The following is the last paper I wrote when finally completing my degree in Commerce (Marketing/ Ecommerce double major) in May 2006. It's a little dry, but the market remains pretty much the same today, and some of the marketing theories provide interesting context given the growth of social networking since this was written.

The topic was to discuss two products, one high involvement, one low involvement with an internal factor of motivation and an external factor of sub-culture.

Introduction

The emergence of the blogging market has seen the creation of two types of product within the industry, both of which provide different perspectives in terms of their involvement. Free Blogging Packages present a low involvement product, in that they are most commonly easy to setup, easy to use, and easy to abandon should the desire exist. Alternatively, paid blogging packages, including paid hosted services and DIY blogging packages, provide a strong example of a high involvement product, due to the cost involved, often the time required in setting them up and maintaining them, and the more difficult ability to abandon them.

The paper will consider both free and paid blogging packages in consideration of their key internal and external factors, motivation, and sub-culture, and how the consideration of these two factors should be considered for each in the development of a marketing strategy.

The markets

Free blogging packages, sometimes referred to as the consumer blogging market are high turn-over, mass market products best designed to target the long tail of the market.

They are typically easy to setup, use, maintain, and abandon.

Paid blogging packages including so-called “Do-It-Yourself” blogging packages and hosted business style blogging packages are high involvement products through their implication of the opportunity costs for each product, where the consumer is offered a variety of products and offerings in which they must pay to use the service, and often require more time in setting up and maintaining.

Long Tail Theory

In considering the market and its place in terms of motivation and sub-culture, Long Tail Theory provides an important consideration.

Long Tail Theory is based on long-known features of statistical distributions such us Zipf, Power-laws, Pareto distributions and/or Levy distributions, but modernised for application in the delivery of internet distribution following a series of speeches by Chris Anderson in early 2004 (Wikipedia 2005) and culminating with the publication of a Wired Magazine article “The Long Tail”in October 2004 (Anderson, 2004).

The concept essentially is the creation of a market through the distribution of many small products, or in the case of free blogging, blogs, created in a way to maximise opportunity not through creating a leading, or high trafficked product, but by the combination of, in the case of free blogging packages, many pages which combined create a strong market presence in themselves, and the subsequent returns of profit through the many, and not the few.

In marketing terms, long tail theory applied to the blogging market place is perhaps different to more tradition concepts of marketing, in that traditionally services such as the provision of the written word (for example TV, Newspapers, books) are marketed to be the most read, the highest selling, the most influential. Long Tail Theory applied to blogging concludes that it is far better to have many, many, small outlets across many niches, that the combined total returns leadership and market position.

The consideration of Long Tail Theory to the two factors, motivation and sub-culture, is important in that the marketing base of a typical blogging company is somewhat different to the producer of a normal good or tradition service.

Motivation

Motivation is the driving force within individuals that impels them to action (Schiffman et. al. 2001: 94).

There are many different motivations as to why people blog.

The most commonly referred to is self-expression (Mohatta, 2006) or as some would prefer to call it, “Ego Gratification”. (Dvorak, 2002)

Other reasons include Antidepersonalization, a process in which people seek to stand out from the crowd, the elimination of frustration, or in other words stress relief, a societal need to share, fulfilling a innate need to share with others, and finally, fame, wanting to become known by others, as a writer and somebody who’s opinion counts.(all points Dvorak, 2002)

Point two of the Trait Big Five Model (Schiffman et. al. 2001:128) extroversion, the tendency to interact with the world, is applicable to bloggers in that many would enjoy excitement and stimulation in an interaction which is available for viewing world wide.

In the Model of the motivation process (Schiffman et. al. 2001: 95), unfulfilled needs, wants and desires in the case of blogging are as detailed.

Considering a marketing strategy, the following parts of the Model should be considered in putting together a pitch for a particular blogging product.

Tension is the result of an unmet need, want or desire. The desire for self-expression can be provided by a conduit in which the consumer can express themselves. In this case, the marketing strategy for any blog platform would be to target this unmet desire, through the highlighting of areas such as low cost, ease of use and functionality.

Considering Drive however is a bigger step forward from the mere frustration of the unmet desire. A marketing strategy would need to highlight the benefits of providing the conduit to self expression. Although detailed individually, the underlying motivations of the would-be blogger often overlap, and together these can be used to highlight the benefits of the given product in the marketing strategy.

For example, very few people would not want to find fame and express themselves, or gratify their egos.

A combination of several of the motivations would serve to provide positive messages in the learning and cognitive processing stage of the model of the motivation process so as to assist in the creation of the behaviour, in this case the adoption or use of the blogging package.

It would be important to consider in any marketing strategy whether these needs are acquired or innate needs. Part of this is consider further in the external factors, however for some the need for self expression would fall under Ego Needs in Marslow’s hierarchy of needs (Schiffman et. al. 2001:106), and yet it would be the role of the marketing strategy to articulate to the consumer how their product can assist in creating Self-actualisation, or self fulfilment as per the top tier of Marslow’s hierarchy of needs.

Motivation and Free Blogging Services

Free blogging services are able to more readily meet the challenges of targeting unmet needs, wants and desires by its nature of being more attractive to impulse needs satisfaction by its very nature, in that they are free.

Because they are free, easy to use, and often marketed in that way, free blogging services increase the likelihood of cognitive processes and the learning stage of the model of the motivation process being more quickly delivered to a behaviour process.

The marketing strategy for any free blogging services should, and must emphasis the ability to quickly, and with ease, delivery the tension reduction that is delivered through the goal or need fulfilment as part of the model of the motivation process, particularly given that these services are not superior to paid services in terms of added functionality.

Motivation and Paid Blogging Services

Paid blogging services face the opposite problem of the free blogging services, in that they are often unable to deliver a quick resolution to the drive inherent in a motivated consumer, both due to the need to pay for the service, as well as the complexity involved in setting them up, particularly with do-it-yourself packages, which require separate hosting, installation and often detailed designing.

They do however have a distinct advantage over free blogging services in terms of functionality, and this can deliver a high return to self-actualisation, or self fulfilment as per Marslow’s hierarchy of needs.

From the view of a marketing strategy, it is important to highlight the extra gratification the paid package is able to deliver. Whilst between one paid blogging package and another, ease of use, installation, payment and other features may be present, as per any blogging package (including free services), it’s the ability to provide better returns to the need for self expression, through better platforms in terms of search engine optimisation, customisation and accessibility to others, be that through the addition of services such as RSS, commenting, trackbacks and other features.

Subculture

Subculture is the distinct cultural group that exists as an identifiable segment within a larger, more complex multicultural society (Schiffman et. al. 2001:406).

Subculture has played an important roll in the development and expansion of blogging, and will continue to do so into the future.

Blogging itself first arose from a sub-culture commonly referred to as “geeks”, a group dominated by technologically informed men. (Riley 2005).

As the blogosphere developed, key sub-cultures, such as those with a political interest joined in waves.

Even to this current day, various subcultures can be seen within the blogging community, often grouped together in distinct social networks.

Sub-cultures to be considered into any marketing strategy for blogging include:
Ethnic Subcultures
Religious Subcultures
Geographical and regional subcultures
Racial subcultures
Age subcultures
Interest based subcultures

(list in part: Schiffman et. al. 2001: Chapter 14)

Long Tail theory, as well as discussing the combination of many small blogs equalling a greater whole, also provides for more niche targeting into smaller subcultural groupings than perhaps a more generic, or more traditional product would.

The predominant subcultural groups in blogging have been interest based subcultures and age subcultures, although this is now expanding to cover the more tradition ethnic, religious and geographical subcultures as marketers look at targeting groups who may otherwise have not previous had an interest in blogging.

Blogging has, and continues to play an important role in the development of subcultural capital, the cultural knowledge and commodities acquired by members of a subculture, raising their status and helping differentiate themselves from members of other groups (Wikipedia 2006), in giving an easy to use medium in which to disseminate information and form collective bonds based on the same sub-cultural interest or need.

Age Based subcultures

The most dominate of all subcultures in blogging is the teen market, with 52% of all blogs being developed and maintained by teens that are ages 13-19 (Huffaker, Calvert 2005) and at least 19% of all US Teens Blog (Riley, 2005 HYPERLINK "http://www.blogherald.com/2005/11/03/19-of-us-teens-maintain-a-blog-survey/" ).

The teen market is traditionally driven by peer influences, and hence as a sub-culture the rapid rise of blogging, and the related social networking (which also includes the use of blogs) has been rapid. The take off of services such as Myspace have been driven by acceptances amongst peers and the need to be involved in such places.

And yet, the mainstreaming of such sites can also lead to an eventual backlash, as some reports now indicate with Myspace.

MySpace's notoriety could be a turnoff for young people who are looking for an online community of their own, said Amanda Lenhart, a senior researcher for the Pew Internet and American Life Project. Lenhart has studied teens' online behavior since the late 1990s. "Teens will go where their friends go," she said. (Cohan, 2006)

The question for any marketing strategy is consideration of how to present the blogging product to the age based subculture without actually alienating it by becoming too “mainstream”.

Myspace led the field, through the inclusion of dedicated musician sites and the ability to ad pictures, music and video to user sites, combined with blogging and social networking, whilst being relatively simple to use.

Whether it will eventually be a victim of its own success is yet to be seen, but the E-Commerce Times (Cohan, 2006) article references are number of competitors who is some cases, such as Friendsorenemies.com are targeting more interest based niches amongst the teen demographic.

And in a crowded marketplace, this would be wise advice for any marketing strategy, as it would be in any business plan: what sub-cultures are yet to be specifically targeted. How can we better target the sub-culture, whether that be age, interest, or a combination of the two.

Interest based subcultures

Interest based subcultures are relatively new in terms of marketing blogging services. Certainly, various groups have embraced the medium, however this has generally in the past been through the use generic services as opposed to interest based targeting. Although there has been some attempts at incorporating interest based targeting as part of a broader service (as previously mentioned with Myspace), most companies offering blogging services haven’t targeted interest based subcultures.

The question arises in the development of a marketing strategy, is should a firm consider interest based subcultures in its marketing mix.

With some 200 million odd blogs in existence (Riley, 2006), the marketplace is already highly developed. Any new blogging package, be it free or paid, would need to distinguish itself from existing sites, and certainly interest based subcultural services are currently under catered for and could provide a marketing edge that could define the company.

Conclusion

The consideration of internal and external factors to the low involvement product: free blogging services, and the high involvement product: paid blogging services, has been demonstrated to be important to a marketing strategy for any firm due to:
The need to differentiate the firm from the competition
The need to target consumers through the model of the motivation process so as to deliver a behaviour that results in the goal or need fulfilment being place with the service provider
The need to use these stages in consideration of the subcultural aspects of any given consumer

Whilst there are other factors to be considered in any overall marketing strategy, both the motivation, and subcultural aspects are important in terms of developing a marketing strategy that aims at building the service to higher levels.

References

Wikipedia Foundation, 2005 ‘The Long Tail’ Wikipedia. Retrieved 13 May 2006 from HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_tail" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_tail
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Schiffman, L., Bednall, D., Cowley, E., O’Cass, A., Watson, J. & Kanuk, L. 2001 Consumer Behaviour 2nd edition, Pearson Education Australia, Frenches Forrest p.94
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Schiffman, L., Bednall, D., Cowley, E., O’Cass, A., Watson, J. & Kanuk, L. 2001 Consumer Behaviour 2nd edition, Pearson Education Australia, Frenches Forrest Chapter 14
Wikipedia Foundation, 2006 ‘Subcultures Wikipedia. Retrieved 20 May 2006 from HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subculture" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subculture
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