Consumer Behavior and YouTube Advertisements

This article discusses the impact of consumer behavior on Coles' Easter sales and the justification for the YouTube boycott by major business brands. It also explores the theories of psychoanalysis, Veblenian Social-Psychological Model, classical conditioning, and implicit association psychology.

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CONSUMER BEHAVIOR
Name
Institution
Date

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Question 1
Introduction
The idea of Coles to have Nationwide Easter sales at every point of their stores is a good
idea. For one, Coles is prominent in Australia and it has a good foundation of marketing.
Consumers are already aware of the presence of the grocery store and have subscribed to being
loyal customers. In that case, the only thing that is remaining for Cole is to utilize the high
emotions that accompany holiday celebrations (Escalas and Bettman 2005). The main point of
strength for Coles and that would give it an advantage is the emotional level of the consumers
during the festive season. The explanation of the fact that success is expected is demonstrated
below;
Body
The target of the Coles grocery store is the Easter season, where consumers will spend
time at home with their family members in a celebratory mood. Their tolerance level will be high
and excitement will also increase. The psychoanalytic theory best explains why the condition of
the consumers’ moods will be a point of strength for Coles (De Masi, 2018). Tracing back to
Sigmund Freud the founder of psychoanalysis, the psychoanalysis theory is revolutionary in the
field of marketing (Dahlén et al., 2005). Sigmund believed that consumers have limited ability to
fully understand the motivations of their actions because the psychological factors shaping them
are largely unconscious and the major part of the unconscious mind compose of strong desires
and urges. People normally repress the desires in fear of them causing shame and guilt.
According to the theory, symbolic concerns play a major role in the behavior of
consumers. The external factors like income and age have less effect on the behavior of
consumers. However, the messages embedded in marketing containing an emotional appeal to

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the hopes, feelings, fears, and aspirations are normally more effective as compared to rational
appeals. In the examination of this theory, it is evident that Coles’ strategy of having an Easter
sales day will automatically be a success. The fact that the holiday period creates a lot of
emotions and celebratory mood, other factors such as the economic performance will not have
more effect than the psychological and emotional drive. Consumers have been psychologically
wired to understand and know that holiday periods are like spending periods. In fact, most
households save a lot of money for spending in the holiday periods. In as much as people
normally have their own disciplined actions of spending, holiday periods are normally an
exception and the saving rules are not applicable (Shin, Lee and Perdue 2018). Furthermore,
most people will not be working and they will have loosened up their attitudes and actions to
accommodate the time for the holiday. It is with that kind of attitude that the psychoanalysis
theory and the emotional state of consumers serve as the strongest force that dictates the
purchasing behaviors of consumers. Therefore, Coles would stand a good chance of making big
sales during the time of Easter celebrations (Bolton and Reed 2004). Considering the fact that
celebrations and eating are almost used interchangeably, the sale of groceries would serve as a
major advantage for the Coles grocery store. For it to flourish and succeed in the campaign, it
should back up its marketing message with a healthy living message. Consumers have realized
the dangers of junk foods and are beginning to consider other remedies of healthy eating
(Cialdini, Reno and Kallgren 1990). Thus, it is the perfect moment for Coles to brand its
marketing message for the Easter edition to stand on the basis or foundation of driving a culture
of healthy eating through great offers of groceries. The message would create a big competition
that will rival the junk food stores for the benefit of Coles. Therefore, Sigmund’s theory bears
great relevance to the success of the message campaign.

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The Thorstein Veblen’s Veblenian Social-Psychological Model also backs up the chances
of the success of Cole’s Easter campaign. According to the theory, human beings are social
creatures with a high tendency to conform to the cultures of subgroups and culture. Veblen
believed that the desires and needs of people are informed by group membership. According to
the theory, marketers must have a good understanding of the social influences of groups and
people for a better comprehension of the demand rate of products. According to Coles’ case, the
main social influencer is the Easter celebration. The main social influencers for the Easter
holiday celebrations are the elite Christian churches, gatherings and personalities (Mazodier and
Merunka 2012). Given the fact that Christianity is unwelcoming to indulgence and alcoholism,
the Easter holiday will be dedicated by the Christians as a holy day. Therefore, the idea of having
Liquor land to have an Easter sale during this period is a bad one. Even though most Christians
on a daily basis take alcohol, a majority will less likely take alcohol during this period because of
the strong influence of the religious groups (Belk 1988).
The Easter holiday would not work in sync with an Easter sale of liquor because for one,
it will be considered as blasphemous for the day of Easter, by Christians. That will make it even
worse because the attention of the religious groups would be caught. When that happens strong
warnings of indulgence in actions considered as unworthy to Christianity will be preached.
Christian leaders will be quick to identify the Liquorland Easter sale intentions and will find it
disrespectful to the holy day of Easter. Therefore, they will spend a lot of efforts trying to warn
their congregation of drinking and engaging in unholy actions. The messages at the pulpit and of
the pulpit by the religious groups will be detrimental to the Easter sales campaign of Liquorland.
That will also have negative and damaging effects on Coles’ Easter sales campaign of grocery

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sales. Therefore, it will be at the best interest of Coles to abstain from carrying out its planned
campaigns of Easter sales for Liquorland.
During the holiday period, all the religions will be influenced to join the celebratory and
the purchasing and eating spree culture of holidays, according to the theory. The Muslim and
Hindu communities, alongside other religious groups, will be influenced and affected by the
celebratory moods of the people around Australia. Therefore, Coles could establish other
religions as a niche too. The marketers of Coles should understand the needs of the consumers
first. It would be insufficient to post a marketing message that will notify people of the presence
of an Easter edition. For better results, it must start early to try and identify some of the
influencers that would capture the attention of most of the consumers. For example, it could try
and figure out the types of groceries that consumers attach to the Easter holiday.
Marketers could also find out the source of influence for the healthy living campaign and
try and work with it. For example, the bodies in place that have the necessary campaign
messages about lifestyle diseases caused by Junk food. The message of healthy eating could be
released early, before the Easter holidays and the partnership with the healthy bodies and
medical personalities with the Coles grocery stores could be concealed from the public
(Oyserman 2009). Only after the health campaigns have been completed would Coles make
rounds announcing the Easter offers. According to Veblenian, the actions of consumers will be
influenced by social groups, especially the elite groups. Therefore partnerships with relevant
healthy bodies for the consumption of healthy foods will serve as an advantage for Coles.
The fact that the Coles grocery stores are well known in Australia, the Easter campaign
will be a great success especially with some few adjustments here and there. That can be
evidenced by the Pavlovian theory assertion that human behavior, especially consumer behavior,

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results majorly from conditioned responses (Heckler and Childers 1992). The Coles’s presence
in the market for a long time serves as the best case of a Pavlovian theory where consumers have
been conditioned to have groceries from Coles (Franks 2017). The problem with that scenario
though is that consumers have had no conditioning for the Easter editions of Coles’ products.
That is where the company will strive to make the necessary adjustments to achieve the best
conditioning. The adjustment measures would involve developing pre-Easter offers to the
consumers in preparation for the Easter holiday. By the time that the Easter offers are taking over
the market, during the Easter days, enough conditioning would have been made to the consumers
for the success of the campaign. Therefore, the Pavlovian theory could inform the grocery store
on the preparation phase of the Easter campaign for better achievement of success during the
day.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the chance or the probability of success of the Coles grocery stores is
greater than the chance of failure, because of the main factor being the prominence of Coles and
the utilization of the theories presented above. The Easter celebrations would create days off,
family times, group and religious gatherings among other social events. At this time, most people
will have the time to go shopping. Therefore, Coles should utilize the theories presented above,
especially the Psychoanalytic theory in its marketing strategies. That will enable the grocery
stores to make huge amounts of sales during the Easter holiday celebrations.
Question 2
Introduction
The safety of advertisements on YouTube has lost balance. That is evidenced by the
massive boycott of YouTube by major business brands. For instance, over 250 brands have been

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reported to have pulled their advertisement spending on Google’s services following an
investigation of a newspaper resulting in the findings that their ads appeared adjacent to contents
that were considered to be extreme, in YouTube. The Business Insider gathered from ad
executives that the boycotts were mere opportunities for destroying the biggest business and
player in the online business of advertising.
Body
The processes for the YouTube boycott by the online advertisers began with a series of
untimely incidences. The week to the event of the annual ad industry in Europe, investigations
were conducted by the Times of London into the incidence of brand ads appearing next to
content that was deemed as extremist, on YouTube. The brand ads also seemed to have funded
the creators of the extremist videos. The second day of the trade show of London marked the
reporting of the suspension of campaigns from YouTube, by more than 250 brands. That was
inclusive of L’Oreal, McDonald’s, Audi, HSBC among many more (Greenwald and Banaji
1995). The brands pulled their adverts even from the platforms of Google’s display ad until
Google could provide the assurance of the safety of their ads. Because of that incident, Google
devoted most of the event’s first session in a chat on stage with the marketing chief of Unilever,
Keith Weed and Matt Brittin its European boss (Collins and Loftus 1975). In the meeting,
Google gave apologies about the issues that occurred and offered promises to update its controls,
policies, and hiring strategy for tackling the issue.
The anomalies with the YouTube advertisement come about as a result of the fact that the
pricing for advertisement depends majorly on the size of the audience and not the type of
audience. Advertisers rarely negotiate the individual placement of online media. Instead,
advertisers buy audiences across YouTube videos through a method known as programmatic,

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which is a method that uses automated systems for bidding ad slots on behalf of advertisers
(Petty and Cacioppo 1984). Advertisers are often pushed by their departments of procurement to
strive to reach or cover the largest audience using the smallest cost that serves as a priority, as
opposed to considering the context of the appearance of the ad (Englis and Solomon 1995).
Because platforms like YouTube have more open access to third-party measurements, and
brands and agencies find it easier observing the appearance of their ads. However, the survey by
computer vision firm GumGum and artificial intelligence made observations that the
professionals of marketing ranked YouTube as the least safe brand platform, out of the eight
possible choices of Instagram, Twitter, search, Facebook, LinkedIn, Snapchat, among others.
According to the theory of classical conditioning, an audience responds to conditioning
stimuli. Therefore, allowing the appearance of extreme messages adjacent to the brands would
creating a conditioning effect where consumers will attach extreme messages to the brands
(Wilson & Sherrell 1993). Therefore, I think that the boycott was justifiable because of the
dangers that would have been caused by classical conditioning of the extreme messages on the
brands. If the companies allowed the appearance of the ads next to the extreme messages as a
solution is sought, more consumers would view the extreme content alongside the company
brands (Mazodier and Merunka 2012). In the long run, when they see the brand in the future,
their minds, perceptions, and attitudes would be drawn to remember the extreme messages that
were posted. That would then create the worst reputation for the brands that were attached to the
extreme messages. Therefore, the company would go on a big loss, in the long run. In as much as
the brands would lose the millions of opportunities to advertise online, they would have stood
their grounds in what they believe (Maison, Greenwald and Bruin 2004). The gesture to pull
down adverts and distance from extreme messages plays a critical role in passing a positive

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message to consumers of the fact that the incident was a mistake. Brands that continue to stick
around after such incidence provide mixed reactions with the consumers and most of them would
perceive that the companies behind the brands were guilty.
With implicit association psychology, people have a tendency to associate automatically
with objects bearing mental representations in memory. Therefore, the consumers of the brands
that were the victims of the extreme messages in YouTube would attach the brands as objects for
the representation of the extremist messages. The attachment comes with a repeated sight of the
objects (Allen and Madden 1985). All the brands that pulled down their advertisement prevented
the development of such a case of an implicit association, where consumers would attach the
brands with negative and extremist messages. Companies recognize that their brands are
priceless and any distortion of the brand would lead to a devastating colossal amount of losses
for the companies. Therefore, brands should be protected from attacks, at all cost. Those brands
that have not invested in much value for the products and business would not have much to care
about the dangers and risks associated with advertising on YouTube. That is why they will
continue hanging around; after all, they do not have much to lose in the long run.
Conclusion
The image of a company is represented by its brand. Therefore, an attack on a company’s
brand is equivalent to the attack on its image. That is why the YouTube boycott is justified.
Companies must ensure that their consumers are conditioned to attach positive values to their
brands. That will be beneficial in the long run because consumers’ trust will be established.
Therefore, companies should not be led by the greed of huge social media following, at the
expense of the companies’ brand image. The companies like YouTube must ensure that they
tighten their security to ensure that their image is also secure. As an intermediary between

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businesses and customers, YouTube must make the security of its platform the top priority in its
strategic plans. That way, it could recover its brand image with time.

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