Assignment 1: Reference Groups
You are an African-American woman with a husband and two children-a fourteen-year-old girl and an eight-year-old boy. The children plan to attend college. You are a Human Resource Manager at a local firm. You live in a mid-sized U.S. city. Your parents live in a retirement community 1,500 miles away and you have no other relatives. Your husband has only one family member, his father, who is in a nursing home a few blocks away. He is in the final stages of Alzheimer's disease. Your husband holds an MBA and is a CPA who works as an independent accountant at his home office. You are moderately wealthy and have few financial worries. You read fictional mysteries in your spare time and enjoy yoga. Your husband reads industry-related journals and loves watching sports on TV, particularly football. Your children play sports and love music and hanging out with their friends. Both you and your husband are in your forties and are interested in exercising and eating healthy. Consider your family and the reference groups that influence your purchases. Create a 300-400-word response and answer the following:
- List and evaluate at least five different reference group influences on the different members of your family. Discuss which is most important and how a firm could best market its products and services to you and your family.
- Discuss how changing demographics like smaller families that are more mobile, greater levels of education, and more women in the workplace affect the influence of reference groups on consumers.
Submit your response to the Discussion Area by Saturday, July 23, 2016. Be sure to properly cite your sources using APA; include your references and in-text citations.
Comment on the postings of your classmates. Do you agree with their position? Why or why not?