ZHEJIANG GONGSHANG UNIVERSITY

School of Business Administration

Student: Orkhan Gasimov (Master)

Describe a virtual brand community. Create an example that demonstrates the concept .

Answer: A virtual brand community is an online group of people from all over the world who share
information with a given brand about their experiences. "The Hollywood Stock Exchange, a simulated
entertainment stock market, is one of the examples used in my answer. Traders are trying to predict the
box office take from films for four weeks. Student examples should demonstrate how their proposed
virtual brand community interacts, who the members might be and what makes customer interaction
unique. This extension of the chat room is a specific research tool for the specialist in marketing and
customer behavior.

A critic says that marketing encourages women to hate their own bodies by showing them
models that are impossibly thin. Compare how a typical consumer behavior researcher and a
transformative consumer researcher might differ in their approaches to investigating this
criticism. Be specific in your statements.

Answer: A typical consumer behavior researcher would probably be interested in investigating how
advertisements displaying such impossibly thin models affect the buying behavior of different groups of
people. A researcher like this may have a strategic focus, hoping to gain insights that would lead to more
efficient marketing. On the other hand, a transformative consumer researcher would see research
subjects as collaborators in classifying ways to improve the wellbeing of consumers. A transforming
consumerist would be interested in social change.

Why should marketers be aware of consumers' cognitive consistency and cognitive

dissonance? How can dissonance be reduced? Use the post purchase behavior of a customer
as an example.

Answer: People continue to seek continuity in their views and beliefs. So what happens when one of
our beliefs clashes with another religion previously held? The term cognitive dissonance is used to
describe the sensation of discomfort resulting from holding two conflicting creeds. If there is a
discrepancy between beliefs and behaviors, something has to change to remove or minimize the
dissonance

Cognitive dissonance is a psychological phenomenon that refers to the confusion between what you
know or believe and new knowledge or perception. Therefore it happens when there is a need to accept
new ideas, and it may be important for it to evolve so that we are "open" to them, making the
generation of acceptable dissonance a major characteristic of teaching: it demonstrates how to push
this kind of conceptual wedge between the current beliefs of the learners and "reality."

Cognitive dissonance plays a role in many value judgments, decisions and evaluations. Being aware of
how conflicting beliefs affect the decision-making process is an effective way to enhance your ability to
make faster and more precise choices. ".
There are three key strategies to reduce or minimize cognitive dissonance:

1. Focus on more supportive beliefs that overcharge the dissonant belief or behavior.

2. Reduce the importance of the conflicting belief.

3. Change the conflicting belief so that it is consistent with other beliefs or behaviors.

A demonstration of post purchase behavior can be given in this regard: When a customer feels
lost and he/she is trying to choose between a shipping solution A and another one B shipping solution.
A might be cheaper and better in quality but delivery time is longer than B (especially when ordering
online from another country) after choosing shipping solution and confirming the online order by paying
the invoice, customer might feel confused and then he created a sense of tension and panic as he might
regretted not choosing the other delivery/shipping option. Customer might overcome this dissonance by
understanding that shipping A is better and cheaper and better in quality.

What is a decision-making heuristic? Describe two typical heuristics used in consumer

decision-making situations.

A heuristic is a mental shortcut that enables people to solve problems quickly and efficiently and to
make judgements. These rule-of - thumb strategies shorten the time to take decisions and allow people
to function without constantly stopping thinking about their next course of action. In certain cases,
heuristics are beneficial but they can also contribute to cognitive biases.

People are relying on a host of heuristics for convenience and speed when making decisions. The
representative heuristic (RH) is one important heuristic, which is an extremely economical heuristics. If
one of two items is familiar, people prefer to choose what is recognized; use or make a decision with the
least effort or information. Hilbig and Pohl noted that when an individual uses the RH alone, or when the
person uses other information in drawing a conclusion, it is difficult to research and answer definitively.
Consequently, HR research is mixed.
The availability heuristic is another popular research heuristic. People are inclined, according to this
heuristic, to retrieve information that is most readily available in making a decision. This is an essential
heuristic, surprisingly, since it is the foundation of many of our judgments and decisions. For instance,
when people are asked to read a list, then recognize names from the list, sometimes the names
identified are names of famous people familiar to the participants