Reference group is a group that a person looks to when forming his or her beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors." Marketers often use groups to show off their goods, like a family eating breakfast cereal or a neighbor looking at the paint on a house.
The point of these cases is to show how friends and family can have an effect on consumers. Advertisers use celebrities to mirror group influences and sometimes use typical consumers as spokespersons because they reflect the buyer's norms and values and act as a representative of the consumer's reference group. For example, in the ad for the Vim bar, only the housewives next door are shown.
Reference groups give people something to compare their views and actions to. A customer can be a part of a reference group (like his or her family) or want to be a part of a group. In the first case, the person is in a membership group. In the second case, the person is in an ambition group.
When a person joins a group but then doesn't agree with the group's ideas, that person is in a disclaimant group. When someone doesn't want to be a part of a certain group, this is called a "dissociative group." This means reference groups can also be viewed negatively.
Types of Reference Groups:
These four types of reference groups are shown in the table. Advertisers use only positive attitude appeals in their ads.
Membership Groups:
Since marketers are only interested in the good kind of membership group, let's look at membership and goal group in more detail. Membership groups can be further broken down into main or secondary and informal or formal. If a person spends a lot of time with certain people, like family, friends, etc., those people make up their main group. If people in a group don't talk to each other as much, they might be from a secondary group like a shopping group, sports club, etc.

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Content Creator: Aysun Ibadova, Kamran Tagiyev
Voiceover author: Jeremy G.
Animation author: Nazanin Suleymanova
Sound editor: Aysun Ibadova
Project manager: Kamran Tagiyev