MKTG 490
3rd Individual Assignment
Marketing Example: Social Class and Choice hotels international
Questions
1. Explain the ways in which social class and income can serve as predictors of
consumption.
2. Explain the following ways that social class can affect consumption. When do
consumers engage in conspicuous consumption? When do consumers engage in
compensatory consumption? Please provide specific examples for those two types
of consumer behaviors.
Question 3-4:
Among marketers who target consumers in more than one social class, a favorite strategy
is developing different product lines or brands within a product category to appeal to
consumers in each targeted class. Choice Hotels International offers travelers a variety of
lodgings suitable not only to a broad range of incomes but also to several different social
classes. Go to the company’s site at www.choicehotels.com, scroll to the bottom of the
page (where logos are shown with the blue background), and click on the link for each
lodging subsidiary (Clarion, Quality, Comfort, etc.).
3. Examine each hotel’s page for cues that appeal to consumers in a particular social
class. Provide the subsidiary name(s) and justify your answers. What cues did you
notice to determine your answers?
a. Which lodgings appeal to upper-class consumers?
b. Which lodgings appeal to upper-middle-class consumers?
c. Which lodgings appeal to middle-class consumers?
d. Which lodgings appeal to working-class consumers?
4. What other cues and information can Choice Hotels provide at its website to steer
consumers toward the lodging subsidiary that best meets their needs?
General Guideline for Assignments
You will have short assignments. Some of these assignments will be done during the
class time. The assignments may be related to your readings for that week or help you
prepare your group marketing project. Lowest grade will be dropped. No exceptions will
be made to this rule. For instance, if you come unprepared and receive a low grade on an
exercise or if you have miss an in-class exercise (since you were not at the class), your
grade will not be affected negatively. This privilege is intended to give you reasonable
allowance for an absence or emergency; so use it wisely.
