Table of Contents
Implications of these issues from marketing perspectives. 4
Implications of these issues from marketing perspectives. 5
Article One
Name of the article: How social media is helping Big Tobacco hook a new generation of smokers
This article highlights how social media big tobacco marketing is creating a major negative impact on youth. It is written in the article that tobacco companies organize promotional events in some big cities like Rio de Janeiro, Cairo, Jakarta, and Milan for attracting young generations for their tobacco products (Kozinets, 2019). This event is affecting the lifestyle of the young generation of these cities negatively. The key issue of this event is that the tobacco companies are using social media platform for promotional campaigns as this platform is highly used by the young generation. These campaigns are designed in such a way that can attract the highest number of young influencers who will purchase tobacco products. Tobacco companies use this platform to connect with the young generation more and increase their product sales (Kozinets, 2019). These campaigns encourage the young generation to consume tobacco products. The author of the article mentioned that the tobacco companies catch the recent market trend and as a result young people are becoming their target customers. The young people are using social media platform and share photos of tobacco sponsored adventures with their social media friends and their followers. But this has become a major concern as the followers of the young people can be much younger so the entire society is being targeted of the tobacco companies.
This issue is very important as it showcases the loopholes of social media marketing as the tobacco companies aim to convince young people to buy tobacco products (Apollonio & Glantz, 2016). This issue is important as the government of the big cities cannot prevent these tobacco companies in using social media platform for promotional purpose of their product and targeting young generation. The global smoking rate is increasing day by day. Tobacco companies recruit nano-influencers in Indonesia and the Philippines. These influencers are mainly followers of young people. They ask them to post about their tobacco-sponsored adventures (Dunlop, Freeman, & Jones, 2016). The regulatory board and legal authorities of the mentioned countries cannot stop these activities as the tobacco companies are spreading their business enormously.
Implications of these issues from marketing perspectives
In terms of marketing perspectives, the role of the marketing people is to educate people about the role of social media in daily life. This marketing platform has no filter thus any company can use social media platform to promote their products just like the big tobacco advertisements (Soneji, et al., 2018). The article showed how big tobacco hooks young generation smokers using the social media platform. These companies use creative ad campaign like K Player and RedMoveNow. The interesting fact of these issues is that the companies use social media as promotional channels and add attractive content so that this ad campaign drags the attention of the young generation. They are successful in targeting their target customers easily to increase their revenue. The regulatory and legal authority need to be strict in these advertisements and promotional campaigns of tobacco on social media. They must ensure that the tobacco companies should avoid exposing these ad contents to the minors and young age people. The stakeholders are mainly government, regulatory bodies, young people, and tobacco companies. The government and regulatory bodies of the above-mentioned countries are facing some pressures from society against these ad campaigns on the social media platform. These issues harm young people and encourage them to accept an unhealthy lifestyle. Tobacco companies are getting benefits and earning profits but their marketing activities can be restricted after mentioning such issues regarding the disadvantages of smoking (Kozinets, 2019). Thus, these issues have major impacts on the relevant stakeholders.
Name of the article: The kind of Authenticity Customers will Pay More For
URL: https://hbr.org/2019/06/the-kind-of-authenticity-customers-will-pay-more-for
The article showed the perception of consumer towards authenticity. Customers categorized products or services in terms of their authenticity and pay according to that. The authors identified two types of authenticity present in the modern marketing environment. It is found that one type of authenticity is driven by social categories and one type of authenticity is driven by organizational core value or belief (O'Connor, Lehman, & Carroll, 2019). The article included four different studies regarding authenticity. The key issue is that customers have such a tendency to exhibit a different kind of values of products or services before paying more for the authenticity of that particular product or service. Authenticity in products or services or brands is disseminated in different ways. Social category driven authenticity mainly leads an organization in getting higher star-ratings in society but customers do not wish to pay more for the products or services. The organizational core value and belief-driven authenticity tends to encourage customers to pay more for the products or services but does not lead them to give higher-ratings to that product or service.
The issues are important because the customer perception level is responsible for different kinds of authenticities. Besides that, the customer perception affects consumer behavior (Mahsud, Imanaka, & Prussia, 2018). Many organizations face issues as customers tend to pay more when their satisfaction level and perception match the products or service. The article contained some research results. These results state that customers mainly interpret authenticity according to their perception regarding the product or service or brand. The results also show that consumer behavior is influenced by their perception. Thus these issues are important as the marketing people can easily interpret authenticity once they can understand consumer behavior pattern.
Implications of these issues from marketing perspectives
This article showed that customer perception plays a major role in decoding the term authenticity. Consumer behavior pattern is influenced by various factors like values, beliefs, and perception (Meng & Choi, 2018). The article highlighted an interesting fact that organizations are in a dilemma whether they maintained a connection with the society or give importance to the personal values of the customers. It is quite obvious that a customer’s personal choices may differ than social influences. The marketing managers need to understand the fact before expecting higher pay from the customers. The managers of organizations should communicate with the customer in simple languages so that they can understand consumer behavior (O'Connor, Lehman, & Carroll, 2019). The authors stated that organizations which are authentic and stick to their core values and beliefs are more popular than those organizations which try to be authentic by providing a particular product or service to their customers. The marketing perspective suggests that understanding customer perception and branding strategies are a key part of maintaining authenticity in business (Newman & Smith, 2016). Organizational core values and beliefs influence customer perception. The stakeholders, in this case, are modern organizations, marketing managers, customers, and investors. Modern organizations are changing their business model so that their organization or brand become authentic and drags the attention of more customers. The impact on marketing managers is that they are upgrading their knowledge on customer preferences and focusing on business sustainability to generate more profit (Mahsud, Imanaka, & Prussia, 2018). The customers can learn about the term authenticity and this study informs them to be real while taking final purchase decisions. This issue will impact the investors also as if they tend to continue the traditional approach, they may cause backfire for the organizations and thus they can lose market shares.
Apollonio, D. E., & Glantz, S. A. (2016). Minimum ages of legal access for tobacco in the United States from 1863 to 2015. American journal of public health , 106 (7), 1200-1207. https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2016.303172
Dunlop, S., Freeman, B., & Jones, S. C. (2016). Marketing to youth in the digital age: The promotion of unhealthy products and health promoting behaviours on social media. Media and Communication , 4 (3), 35-49. https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/522
Kozinets, R. (2019). How social media is helping Big Tobacco hook a new generation of smokers. The Conversation . https://theconversation.com/how-social-media-is-helping-big-tobacco-hook-a-new-generation-of-smokers-112911
Mahsud, R., Imanaka, L. J., & Prussia, G. E. (2018). Authenticity in business sustainability. Sustainability Accounting, Management and Policy Journal . https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/SAMPJ-02-2018-0036/full/html
Meng, B., & Choi, K. (2018). An investigation on customer revisit intention to theme restaurants: The role of servicescape and authentic perception. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management , 30 (3), 1646-1662. https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/IJCHM-11-2016-0630/full/html
Newman, G. E., & Smith, R. K. (2016). Kinds of authenticity. Philosophy Compass , 11 (10), 609-618. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/phc3.12343
O'Connor, K., Lehman, D. W., & Carroll, G. R. (2019). The Kind of Authenticity Customers Will Pay More For. Harvard Business Review . https://hbr.org/2019/06/the-kind-of-authenticity-customers-will-pay-more-for
Soneji, S., Yang, J., Knutzen, K. E., Moran, M. B., Tan, A. S., Sargent, J., et al. (2018). Online tobacco marketing and subsequent tobacco use. Pediatrics , 141 (2), e20172927. https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/141/2/e20172927.abstract
