The Impact Of Pop Culture On Branding And Millennial Consumer Behavior

Research Questions

In this paper a detailed analysis has been presented to understand the pop culture’s impact on branding and influence over young consumers purchase behaviours through discussion of literature review, identification of research design and methodology and time scale for research. Also value for this research study has been identified along with limitations to give a better understanding.     

According to Lazarevic (2012) advertising is contemplated to be the classical form of pop culture amongst the consumers and this had since earlier times revolutionised the manner the products/ services are being marketed or sold through the idea of mainstream popularity. As such consumers act to get inclined to products or brands that are endorsed by their preferred celebrities and hence pop culture has become a source for promoting products/services.  It has considerable affect on behaviour of consumers depending on the manner the mass media advertises the products/services with use of celebrities or prominent personalities. Significantly, teenagers and youth tend to get inclined by what they observe from others, particularly from those who are hugely popular. Some consumer’s infact go to extreme lengths to get the product endorsed by their favourite superstars or celebrities and claim to experience sense of happiness, fulfilment feel after they possess the product they have sought for. Mostly the youths and teens are impacted by this marketing force where business tends to appeal consumers better as per their demographics and pop culture.

For instance several vampire books had successfully been sold since the release of Twilight saga in movie theatres and in most of the bookstores specifically in young adult fiction category it could be found that selves were mostly occupied with various novels on vampires. Young adults are yet in the phase where they sought after for things or people who they aspire to be and consumerism and pop culture has given young adults a niche they could be comfortable with.

How does Pop Culture Impact Branding and influence the millennial young adult Consumer base’s purchasing behaviour?

As stated by Straker and Wrigley (2016) to sell products or services to any consumer it is essential to interpret their behavior and understand their thinking, actions, purchase intentions to find new opportunities to engage and interact with target audiences. This is specifically even more significant of Millennial and young adults as they are the newest target market for various brands due to the fact that they have high purchase power, disposable income and they continue to strive the demand. As such it is essential to evaluate this generation of consumers to develop proper approaches to engage them and motivate their purchase behaviors. There are almost 79 million Millennial in US i.e. around 25% of population and they exceed baby boomers by around 3 million. Earlier size of baby boomers was significant force to drive consumerism because of purchase capacity and now retirement. The size of baby boomers made it convenient to influence society and catch attention of marketers seeking to capitalize on them, but now millennial have overruled with their large population that has equal or even bigger influences considering differences of money, education and acceptance of ideas.  

Research Aim and Objectives

As stated by Patsiaouras (2017) even in UK the millennial make up 1/4^th of population and is forecasted to reach to 17 million by 2019 and a wide range of behavior and assumptions have characterized these young adults between 16-34 years, so to understand their purchase intentions, behavior patterns it is important considerably to understand their consumption for products. Also to develop a better outreach and understanding of implications of pop culture and influence over branding and purchase behavior of young adults this study is focused to examine the theories of consumer behavior and their influence on purchase intentions to interpret impact of pop culture on branding.  

The research objectives that are determined to answer the given research question are:

• To examine the change in marketing approaches over past few years to interpret implication of pop culture on branding
• To evaluate specifically millennial consumers purchase behavior and recognize the elements that drive their decision making procedure
• To identify relationship between the manner a brand influences consumer base through conventional marketing approaches by integration of effective pop culture marketing into brand strategy and identify the manner these targeted sales promotions towards millennial enhance sales
• To establish an interpretation of the manner the present and future impact of strategic branding on consumer and market base will be able to drive marketers success

According to Kennedy (2017) young consumers and millennial are massive in size not only in US but together throughout the world and because of this vastness this generation is being focused by marketers as a necessity rather than optional decision. Also, financial reasons are an element that has driven businesses towards focusing on millennial as this generation has around 300 bn USD of spending power of which 62.7 bn USD is unrestricted. Also millennial are recipients of around 41 trillion USD wealth inheritances from earlier generations. So young adults seek for areas and scope to invest or spend whether it is product, service, society, environment or political causes. As such businesses have real possibilities to target for millennial financial resources available with right action and approach.  Also as stated by Erdemir (2016) businesses are inclined to focus on millennial and young adults as they reflect trend setting cultures due to their distinct personalities, characteristics, preferences and specific purchase patterns as well as due to the fact that these millennial have super influence on spreading word about brands throughout social networks and other channels. This means that other demographic groups are exposed to new thoughts of young adults which can impact buying behaviour, preferences etc.  Further the scattering of information and distribution level in modern globalised society is encouraged and promoted by millennial and they have significant power to affect behaviour, values and beliefs of distinct people in society and due to this huge influence over co-members of society and elder generation, many consumerism decisions are focused on behaviour and expectations of millennial as a standard to spread to mass consumers.

Factors influencing buying behaviour of millennial

As stated by Rippé, Weisfeld-Spolter, Yurova, Hale and Sussan (2016) in order to promote a product effectively it is necessary to interpret buying behaviour so that strategic approaches and marketing efforts are channelized adequately to create influence so as to generate persuasion for purchase. As such marketers study and evaluate behavioural process and patterns to market products effectively to target consumers by decoding the psychology behind consumers, identifying their response to strategic stimulators and by meeting their perception and interest related to a product. According to theory of marketing principles personal factors like self concept, lifestyle, psychological factors such as attitudes and learning and societal factors like education, status and finances drive the purchase behaviour of millennial.

Literature Review

Millennial are not very keen on advertisements as they do not prefer marketers to exploit them with gimmicks, so authenticity of branding is key driver that influences their purchase behaviour and decisions.  According to Vaux Halliday and Astafyeva (2014) the authenticity of brand is characterised by brand attributes and actions, high quality, endorsement of brand by popular celebrities that talk of experiences followed by relatable and appealing advertising content. So pop culture can be seen as enabler to determine authenticity of brand as it gives millennial confidence to believe in promises of brand by hearing their favourite superheros or celebrities who are real people sharing and talking of the brand and its features. This positively influences the purchase behaviour of young consumers.

Secondly young people and millennial are sensitive to ethical purchases and brands that promote human rights and engaging ethical buying content are preferred by these group of consumers as they tend to prefer brands that promote ethical values (Vaux Halliday and Astafyeva 2014). So brands that use pop culture through endorsing celebrity to talk of brand’s associations and efforts made towards environment and community concerns tend to influence millennial and motivate positive impact over their buying intentions as young consumer consider brand ethics and values while deciding their purchases for products.  

Example, H&M endorsed celebrities to celebrate Earth day in 2015 with their H&M Garments Recycling campaign which encouraged young consumers to get engaged with initiative and impacted their behaviour towards sustainable fashion future and their purchase intentions to select more sustainable fashion options (PR Newswire 2015). H&M endorse celebrities like Jessica Alba, Olivia Wilde, Solange Knowles, Victoria Justice, Dakota Fanning, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jennifer Lopez, Miranda Kerr, Kate Mara, Emmy Rossum, and more in their advertising and marketing campaigns to appeal young consumers with pop culture by using favourite personalities with different backgrounds to get closer to this group of consumers and influence their mind and build increased brand awareness.

The empirical examination and study of a generation like millennial is a problematic aspect because the idea itself includes tension amid its qualitative and quantitative nature, as generations are separate by both qualitative experiences and following quantitative attributes such as age, time space that vary depending on topic of research. Due to the level of current research topic only qualitative side of millennial and young generation consumers will be taken into consideration while conducting empirical study. The data collection method that will be selected is semi structured in-depth interviews where data will be collected through one-to-one personal conversations and interviews would answer pre defined questions (Tobi and Kampen 2018). However as it will be a semi structured interview so rather than having defined set of questionnaire beforehand, the researcher would only draw areas or topics for conversation to occur around research questions and as the interaction will develop the flexibility would be given to interviewer to deviate from interview structure in case need is seen. This methodology and research design is very resourceful; as it will result in to gathering different and deep established data responses covering around research topic and question and yet would present few specified challenges of appropriate findings presentations and conclusions drawing.

Factors influencing buying behaviour of millennial

The research study will consider two groups of respondents due to significant nature of both business respondents and consumers presence to understand deeply both ends of communication and impact of pop culture over branding as well as on behaviour of millennial. This will help to get a complete picture of changing purchase behaviour of millennial by getting opinions from both marketers and buyers. The choice of respondents will include 5 millennial, 5 marketers and 5 consumers to be chosen for interview and this choice is made based on level of involvement with millennial.

This research design and methodology will enable to draw multi dimensional data from semi structured interview through interview guide rather than exact questions to be formed beforehand the interviews is conducted (Ridder 2017). The interview guides will be based on theoretical findings of research study and will cover topics of millennial as consumers that will reflect questions describing their wants and expectations, marketing communication and channels to be utilised for this particular demographics. Also it will cover factors that influence millennial choice of brands such as ethics and environmentalism that largely shapes their purchase behaviours in the modern society.

It will even cover findings on financial dimensions of millennial that influences purchase behaviour and their buying decisions as well as loyalty. Interview guides developed by marketers and consumers will be targeted at covering same questions from two different aspects of marketing communication, thus aiming to get clean, unbiased data which will help researcher to eventually analyse, present and apply the research findings. The interview will be conducted and responses will be recorded with consent of respondents.

Proposal submission	15/11/2018
Literature Review	20/11/2018
Methodology	26/11/2018
Interview group: conduct, transcript, evaluate	06/12/2018
Questionnaire design	18/12/2018
Data analysis	28/12/2018
Completion of draft	07/01/2019
Final report presentation	12/01/2019
Research submission	16/01/2019

A summarised interview result from both marketers and consumers will be presented with vast analysis of responses from the whole data gathered to add meaningful information and value to research so that a better piece of study is presented that draws on data to better interpret implementation of research findings. Also the research study that will be presented will help to give comprehensive holistic perspective at main elements that need to be considered when millennial consumers are to be targeted by marketers as their buying behaviour is undergoing significant structural changes which in this research will be studied and identified exhaustively as well as outlined to give better picture and add value to research study.

Due to particular methodology applied for data collection i.e. semi structured in-depth interview used for analysis of empirical finding , it will have considerable limitation for researcher as number of respondents studied will be limited to gather appropriate, unbiased and effective insights. Also time and cost of carrying the research is a limitation.   

Millennial and branding

Conclusion

Thus it can be concluded that with help of this detailed study on millennial consumers a deeper understanding of their behavioural preferences, buying patterns and purchase behaviour that influences their decisions have been interpreted to relate these factors significantly with effective marketing approaches for branding and promotions with focused approach on selection of communication and advertising tools. This understanding and meticulous examination has helped to understand marketing activities towards millennial which can be even utilised in future prospects.  As brands that engage young and millennial consumers through endorsing popular personalities tend to leave long impressions and impact on their perceptions that drive their buying intentions and actions. So it is recommended that pop culture’s use of celebrities effectively can help to attract customers and increase brand image so it has can be used as popular strategic approach to promote a brand through appearance of well known personality so as to build relationship between celebrity through pop culture and brand that is powerful enough to differentiate from rivals and develop value in branding to attract a large base of young customers and their purchase behaviours.

References

Erdemir, A. S. (2016). Integrating second screen and moments of inspiration: impact of socialization and patronage on purchase decision.

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Lazarevic, V. (2012). Encouraging brand loyalty in fickle generation Y consumers. Young Consumers, [Online] 13(1), 45-61. Available: doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.1108/17473611211203939 [Accessed on 4 Nov. 2018]

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