands represent considerable market opportunities. Children play an important role in influencing parental shopping and spending habits, and television advertising has a powerful influence on children's product preferences and choices. Teens are a popular target for marketers because make up a large part of the population and they often enjoy substantial discretionary income. Teens are market savvy and involved with consumer culture, and are undergoing many physical and emotional changes. Many initial purchases are made as a teenager and so this age group offers an ideal target market for promoting brand loyalties. Teenagers globally are increasingly wired into the Internet. This facilitates the spread of images, ideas, values, and trends among teenagers around the world. The population is aging in many of the most developed nations. The elderly of the future will be more affluent, better educated, and more active. Hence, it makes sense to position goods and services to take advantage of these facts.

Gender is a significant segmentation and targeting criteria in marketing. Evident physiological differences between men and women lead to specialized product needs in nutrition, health, and personal care, for example. Gender roles are learned early and play a formative role in personality development and self-identity. Patterns of wants and responses to market appeals vary with gender. Traditional gender-related differences in information processing and response to marketing appeals have also been identified. Obviously many products are designed to appeal to or even accentuate gender-specific wants. Gender roles definitely persist and influence consumer behavior, but the behavior of male and female consumers often defies these stereotypes. Even in very traditional male-oriented societies, we see important changes in gender roles. When women enter the wage labor force in developed and developing nations and gain access to economic resources, a blurring of gender role differences occurs.

Religion refers to beliefs and practices relative to the sacred. Surprisingly, consumer research has not extensively studied the impact of religion on consumer behavior or the purchase and consumption of religious goods and services. As with ethnicity, religion's influence varies with the consumer's identification with a religion and its values, the strength of identification, and situational factors. Religion may be a useful segmentation variable because religion influences value systems. Value systems in turn influence preferences of all kinds. Religion-based segments and consumer behavior certainly merit more investigation, because in the United States alone religion is a multibillion dollar industry, employing thousands of people, in which there is intense competition between competing products.