Question

a) Opinion leaders are widely used in marketing to influence consumers. Explain why opinion leaders are hard to identify.

b) For each of the following products, nominate a celebrity whom you feel would make an appropriate opinion leader. List the characteristics of the celebrity that would make him or her suitable in terms of the type of reference group influence likely to be exerted (informational, normative or identification).

• Toothpaste

• microwave ovens

• jeans.

Answer 1

(a). Opinion leaders have now a days become an important media of advertisement. Opinion leaders are those members of the community who have the ability to influence a wide range of people towards any product, industry or any service or even occupations. We can also say that they are the early adopters or users of a particular product or technology and they pass the information to the less informed population. They are mostly the celebrities, social media influencers, and popular personalities who have achieved something great full in their respective field and are followed and admired by a large number of people.

Companies may face certain difficulties in finding out which opinion leaders they have to choose in order to advertise their product. The very first problem is to identify the personality who can best advertise the product based on the characteristics of the product. For example, in order to advertise nutritional supplements, fitness models or celebrities can be used.

Then there may be a problem of convincing the celebrities. Since the quality of the product will be attached to the image of the celebrities, he must be aware about the complete pros and cons of the product.

Further the celebrities also charge a huge amount of advertising the products which is also a major issue in using opinion leaders.

(b). 1. Toothpaste: Any popular dental specialist can be used as an opinion leader to advertise toothpaste brand. Also film actors having good dental hygiene can act as opinion leaders for toothpaste marketing. For example : Akshay Kumar.

2. Microwave ovens: Any popular chef who would have been a popular contestent or winner of any popular cooking show on tv can be used as opinion leader for advertising a microwave oven. For example : Sanjeev Kapoor. Since most of the people follow their cooking recipes, he can advertise a specific company microwave oven by recommending it to be most suitable for cooking any particular dish.

3. Jeans : Actors and celebrities can be best use to popularize a particular jeans brand like Hrithik Roshan, since their fashion is being followed by the viewers of there movies i.e. they are fashion influencers best suitable for marketing of clothing and fashion.