Exam 11: Group Influence and Social Media

Allison carefully avoids doing what everyone else does. She goes out of her way to make sure that she does not dress the same way as others of her age. She spends a lot of time and effort to ensure that she will not be caught "in style." Her behaviour would be called:

Homophily refers to the degree to which two individuals are similar in terms of specific expert fields.

Jason was at an exciting ball game and found himself standing on his seat shouting insults at the referee. He couldn't even remember standing up. This is an example of the risky shift created by group dynamics.

Why might John want to distance himself from a group of computer geeks at his school to the extent that he avoids buying the same clothing as they do?

Use the concept of reactance to explain why independence and anticonformity are not the same thing.

The strategy of getting customers to sell a product on behalf of the company that creates it is called:

Members of a group are attracted to each other and value their group membership. Keeping membership exclusive tends to increase which of the following influences?

Under what conditions of social comparison might we compare the rightness of our judgments or actions with those of people who are obviously dissimilar to ourselves?

A website, Threadless.com, allows consumers to predict which will be the most successful t-shirt design. This process is taking advantage of:

Amy purchases certain brands of clothes because she is influenced by fellow members of her women's rugby team. This is an example of what type of influence reference group?

Some people are hired to make recommendations or actual purchases for others, such as an interior designer who "re-does" a home, or a broker who is entrusted with buy/sell decisions on behalf of investors. In essence, the ultimate user has relinquished decision-making control. The term for the designer or broker is:

List six types of power outlined in the text and discuss each as it relates affecting behaviour.

The "Rachael Ray Sucks" online community is best described as an example of a(n):

Some smart marketers proactively seek out influencers or product curators to help them identify just what they should offer to their customers.

We may not wish to be identified with a particular group, so we take great care not to dress nor act like members of that group. The group from which a consumer actively tries to distance himself is called a:

Jasmine goes to a very large party and notices that a few people she knows are acting wildly out of character. This is an example of:

Rodney wants to know which brand of insecticide to buy, so he asks for brand evaluations from various professionals, experts, people who work with insecticides, even independent testing agencies which have seals of approval. Which kind of reference group influence would result?

Rather than using a self-designating method to find opinion leaders, one company selected certain group members and asked their opinions on who were the leaders. This method involved using:

Robert, Larry, and June formed a marketing study group. Robert was an expert in research, Larry in consumer behaviour and sociology, and June specialized in integrated marketing communications. How did each influence the study group?

The ________ effect depicts, within limits, the approval from others toward someone who exhibits nonconforming behaviour.