Question:

1. Ms. Melis Kant is a manager at a well-known international advertising agency in Istanbul. She is also enrolled in the MBA program of a well-known university, and will graduate in June, 2021. She is 25 years old, has been engaged to an architect for two years, and lives in a small apartment house in Levent. She has plain furniture, many plants without flowers, and a collection of antiques. She purchases two newspapers daily, but reads six on the internet. She watches different programs on nine TV channels. She is a heavy web-user, too.

She does most of her shopping on-line. She purchases some products through catalogs, and also from Mall. She changes her shampoo brands frequently, but uses only one brand of toothpaste. She is a heavy coffee drinker, does not smoke, but sometimes has a drink in the evening. She loves sea-food and ice cream. She is a good cook, and likes entertaining people at her home. She likes to travel, both for business and for personal reasons. She drives a station wagon, goes to Bodrum frequently, even for a weekend. She is interested also in history, antiques, tennis, diving, electronic gadgets, and animals; she has a German Shepard. For her investment decisions she benefits from the services of ANB Marketable Securities Company.

Her fiance, Mr. Sencer Bilgin, has an office with a partner in Cihangir, Istanbul. He focuses mostly on projects for hotels and restaurants. He is 33 years-old, and lives in a two-bedroom apartment in Bebek. He is an active sports-person, and is involved with long cycling tours as well as hiking. He doesnt like closed sports centers. He wakes up early in the morning, and runs or takes a bicycle tour before going to his office. Mr. Bilgin is not a very sociable person, he does not like large social gatherings. His social life is mostly casual dinners or drinks with friends, or activities like concerts, seminars. He reads newspapers on-line, but purchases six-seven magazines regularly, about architecture, sports, photography, etc. He has a very comfortable and tasteful living environment in his house. He has modern and stylish furniture, and a lot of artistic objects and accessories. He has a collection of natural stones, he believes in their good energy; hand-made gifts from friends, and souvenirs he picked up from different parts of the world. He has been interested in photography since his university years. He runs a two-week workshop at a museum every summer, to teach photography to young students. He shares the photos he takes on photo sharing sites on-line. The latest series of photos he shared were those he had taken at Nairobi National Park. They generated a lot of positive comments and reviews from the other members on the site. He is more of a spender than a saver; his spendings are in specific areas related to his hobbies. He shops heavily online, purchases products related to his hobbies, such as lenses and other accessories for his professional cameras, technological gadgets, sports goods, books, e-books, and CDs. He prefers to enhance his large music collection with CDs instead of downloading music. His latest online purchase was a Samsonite travel bag-pack.

Ms. Melis Kant, last Friday, got a big bonus from her company for her exceptional performance during the last year. After work, she went to Akmerkez, purchased some outfits at different stores; then stopped at a supermarket near her house, got the items on her shopping list, noticed only two new productsan herbal tea and a packaged organic foodamong the other products. She couldnt find her preferred brand of shampoo, because it was placed at a different shelf; so she purchased another brand of shampoo. She came home tired. She had a quick dinner, sat on the sofa with her dog. She surfed the web; one of her Facebook friends had sent an invitation for an informal dinner for which she was not too enthusiastic about. Then she checked one of the popular womens portals. After an hour of surfing some e-commerce sites, she decided to reward herself with a self-gift after exams; called her fianc for suggesting a five-day vacation. She also searched the internet about places to go, looking for a destination where they can have unique experiences in which they can be actively involved during the day. She wants to rest and read books and journals at night, to be ready for her challenging and creative work. She will be alone for the first two days, since her fianc, due to his heavy work, will join her later.

After planning for the vacation, she watched a series on Netflix, and read four magazines. When questioned the next day, she could recall two-bank, one-shampoo, two-vacation, and three-personal computer advertisements, although she went through at least 100 ads; but she could talk about a number of articles in detail.

Based on the above information, and benefiting from studies and research on perception, motivation, and personality:

• Describe the personality characteristics and motives of Ms. Kant, and of Mr. Bilgin. (20%)
• What explanations can you give for their behaviors? (10%)
• How can a travel agency benefit from this description, in preparing a program/value package offer to them for their planned vacation? (15%)
• In addition to travel agency, what types of product/service companies may benefit from the above information in their marketing mix, how? (15%)