Topic 1: Digital Residents and Visitors

I like the idea of how the authors White and Cornu (2008) first established in their blog post, the basis behind how they classified their student’s digital behaviours according to ‘visitors’ and ‘residents’. I would like to support their notion that how people use the web (in this case taking their students as samples of the general population of present day web users) is largely based on their approach and motivation behind it more than just their age.

We are all familiar that, in the interconnected realms of marketing and psychology, segmenting people according to Behaviour and Socio-Psychological factors (eg. Motivation) are often far more effective than simply segmenting them according to their Geographic and Demographic (eg. Age) factors. (Capon & Hulbert, 2007). In this case, simply trying to understand peoples’ digital behaviours by their age is not enough.

We also know that what drives a person’s behavior is based on a set of deeply entrenched values as famously explained by Homer and Kahle’s value-attitude-behaviour hierarchy (1988).

Image.slidesharecdn.com, (2014)

In the same way, if we want to truly understand what drives a person’s digital behaviour, we have to really uncover and understand his or her values and belief systems. Understanding people’s values can help organisations or universities to package their product, service or tools in ways that relate to their customer’s value rather than try to come up with endless amounts of variations in order to meet different customer behaviours.

There are many reasons that can explain a person’s motivation towards the web. Some of us, like myself, who may not be so comfortable expressing ourselves in front of people may find it doubly difficult to go online and start expressing ourselves there, much less maintain an online identity, when we prefer to keep our lives private. A lot of this could be due to cultural context or even down to a person’s personality.

Having a framework to classify current day internet users along the spectrum of digital ‘visitors’ and ‘residents’ is certainly more useful and comprehensive than the categories of digital ‘natives’ and ‘immigrants’ (White and Cornu, 2008). However I would like to suggest that if we want to truly identify the best platforms and ways to engage current day internet users, it may be necessary to conduct a more in-depth study to examine the relationship between peoples’ values and the way they use the web.

References

Capon, N,. & Hulbert, J. (2007). Managing marketing in the 21^st century. Bronxville, N.Y.: Wessex Inc.

Image.slidesharecdn.com, (2014). [online] Available at: http://image.slidesharecdn.com/buyerbehaviour-1207827345126981-8/95/buyer-behaviour-4-728.jpg?cb=1207820152 [Accessed 27 Nov. 2014].

Homer P.M. & Kahle L.R. (1988) A structural equation test of the value-attitude-behavior hierarchy, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54 (1988), pp. 638–646

White, D. & Cornu, A. L. (2008). Not ‘Natives’ & ‘Immigrants’ but ‘Visitors’ & ‘Residents’. TALL blog, The University of Oxford.