Modern Day Tribes and Marketing

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This study will attempt to create an understanding of how contextual marketing, macro trends, cool theories and individualism affect tribes in marketing. Numerous journals that are recent in nature will be used through out the study.

From the study a clear relationship of modern day tribes will be gained.

One major aspect of modern day marketing is contextual marketing. Contextual marketing refers to a type of marketing that is targeted at satisfying the consumer’s needs. It is geared towards the co-creation of value in advertising. In contextual marketing the marketers target the unique needs of each tribe. This is due to the fact that each unique tribe is brought about by a common passion, desire and a tendency to consumer similar products.

Marketing as a practice has been evolving over the years. The current type of marketing is called post modern marketing. Marketing in the post modern setting refers to the organizational process responsible for the identification, forecasting and the satisfaction of consumer needs. Consumerism in post modern marketing refers to the tendency of people to spend more resources than they have on non essential products (Levin, 2008).

”Consumption is no longer just about a simple purchase or the satisfaction of basic needs and wants, but a culturally determined behavioral pattern which forces us to choose and change the elements of our lifestyle…and it is first of all through our way of consuming that we define ourselves as individuals.”

Today’s marketers are contended with the challenge of adapting to the post modern culture so as to be able to stay relevant (Levin, 2008). The post modern culture has distinct characteristics such as:

Hyperreality,
Fragmentation,
Law of opposites,
Reversed consumption and production trends and an
Overall loss of commitment.

As a result of his / her culture the modern day consumer lives in a continuous state of the present time, has a greater emphasis on style and form and has accepted the chaos and disorder in life to be a way of life. Tribal marketing is a form of post modern marketing (Allen, 1993).

Another aspect in today’s marketing is individualism. This is a theory / principal that emphasizes the importance and worth of the individual being. This theory stresses the importance of a person to pursue and achieve his / her goals so as to attain a state of self fulfillment and joy. The individualism theory however does not take into account other forces and influences exerted on to the individual by the society / external factors (Miles, 2007).

In marketing the individualism theory takes a different approach from the tribal approach. This is mainly because;

The individualist theory focuses on the relationship between the customer and the company
The companies take a core position in the company- client relationship
This approach uses means such as loyalty cards and bulletins unlike the tribal approach that relies on rituals and cultic tendencies (Greene, 2009).

Its main agenda is to develop loyalty among the tribe members; to the company.

Macro trends are another area of study. In today’s business environment there exist those factors that a business cannot control. These factors are usually outside the business’ immediate sphere of control and thus are referred to as macro factors. In the current advertisement industry such factors are gaining an ever growing importance as the businesses strive to position themselves strategically (Fourcade, 2007).

Most advertising firms are thus forced to observe and study the forces that affect commodity sales and marketing and adjust accordingly so as to remain relevant. These trends are known as macro trends in advertising / marketing. To cope with the macro trends the business is then forced to analyse the (SWOT) strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats that do exist (Dietsch, 2010).

There are various factors of consideration in marketing macro trends namely demographics, economics, environment, government, society and technology. In demographics the marketers assess the population distributions of the buyers, their family sizes / units, life expectancy and disposable income levels (Beckert, 2010).

The cool theory is also an area of study. Cool has assumed many definitions in today’s markets. It has no single meaning as it assumes various meanings depending on the locality and the context (Fourcade, 2007). It is generally used to describe a state of mind or an attitude. Mostly it assumes the form a desirable attribute in which the consumers would want to associate to. A car can be cool, an actor can be cool and a pose can be cool (Sinha, 2008).

The tipping principle follows a few rules and principle in its operation namely the law of the few, stickiness factor and the power of context. The law of the few states that in any process and system, not all players can have the same level of importance; some players will always have more stake than the others (Wade, 2010).

The stickiness factor on the other hand claims that the way a message is conveyed to the target users affects its contagiousness, ability to spread and be assimilated. For a marketing campaign to get to the tipping level, it must be memorable and touching to the target audience so as to make them aid in its flow (Dietsch, 2010).

The advertisement must also be in the right context as human beings are very sensitive and responsive to the environments in which they are in. If the advertisement is not in context it may not achieve the required success and influence percentage (Mitchell, 2010).

From the cool principle it is found that cool personalities are those who start, nurture and grow a trend. In the past trends were sourced from the tops of companies and large institutions; the cool people were those at the first tier levels. The recent years have proved that the new cool is the trend setter at the bottom. The new cool is a visionary who launches a new idea and concept and sees it through (Lee, 2007).

Tribes can be defined as a small scale representation of an ethnic group yet larger than a social clan. A common trait of the modern day tribes is that they do not limit people according to age and their driving force is a common passion / emotional experience. The modern day tribes also exhibit a great tendency of affection among the members even though no strong ties exist between the members (Dietsch, 2010).

However, the modern day tribes have a few differences from the past era tribes namely:

There are no strong binding forces and sense of permanency in the tribes
There is no exclusiveness in modern day tribes as a person can belong to more than one tribe in today’s world
There exist no physical boundaries in modern tribes they are just virtual / conceptual
Modern day tribes consist of members who share passions and emotions unlike dialect in the ancient tribes

“Tribal marketing is a marketing strategy that attempts to create social groups or communities that are centered around a product or service. The credo of tribal marketing is that postmodern people are looking for products and services that not only enable them to be freer, but can also link them to others, to a community, to a tribe” (Mack, 2005).

The cool principle also states that for a marketer to reach and help set trends he must influence the innovator as it is the innovators who look for new ideas unlike the followers who just assimilate already set trends. Several rules of cool have been derived from the principle:

Marketing cool causes cool to stop being cool
Cool can be identified but cannot be manufactured
Cool people can’t be told what’s cool

This principle has enabled researchers realize that the world is a huge global village and that for a product to be sold a social network must be used. It emphasizes the importance of using the social web to popularise, create waves and trends that in turn boost sales / consumer response (Luo, 2003).

According to the work by Cova it is seen that modern day and ancient tribes have certain characteristics namely:

Tribes cannot be controlled by a central power to maintain order
Tribes tend to rally people around non rational factors and elements
Tribes tend to embody an inherent countermeasure to institutionalism
Tribes are unstable and do not conform to the common norms of the society

Just like in the past people in today’s societies are grouped into categories. These categories apply to all spheres of life including marketing. The ability of tribes to influence consumer decisions has forced researchers to go into the study of the effects of tribes on the marketability of products (Davis, 2009).

The above diagram shows the various types of consumers that exist in any market. The first type is the consumer who is influenced his culture, gender, status in society and lifestyle when it comes to his / her choices. The second type is the micro-social consumer who is influenced by his tribe and subcultures.

The third type of consumer is the single actor who makes his own decisions and is not influenced in any way by external factors. The single actor bases his consumption choices on the individualism theory, self motivation and unconscious impulses.

The concept of tribal marketing does not focus on the aspects of the product being promoted but instead focuses on the creation of social links between consumers so as to form tribes. Tribal marketing is geared towards the promotion of good and services that facilitate the formation of tribes among the consumers.

The approach bases everything on consumer service
Overrates the value of proximity to the client and confuses it for intimacy
Strives to enhance the relationships of the consumers with each other instead of creating a relationship between the consumers and the brand
Most efforts in this approach are geared towards strengthening the ties among tribe members instead of substituting them

The tribal clover has four aspects namely imaginary, institutional, normal life and occasional. Imaginary aspects go unseen, normal life aspects are practiced in the day to day lives of the members and occasional aspects include gatherings (Garrett, 2010).

Tribal marketing cannot be separated from social marketing and is based upon the use of networks that exist in the social circle of the target audience. For the tribal marketing theory to work it has to apply to a social environment (Faber, 2004).

This study has shown that marketing is indeed tribal. From the inferences made, the research question “.. is marketing tribal..:?’ is answered. The study shows that there are various theories and principles such as the cool theory, macro trends, individualism theory and post modern marketing theories that show an interrelation with the tribal theory.

This goes further to emphasize the importance of the implementation of tribal marketing in today’s business. Tribal marketing has been seen to boost sales and consumer relations and is a must do for the businessman of today.

References

Allen, J., 1993. Individualism and the Modern Corporation: Implications for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Journal of Management, 19 (7), pp. 595-612.

Beckert, J., 2010. The Interrelations of Institutions, Networks, and Cognition in the

Dynamics of Markets. Organisational and Marketing Journals, 31 (5), pp. 605-627

Davies, W., 2009. A Case Study of Teaching Marketing Research Using Client- Sponsored Projects Method, Challenges, and Benefits. Journal of Marketing Education, 31 (3), pp. 230-239.

Dietsch, P., 2010. The market, competition, and equality. Journal of Macromarketing, 9 (2), pp. 213-244.

Faber, R., 2004. Advertising Theory: Reconceptualizing the Building Blocks. Marketing Theory Journal, 4 (2), pp. 7-30.

Fourcade, M., 2007. Theories of Markets and Theories of Society. American Behavioral Scientist, 50 (8), pp. 1015-1034.

Garrett, P., 2010. Recognizing the Limitations of the Political Theory of Recognition: Axel Honneth, Nancy Fraser and Social Work. The British Journal of Social Work, 7 (11), pp. 1517-1533.

Greene, T., 2009. Three Ideologies of Individualism: Toward Assimilating a Theory of Individualisms and their Consequences. Critical Sociology, 34 (1), pp. 117-121.

Kaplan, M., 2010. Educational Blogging: Integrating Technology Into Marketing Experience. Journal of Marketing Education, 32 (1), pp. 50-63.

Lee, T., 2007. The role of contextual marketing offer in Mobile Commerce acceptance: comparison between Mobile Commerce users and nonusers. International Journal of Mobile Communications, 5, (3), pp. 339-356.

Levin, P., 2008. Culture and Markets: How Economic Sociology Conceptualizes Culture. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 619 (1), pp. 114-119.

Luo, X., 2003. Contextual Marketing and Customer-Orientation Strategy for E-Commerce: An Empirical Analysis. International Journal of Electronic Commerce, 2 (4), pp. 95–118.

Miles, C., 2007. A cybernetic communication model for advertising. Marketing Theory Journal, 7 (4), pp. 307-334.

Mitchell, R., 2010. Sustainable Market Orientation: A New Approach to Managing Marketing Strategy. Journal of Macromarketing, 30 (2), pp. 160-170.

Sinha, K., 2008. New Trends and their Impact on Business and Society. Journal of Creative Communication, 3 (3), pp. 305-317.

Wade, D., 2010. Economics, psychology and the history of consumer choice theory. Cambridge Journal of Economics, 5 (4), pp. 633-648.

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Modern Day Tribes and Marketing

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