Weight Watchers vs. Jenny Craig

Tuesdays & Thursday Honors 1:00 PM

Question 1:
When first considering which diet plan to choose, a consumer must recognize their need; in this case our need is to lose weight. This serves as both a functional and psychological need. Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers both provide the functional need to help you satisfy your hunger while facilitating weight loss in a healthy manner. When it comes to our psychological needs, we want the personal gratification of losing weight and looking more attractive. The marketers for Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers show advertisements that portray their customers as fit, attractive and happier as a result of their weight loss program. We see this and immediately want those results that are associated with that program. Marketers will also use celebrity endorsements to sell their program and try to influence the consumer’s needs.
Once we, the consumer, have recognized a need, the next step is to search for information. This search is both internal and external. For our internal search we might ask ourselves, “What do I know about weight loss programs?”. Additionally we will do an external search by researching the programs online, visits to their actual locations, or asking our friends and family for information. In this step, the consumer will weigh the perceived benefits against the perceived costs (See question two). Marketers have influence over this search for information by having websites, salespeople selling their service and commercials showcasing their weight loss program.
Next we evaluate alternatives. Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers both advertise heavily through various medias in attempt to place their weight loss program into a consumer’s retrieval set. However, these companies are truly hoping to get into the consumer’s evoked set, since that increases their likelihood of purchase. So, upon having two programs to choose from we will evaluate criteria that we deem important and decide the determinant attributes. We do this by listing features that are essential to us. Features like: price, support, privacy, effectiveness, flexibility and so on. The consumer then evaluates these attributes on a scale that calculates the perceived differences. Marketers influence the decisions a consumer makes when they evaluate criteria. They advertise for increased awareness of their brand and portray its best qualities to the consumer. This consciously and subconsciously affects the consumer’s decision making as well as how they go about quickly and efficiently selecting from among several alternatives. Once we have realized what is important to us in a weight loss service, we are ready to buy and move to the purchase and consumption step. Here the marketers will advertise things such as online services and the convenience of their locations to try and increase their conversion rate. This is the percentage of consumers who will actually purchase their weight loss plan after viewing it and marketers will use various tactics in order to convert purchase intentions into actual purchases.
The final step of the consumer decision process is postpurchase behavior. Marketers hope to have three positive postpurchase outcomes: customer satisfaction, no postpurchase cognitive dissonance, and customer loyalty. In order to ensure these positive outcomes marketers must report and advertise realistic weight loss expectations, offer reassurance that the correct choice was made, and solidify a loyal relationship with us, their customers.
Question 2:
Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig create value through their program’s unique features and benefits. Since these programs are competing to convince a consumer to pay for their particular weight loss program they each must offer features that the consumer would find appealing and then use as a reason to purchase their program.
Weight Watchers offers benefits such as diet flexibility, group support, online services, healthy lifestyle training and is available in 30 different countries. The unique feature of Weight Watchers that sets them apart from competition is their food point system. Members are given a certain amount of points they are allowed to consume in a day based on their weight, lifestyle and their desired outcome. Weight Watchers provide a portable book containing the points of almost every food imaginable and tell their clients to track their points; this allows their clients to have freedom with choosing their diet. In addition Weight Watchers also caters to men’s needs to lose weight by addressing male interests and concerns and focusing on working out. The cost for this program is $42.95 per month ($9.92 a week) plus normal food expenses.
Jenny Craig on the other hand caters to a time-poor society that likes privacy and simplicity. Jenny Craig offers benefits such as weekly meetings with a personal adviser, pre-made meals, privacy and healthy lifestyle training. Instead of a point system, the Jenny Craig program exclusively offers their pre-made meals. With this program, clients eat Jenny Craig meals for breakfast, lunch, dinner in addition to Jenny Craig snacks and desserts. This eliminates the need to stress and worry about planning a healthy meal and tracking points. Jenny Craig too offers a male weight loss program that is formatted to better deal with a male’s food cravings and issues with portion control. To advertise this they used Jason Alexander as their spokesperson. The cost for this program is around $424 per year ($8.14 a week) plus anywhere from $60 - $80 a week for food.
Question 3: In the third step of the consumer decision-making process the consumer must choose the determinant attributes that differentiate Weight Watchers from Jenny Craig and vice versa. These attributes are then applied in making the following Compensatory Purchasing Multi-Attribute Model for Buying a Weight Loss Program:

Question 4:
There are many factors that impact the consumers’ propensity to go on a diet, of these factors there are three categories that influence the consumer decision process: psychological factors, social factors, and situational factors. Psychological factors have a huge impact on consumers. Their motives, attitudes, perceptions, learning and lifestyles all can influence a consumer’s decision process. Determination, or the consumer’s attitude, can affect the consumer decision process through their resolution to commit to a weight loss plan, to help trim that waist line and get ourselves to an ideal weight and living overall healthier lifestyles. We desire to look like the best version of ourselves. Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig both influence us to fulfill our desire by advertising their success stories.
Situational Factors influencing the consumer could be occasion. Why is the consumer trying to lose weight? Special occasions such as weddings, school reunions or even summer vacations all put a higher pressure on the consumer to display to their friends, family or significant other with the best image of our self. If you are under a limited time constraint the consumer may be influence by the weight lose plan that can give them the fastest results putting aside all other attributes. The social factors influencing the customer may come from the consumer’s family, reference groups, or culture. American culture has also become increasing aware of our citizens dietary health and wellness needs. Your reference group has a huge influence on your decision process. Based upon recommendations from friends, family, co-works, etc. we may be swayed to choose one weight loss program over another. Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig both influence the consumer in a similar way with real user testimonies, especially with stories of success by a simple recommendation of a family member or friend.