Announcement: Consumer Behavior Portugal

Dear fellows,

It’s a pleasure to announce that this blog has a Portuguese “brother”!

Now, Portuguese speakers can find articles, book references, discussions and other interesting things in the area of Consumer Behavior.

If you’re a subscriber of this blog, and if you find useful to follow the Portuguese one, feel free to subscribe it too – it’s incredibly easy, just sign your e-mail!

Note that the content of the two blogs are not quite the same, so could be an advantage to keep subscriptions on both.

Now…

Help me in this new project and discover Consumer BehaviorPortugal:

http://www.consumerbehaviorportugal.com

Thanks for all the support,

Francisco Teixeira

http://innovationthroughconsumerinsights.wordpress.com/

http://www.consumerbehaviorportugal.com

Linkedin profile: http://pt.linkedin.com/in/franciscojteixeira

Facebook: Francisco Teixeira

Facebook Group: Consumer BehaviorPortugal

Brands, Marketing & Trends, Inc.

Follow me on this one.

 Plan Online, Do It Offline

Society is changing – and the evolution of the Internet in recent years is causing unprecedented changes in consumption patterns. Virtual world is getting bigger.

Until very recently, people rely on cafes to conspire and explore tomorrow’s trends or, in an often isolated act, used napkins from restaurants to record ideas born in a spark of creativity. In deciding a purchase, we had to go to a friend’s house to ask for advice, a few trips to the stores, read magazines or newspapers, have ears ready to catch the last word-of-mouth, be attentive to whatever was advertised. We had no central decision-making – we had several: scattered geographically and conceptually. With popularization of the Internet, the centres of decision merged into one: a huge online headquarters.
Today we plan online and do it offline. Internet provides all the information in a single point, and only ceases to be used when a physical demand overtakes it. Internet is the base camp where organization is built, and decisions are taken. Offline world exodus is just at his beginning…

Private Label Brands
The private label brands are now an inescapable reality in many markets, gaining share year after year. In the U.S., ¼ of the products sold in supermarkets are store brands (the most important segment of private labels). In Europe, the share of private labels is revealing (image and data: PLMA – Private Label Manufacturers Association). The private labels have long passed the “trial” stage; they’re now clearly in the phase of frequent purchase. And if you think that private label brands only became popular with the crisis, take note: for more than five years that its share is growing. This means a sustained growth before the crisis, the crisis has only accelerated the adoption of these brands. The private label brands are cheap and of lower quality? “Blind tests” conducted around the world show that private label brands of reference do not owe anything to national brands. And there are even premium private brands all over, so there’s no excuse.  

But they will dominate the market even more. Social inequality, the rationalization of livelihood, the new law dictated by the current crisis (to be more restrained in our spending, taking everything to the fullest, both in our personal and businesses lives), the shortage of food worldwide and the empire of distribution companies will dictate its rules against national brands, costlier and less flexible. The private label brands will always have a huge advantage: they do not require flight routes (read distribution): they are already at airports. They’ve also little need for advertising.
If we raise the private label brands issue to a new level, we can say that in the future there will be (i) “manufacturers” brands (keeping low profile, but surviving), (ii) “distribution” brands (medium profile and stable) and (iii) reference national brands (high profile to sustain some market share). Private Label Brands have their own modus operandi: they steal more easily market share from brands with uncharacteristic image or with a less clear positioning. Then, I remove from the equation the “normal” national brands and reinforced reference national brands. And manufacturer’s brands will depend more on the distribution companies (being chosen by them to manufacture their products, which does not mean they are the benchmarks in the market …) than their own marketing. If this view is correct, and if the empire of the big retail chains grows, there is a risk that the remaining brands find themselves at a crossroads: either struggle to be manufacturers for distribution chains or they’ll be at their own risk. Ultimately, marketing as we know it can undergo a dramatic negative impact: only will remain the distribution channels and reference national brands to advertise their products or devise marketing strategies. However – and forgive the audacity of this preview – the world economy will be shaken if some very known brands enter the arena. Let me explain: what prevents global brands like Google, Facebook or Twitter to “borrow” their image to anonymous producers and dominate the market? The virtual world will tend increasingly to establish foundations in the offline world. Do not be surprised if one day you find in a supermarket shelf some Google Flakes, Facebook Deodorant, or unexpectedly, you look at the sky and see a plane of Air Twitter.

Rights, Piracy & Patents
We must say it: the more restrictive measures we create to control the Internet, the greater the forces to set it free. France opened hostilities in Europe with its anti-piracy measures, in order to protect copyrights. The results are little or nothing visible. On the one hand, it is known that piracy is behind incalculable damage to businesses and fade the effort to create; on the other, the means of defence against illegal downloads will never be enough against the forces of stratagems and sharing options. Patents themselves will also be a mirage: the number of people tempted to use technology patented by others will be vastly greater than the capacity of detection of irregularities and restoration of justice.

Taking into account how things are going, the business community should begin to adapt to an environment in which nothing can be protected. Create something and earn royalties for years, depriving others of their use seems fair, but not very practical. The new dynamic demands you to create something and sell it to the maximum while others do not copy it. If piracy against your idea increases, it means you already have another idea ready to launch in the pipeline to resume the cycle. In my idea, this could be called “Marketing Acceleration”.

I, Monitored
Behavioral advertising. Genius (iTunes Store), monitoring a patient’s vital signs, which are sent via Internet to a virtual “hospital” (in order to anticipate serious health situations in the near future), augmented reality that responds to our preferences, Skis that monitor the movement of the body (to help perfecting the technique later). Apps that suggest recipes based on the contours of our face (do not believe? Find Kraft’s Assistant iFood on Google). 
Software that checks the emotional tone of content in e-mail (see for yourself at http://www.tonecheck.com/) or monitoring projects such as the United Nations is carrying out, that explores the growing world of real-time data monitoring (http://www.psfk.com/future-of-real-time).
These are some examples that should be explored to exhaustion in the following years. The consumer / person is monitored in real time, so that there is a bilateral interaction with other people or companies – the latter will have sufficient means to anticipate the needs of individuals. This is not about needs, but rather proactive actions to respond to needs that still don’t exist … but they will.

Up to date, or die
Advertising, newspapers, encyclopaedias, technical books … everything that is perishable within 24 hours (in many contexts, less than that), at the level of information or communication, is outside. Just art (music, drama, painting, film, photography …) will have the privilege of timelessness.

Connected: all the time, everywhere
After being announced the departure of Eric Schmidt as CEO of Google, it is wise to remember his words: in the future we’ll all be connected, all the time, everywhere. I believe the future will bring some changes in consumption patterns, based on connectivity. One may be a rule: “fewer procedures.” Some time ago, to listen to music in the car was something like this:

 Itunes at home> Recording a CD> listening to music from a CD in the car.

In a short time, the intermediate procedures will simply be unnecessary. It will be rather something like this: Itunes in the car.

 “Less obvious” examples?

Now, a movie is filmed > It’s recorded on tape > is projected in a theatre.
Future: In the theatre,  the projectionist turn on Internet and projects the movie via streaming

Now, you go to a museum > you pay at the ticket office to get an audio guide > you appreciate art and hear the explanations.
Future: you go to the museum, connect the headphones to your smartphone and, via GPS, unlock the audio guide system of the museum.
Now: Buy yourself a Lonely Planet Guide> Travel to a city> explore the city with the help of the Guide.
Future: just travel to a city> take up the Ipad from your suitcase and wi-fi city “download” automatically to the tablet all the information needed within a 500m radius around you (ps: and also notes with local low cost restaurants!)

The App Empire

Apple brought the “apps” (applications) to the agenda and made it a strategic advantage – now copied by many technology companies. What these Apps do is to enable the customisation of your digital world, while incorporating useful functions for your daily needs, whether personal or professional ones. It’s like building a house with blocks of different types in order to make it “yours.” This App idea, in my opinion, may shape the architecture of other areas, giving them new life and even a trendy air. The universities of the future could not rely on static programs and disciplines. Around the (few) core subjects, courses may have slots to fit blocks (read other disciplines) so that the student do something closer to what he wants to his future. These apps will surely be on e-learning mode.

Service companies have long been offering packages to their clients, in a way they can contract services like they prepare a “do it yourself pizza”. Companies that provide services and projects pre-defined and at large-scale, surely will have to disassemble them into smaller units, giving more choice to customers. An automobile manufacturer provides some special features (extras), but 90% of the car comes “standard” from factory – if we want to do some changes, we will need to go to the garage or appeal to third parties and pay double. In the future, I think the cars will be sold with 50% of standardization: the rest will be built by the client in “a la carte” basis. We will not sell cars, furniture, or electronic devices as we sell today. We will be selling “structures” that consumers will adorn with pre-designed options, provided in large quantity by manufacturers.

Fight for Space
In a few years we will be 7 billion people. Arable land will lack in fields and space in the cities. But there are other areas where space is an important (but less conscious) issue that cannot be ignored. The pool of available IP addresses is rapidly decreasing. Internet is running out of space! The processors need to be increasingly powerful in the smallest volume possible. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) plans to open the “white space” wireless Spectrum, left vacant with the transition from analogue to digital TV – and several companies are already racing weight to compete for this space. Nanotechnology miniaturization spreads. Space: a jewel that never goes out of style.  

Partnerships
The strategic collaboration between brands will be a gold mine for management. Joint ventures, open innovation, open source technologies or crowdsoursing are already reality for some companies, but their power will be higher when the number of adherents increases. Partnerships allow members to join synergies in order to produce higher quality and more innovative products or concepts. Perhaps the competition in the future will not be assessed at the corporate level, but at the level of strategic clusters that are being created. It will be a matter of alliances: company A is not really against company B, but the alliances that each one integrates are against one another and this will be relevant. Or you have an alliance to protect you, or you’re dead. And, unlike individual companies, the setbacks in these alliances will have an impact on the global economy and consumers, given the weight they present.  

The Game Decade
I leave to the end my biggest bet, which I believe can change the landscape of social and technological world in coming years. If I could say a few words to Maslow (the creator of the famous Pyramid of Needs), certainly I would say that human beings have a need to play and this driver should appear on his motivational theory. Human beings are competitive by nature, and winning is a condition which is in the genes – without it, he does not have guaranteed survival until the present day. Playing games has serious consequences, especially when you’re hooked. Some people loose all their money on games of luck, there are those who play on the computer 20 hours a day and cannot rest or even develop other skills. Unfortunately this often happens.
In late 2009, the videogame “Call of Duty 2 – Modern Warfare” pulverise the sales record on the first day of release, getting 310 million dollars in profit just in the U.S. and Great Britain. The novelty is that this represents the most profitable 24 hours of any entertainment action, even surpassing the all-powerful American industry of cinema. Stats were there to confirm the demolishing power of playing games.  
Apple and Google Android platform would be the same without games? For the millions of Facebook fans who like to play Farmville, how would it be if that game disappears from one day to another? And what about all the industry that lives the game business – Playstation, Nintendo, Xbox, game developers, software engineers…?
All this tells us how the game is, after all, extremely powerful – like a mass of energy always ready to be discharged. But this huge mass of energy is not being put to good use: even without knowing statistics, I bet that 95% of this overwhelming energy is being used … to play. “Playing” does not have to be an end in itself for so such power. When playing, we are nourishing our hedonic side, the competitive guy that lives in us, our dark side that leads us to try to defeat the other – but is not usually creating something constructive.
As the matter can be transformed into energy and vice versa, so the game can turn into many things, giving useful purpose to this feature. It can be transformed into education (eg educational games), changes in attitude (eg lose weight, being procedures embodied in a game) in economy simulators (in which teams compete to run a virtual company) in Alzheimer retardants (games that help the brain stay active) in mathematical applications, marketing strategies, to flash mobs, in controlling the biological clock in the gym, on television contests, in dosage drug to sick people and so many other dimensions we can imagine. Imbuing a work with game dynamics can mean the difference between “just” doing an activity or perform it with gusto. The motivational component of playing games rises our attention when performing tasks, enhances our ability to exploit the problems, gives an emotional impact to what we do and, interestingly, is self-rewarding.

Turning games into concepts that structure emotionally activities of our day-to-day will be, in a not too distant future, the goose that lays the golden eggs for consultants, webmasters, software developers, coaching, educational and community organizations, among many others. Let’s stop playing just games. Let’s play something unique. 

Francisco Teixeira

Consumer Behavior Specialist

See my Linkedin public profile: http://pt.linkedin.com/in/franciscojteixeira

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The opinions expressed in this blog, despite they are supported by practical and scientific knowledge, are just that: opinions.

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The Organic Future

Read it in PORTUGUESE here: http://mbuintelligence.com/blog/index.php/2011/01/the-organic-future/

(Thanks to my great friend Eduardo Neves for the inspiring illustrations)

Follow me on this one:

I come home after my late-afternoon jog. I open the door without touching it because I’m sweaty and I turn quickly to the kitchen to kill my thirst. While walking in my home, the lights light up, the shutters go down and the music turns on itself. It was a good idea to have this chip implanted subcutaneously some years ago. Contains all the information needed – for the different devices in the house – to be my slaves without having to do anything. There are my preferences and settings, which I can change at any time in my cloud computer from Asus.
I take a shower at the right programmed temperature and the shower itself monitors my movements for a better hygienic cleaning. I dress my high-tech clothes and with my voice I demand the “Shape” to become a couch – the “Shape” is a kind of special plasticine, using the most hot nanotechnologies to adopt any design or structure we want (it’s for sure the latest gadget from IKEA this summer). I decide to play car racing with the Holographic Dreaming from Sony and the “Shape” quickly read the game’s intentions and start to shake like you’re sitting in a real rally car.
It’s good to see advertising from Heineken in the game because I like the green bottle. It’s funny. My chip blocks any intrusion into the home of unsolicited advertisements – only authorizes the ones that fit the profile I configured. My smartphone makes me the same task, because only are shown to me the augmented reality items that I like. Occasionally I give him full rein to absorb what is happening outside. Sometimes, we must update our thoughts.
Today I worked at home – almost nobody goes to offices because telecommuting is king. The oil is $ 50 per barrel, as people no longer use the car for work, but for leisure. Much of the technology I have at home is Chinese or came from there – China smothered the great powers because it has the largest reserves of raw materials used in technology.
My IPAD 12 received a message saying I have mail. It is a questionnaire for a company to respond. By the way, I’ve developed the platform where this survey works. After years and years of surveys and questionnaires that were static and boring, I decided to create a Mutant Questionnaire: as the respondent answers questions, the following questions are changed in real time so that the person will only respond to what is in his line of reasoning and references, getting a more fluid and reliable questionnaire. What you get are questions and answers to questionnaires tailored to the individual: to be processed together with the responses of other millions of people around the world, with a software that aggregates the data and creates… static questions with different answers. It is a technology that is born of anarchy, but that returns to ordered, static questionnaires as they used to be.
I’m my own boss, because today is more easy to be independent than to be a company. Apps are all free and intuitive. Programmers compete to build solutions that non-programmers can use. Still, I miss the old photographers, journalists, translators  … It’s all gone since the moment the “Do it yourself” has joined the smart and freeware applications, without programming knowledge needed. Incidentally, I love to watch the news from my neighbourhood in the online channel of my neighbour. By the way, I think there’s a barbecue tomorrow somewhere.
Thank God, no need to download illegal music and movies: the copyright tradition is long gone, because large companies have concluded that the protection of what they did was as effective as stop the water with a sieve. The truth is that large companies dismantled into several smaller and flexible companies: their brands do not last long and live exploring small niches. Marketing concepts such as “positioning” no longer make sense: a brand positioning was difficult because there was always a brand (or several) where we wanted to put ours. The big profits have become smaller and Men-Company prevailed with the help of technology. The traditional trade has been replaced by Shopping Centres Spa & Boutique: people go to the mall to wander, have a Turkish bath, watch advertising, have experiences of sensory marketing and see the brands and its news. It’s like a saloon car of the 2000s: the news shows up, some have a coffee and hardly someone buys anything: to do so, they use their Ipad 12.
Nowadays, the amount of digital information is colossal. Analysts and computer systems spend much of their time to structure it, in order to sell software that chew the information needed to the various sectors of the economy. What the Internet creates and dilutes, is what analysts collect and aggregate in information packets customer oriented. Lego is the great sensation this year in this regard. If we imagine such a thing in 2011 …
The art of selling has also changed: most of the vendors became managers of CRM, and so are more suited to online shopping. The e-money is our motto: I charge some of it in my smartphone and do the shopping for wi-fi. At the supermarket, no shopping carts exist, just point your smartphone to a product as many times as you want (sort of Nintendo’s Wii), and is paid automatically. At the end, products I’ve chose are packaged and sent to my home.
But before I finish what I’d really like to talk was about my Samsung PlasmaWall. Through sensors, I do not need to touch it because it is “no-touch” tech. The display is Google’s Web 6.0 standard. Formerly it was possible to put a few open pages on your PC, but that does not captivate me much. For the past few years, Google has redesigned the Internet – now it looks like a Google map, i.e. I know where the sites are in a visual manner, not just through a search engine. The PlasmaWall shows me the internet as if you were to see a country by satellite at night: there are brighter areas (most active categories of sites or other attribute you want to explore) and less brighter areas (less active categories.) The institutions and companies in the Google rank no longer appear on top of a list, but before they earned a colour closer to red. It’s so cool because I can really “see” the internet and go to the hot spots of it!
The 4th of July is tomorrow, so the area of the PlasmaWall corresponding to the category “celebration” is quite active. I think I’ll do a bit of zooming in that area, until some SEO captures my attention as I “dive”, giving me arguments to go celebrate somewhere in particular. SEOs become hunters and I’ll enjoy to be the target today.  Halfway through the trip I will certainly see some announcements from Heineken. After that, I’m going to that huge red stain in the corner. It is the land of Facebook. I’m certainly going to zoom in until I land my neighbour’s house to ask – by Videobook – where will be the barbecue. After all, the world is small and my company headquarters is there. On Facebook.

Francisco Teixeira

Consumer Behavior Specialist

See my Linkedin public profile: http://pt.linkedin.com/in/franciscojteixeira

Subscribe this blog! Just e-mail address needed, nothing more!

The opinions expressed in this blog, despite they are supported by practical and scientific knowledge, are just that: opinions.

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2010 in review

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 4,600 times in 2010. That’s about 11 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 5 new posts, not bad for the first year! There were 66 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 17mb. That’s about 1 pictures per week.

The busiest day of the year was November 22nd with 426 views. The most popular post that day was Get a Life!.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were linkedin.com, springwise.com, facebook.com, mail.live.com, and twitter.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for innovationthroughconsumerinsights.wordpress.com, advt clips, consumer buying behavior, who are the viewers advertisements, and importance of advertising.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

Get a Life! November 2010
9 comments

2

About the author July 2010
2 comments

3

About this blog July 2010

4

Consumer Behavior: what is it and why it matters? December 2010
4 comments

5

Rethinking Marketing Research & The Google Wasted Opportunity November 2010
1 comment and 1 Like on WordPress.com,

Consumer Behavior: what is it and why it matters?

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Consumer Behavior is a research area that derives from psychology and social sciences, and subsequently was merged with economical domains (especially marketing). First of all, we must assume that we are always consuming something: could be time, oxygen, food, entertainment, pleasure… you name it.

Of course, it’s also a matter of perspective: if you are watching the sea, you can swear that you are not consuming anything; on the other hand, if you go on vacation to distant shores and contemplates the sea you are consuming something that you have paid – the vacations, the sea is included

But most of the time that we talk about consumption, we are referring to something economical, that we can buy, a product or a service perhaps. Or an experience. Or a sound. The central point here is “that we can buy”, because companies need consumers to buy their things. And there are lots of things we think we’ll never buy – the air that we breathe, for e.g. but maybe one day we have to do it: every resource gains importance when it is scarce!

Continuing with the “buying idea”, the truth is that we think so much about buying, choose or pay for things that “Buying Behavior” was the main reference some time ago. However, this designation is limited to express consumption patterns, because only takes into account the immediately previous actions before buying, while buying and immediately after buying. It’s like describing a train saying that he as one carriage – when the real train as more carriages and the Buying Behavior is one of the last ones. The buying moment it’s a kind of a result, an end, and don’t make justice to the entire relationship between consumers and the economical environment that surrounds them.

Nowadays, another myth exists: Consumer Behavior is intrinsically related to Market Research, and sometimes they are viewed as the same. If you try to Google some stuff about Consumer Behavior, you’ll find firms that deliver market research results. This is wrong, because market research is a tool to get Consumer Behavior insights; market research reports, for themselves, are of limited value. The real value comes when those reports are related to a Consumer Behavior overall perspective, with the management and the marketing departments watching closely.

 

What is Consumer Behavior?

 Well, like all the definitions, by definition there isn’t a suitable definition of Consumer Behavior for all the purposes and situations

But we can enlighten the subject. Next I’ll present five powerful definitions and give my personal feedback on each one. You may have the sensation that they are very similar, but each one as the positive gift of bringing something new to the discussion.

 Solomon: “Consumer Behavior include the processes involved when individuals or groups choose, buy, use or dispose of products, services, experiences or ideas to satisfy their needs and wants”

> Quick feelings: a good starting point to define Consumer Behavior, from one of its most important representatives. Two interesting points: (i) referring the “groups of consumers” is a hot issue today, as you can see for the success of Groupon; (ii) talking about “experiences” lead us to some (now) popular forms of marketing, like experience marketing or sensorial marketing.

Jacob Jacoby: “Consumer Behavior reflects the totality of consumer decisions with respect to acquisition, consumption, and disposition of goods, services, activities, experiences, people and ideas by human decision-making units (over time)”

> Quick Feelings: My attention goes to the “over time” sentence, because Consumer Behavior study does not stop after consuming a product or use a service. Insights learned in that phase can be helpful to draw the strategic lines of the next marketing campaign.

 Banwari Mittal: “Consumer Behavior is the mental and physical activities undertaken by consumers to acquire and consume products (in a broadly sense, as any physical or non physical product or service that offer some benefit to the consumer, including a place, a person or an idea offered for exchange) so as to fulfil their needs (discomforting physical and psychological conditions) and wants (a desire for a specific object, product or a service).”

> Quick Feelings: Banwari Mittal (that I have the pleasure to talk with when he came to Portugal 2 years ago) give us a very detailed definition, with special concern for the “mental” and “physical” distinctions activities. Consumers don’t go simply buy your product (physical activity): they need to be persuaded to do that, you must explain why your product worth something for the consumer and the information needs to make sense to him (mental activity).

Hawkins, Best and Coney: “Consumer Behavior is the study of individuals, groups or organizations and the processes they use to select, secure, use, and dispose of products, services, experiences or ideas to satisfy needs and the impacts that these processes have on the consumer and society”

> Quick Feelings: In their great book “Consumer Behavior: building marketing strategy”, the authors contribute with a future perspective to the Consumer Behavior definition, where we can fit social responsibility concerns, green marketing, overconsumption or social causes.

Kardes, Cronley and Cline: “Consumer Behavior entails all consumer activities associated with the purchase, use and disposal of goods and services, including the consumer’s emotional, mental and behavioural responses that precede, determine or follow these activities”

> Quick Feelings: Kardes, Cronley and Cline Consumer Behavior’s book (2010) it’s a good commitment to reach an acceptable definition. What’s new? Two things: separates behavior, cognition and emotion in the Consumer Behavior equation and gives us wide amplitude of time between before and after buying something. In other definitions, this length of time is short. Consumer behavior must be embedded in the management and marketing strategies much sooner than expected by all CEOs and chief departments of a company.

 Why Consumer Behavior matters?

 Let’s take a look in a marketing definition by an authority in the subject.

“Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners and society at large.”

         The American Marketing Association

Everyone would agree that the most crucial part of the Marketing definition is in the sentence “that have value for”. Companies can create, communicate, deliver, exchange offerings of any type… but that don’t mean cash, if they don’t add value to the customers. And to add value to them, they need to be at the center of the table when strategic drafts are born.

 So, Consumer Behavior is important in many ways – and I have some to show you (and try to figure them out in my naive draw!!):

-  It establishes guiding points to the marketing strategy to be followed, based on the consumers perspective and consumer behavior scientific knowledge

-  Gives Marketing and Management a chronological and holistic perspective of the customers over time, unveiling the dynamics of the Client-Company-Competitors relationship and anticipating trends.

-  Staying focused in the consumers allows discovering new needs, products, services or experiences valued by them. Innovation begins with the subtle clues that consumers leave behind.

-  Market Research can be optimized by the presence of a Consumer Behavior specialist: from the design to implementation and analysis to follow up.

-  Escorting the clients enables the creation of more effective loyalty programs and activities.

-  Consumer Behavior is of great importance when segmenting the market, because overall complexity and information overload are changing the current segmentation techniques used by marketeers.

-  Consumer behavior can be very effective (after learn the customers dynamics through sales departments eyes) to share valuable insights to the sales force on how to approach the clients.

-  New digital marketing tools (websites, blogs, SEO, Social Media presence, networks…) can be boosted by Consumer Behavior knowledge, especially in web design and networking activities schemas.

-  Most of RP and advertising/communication are built over psychology and sociology foundations (sorry the lack of modesty) – that makes Consumer Behavior and Advertising Psychology must-have partners in marketing decisions.

-  A Consumer Behavior specialist can be of great help in positioning issues: he understands the perceptual universe of brands and the best position they can occupy in consumers minds.

 Hope this article helps you to understand how Consumer Behavior can play a crucial role in a company and why it is important regarding Marketing strategies.

If you have any doubt, you can post your question or contact me directly on Linkedin.

Francisco Teixeira

Consumer Behavior Specialist

See my Linkedin public profile: http://pt.linkedin.com/in/franciscojteixeira

Subscribe this blog! Just e-mail address needed, nothing more!

The opinions expressed in this blog, despite they are supported by practical and scientific knowledge, are just that: opinions.

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Rethinking Marketing Research & The Google Wasted Opportunity

 

 Part One – The process

 Follow me on this one.

  Three years ago I have questioned myself about a situation:

How to make a survey or a Market Research with the following conditions:

 - In 24 hours or less

 - In the major geographic areas of the planet

- With a very good ratio cost/responses

- Managing a sample with millions of individuals

- With a report to the client in real time (almost live) basis?

I challenge you to think in one way to do this with traditional methods (face-to-face interviews, phone, post, 3,5G phones, focus groups, internet – eg: surveymonkey – drop mail, e-mail, with help of local MR agencies… you name it). Well, maybe it is possible that you can handle one or two conditions I mentioned. But I’m almost sure you will fail to meet all the five conditions.

We need to think bigger.

Internet is a good way to cover great geographic areas, with good ratio cost/responses and real time reports. But in the last paragraph I write “Internet” as a traditional method, and I consider it that way. Nowadays Internet surveys are based in limited and not so flexible conditions: people are encouraged to go to a site to answer – and that is not an easy task. At least, you would not conclude your research within 24 hours!

The solution to the problem needs a disruptive approach: the respondent goes freely to the place where the survey is, instead of being encouraged or pushed to go to the place where the survey is based.

Imagine everyone in the world as a cable TV with more than 200 channels, but one of them is seen by all kinds of people on a daily basis. If someone needs to spread a message, an advertising clip or just say hello… that channel is the one to rent some space. If you have access to that channel, you spread what you want everywhere and to almost everyone.

Following this metaphor, I propose a solution to the problem: Google. Despite some regional issues, Google is more than a site – is a search engine where everyone goes regularly, even if people are unaware of that. The Google arms can reach every hot domain in the Internet, so you don’t need to be pushed to it, you go there anyway – is part of your life. In every corner of the Internet universe there is a “Google something” (Google Docs, Google mail, Google Buzz, Translator, Picasa, Sketch Up, Google Finance, Google Maps… and so on). And it’s amazing because you can connect with Google by PC, Laptop, Cell phone, (Google) TV and other possibilities.

Everyday, around the world, millions of times, someone turn on is computer and the homepage is the Google search engine. Globally, maybe more than 50% of web navigation begins in a search engine.

Back on track: remember our challenge? Google is wasting a great opportunity to make money, renting is space to the Market Research industry.

Market Research using Google:

Google could rent space in his main page for global causes or non profit events. Imagine the Seven Wonders of the World contest. To have 100 million votes, they spent some weeks waiting that people go to their site. And they spent lots of money promoting the event or doing viral marketing online. I ask: imagine that you go to Google main page, on a shinning day, and you see 7 Wonders contest link to vote? In a few days or hours, you’ll have more than 100 million votes, it’s for sure. I think this approach would have better results with global causes or non profit events because commercial approach could create a negative feeling among Google users. Of course, this doesn’t mean that Google would do this for free!

Google could use the main page to do overall Market Research directly, for itself.

Imagine you’re doing a query and you see something like this: “We are doing some investigation about eating habits in the United States and your opinion would be greatly appreciated…” Well, this is against the “clean design” homepage of Google minds, but… Google is doing several different activities from Street View to Google Sketch up, so why not open this new window of opportunities? And now, the more important: Google could sell the obtained information to the Market Research industry or directly to global clients, and get lots of revenues from that. And this approach could be used for every search engine in dominant positions (e.g. Baidu for the Chinese market). The MR industry could use global information to boost MR reports to their clients, select local information to join to qualitative research… a world of business opportunities. It’s beyond Google Analytics and Technology centered approaches. MR gets really global, with new opportunities to think local. The way the survey appears (or which is the trigger that enables the survey appearance) would be something like what is explained in the text bellow.

Google could do Market Research within Google’s navigation

For me, this is the most important way to make use of all Google potentialities – and don’t imply to go against the “clean design” of Google main page. How would this work? Of course this methodology is not a flat one – some research could not be done with the following set up, and clients need the traditional ways to accomplish the task. A possible framework:

1) Company A needs to conduct a global study in the United Kingdom about personal care creams. For that, contact with her MR provider (Agency B) that has a deal with Google MR Department.

2) Agency B, as an expert that knows what his client want, designs the methodology, a survey and the conditions that thinks to be sufficient to conduct the research.  They pass those conditions to Google, which analyze the information received and proceeds to the budget issue. If everything is all right for the 3 players (Company A, Agency B and Google), research begins.

3) Person X, somewhere in the UK, is surfing in the internet and needs to find something on Google. Unexpectedly, it appears a kind of pop up where Google invites her to answer a survey for people in the UK area. At first, person X thinks: What the hell? But after this, she thinks: Well, this is from Google; it can do me no arm. So she proceeds, answer to 3 or 4 demographic questions and go to the main questions of the survey.

4) Imagine everything go over wheels, lots of people engage in the challenge and answer the questionnaire. The process continues until some kind of “break” is elicited. According to what has been contracted between Agency B and Google, a “break” could be something like this: the research stops when, in every area, the number of completed surveys reaches the sample distribution registered in the contract.

5) Completed questionnaires are sent to an isolated database and, with a kind of template, responses are compiled and an automatic report with results is made in real time. Today we talk too much about data privacy in the internet, and that really scares me. The danger is real. So, in this process, Google’s word is not enough: the search engine needs to give agencies and clients solid proofs that the data gathered is only accessed by the entity that granted the research. Must be a closed, independent platform.

6) Agency B and Company A -  with a kind of password – access in the Google search engine to the business area where MR is located. This is nothing more than a meta-database where companies, agencies and direct clients from all over the world have their own isolated databases: like Agency B and Company A in our example.

7) Accessing the database, Agency B and Company A will have a real time report and can draw the strategy to win the personal care creams market. In a fastest way than with traditional methods.

Maybe you’ve got stuck in the point 3) where I wrote:

“Person X, somewhere in the UK, is surfing in the internet and needs to find something on Google. “Unexpectedly, it appears a kind of pop up where Google invites her to answer a survey for people in the UK area.”

This is the main point of the process: the “cyber way” to screen participants to the study. Like the Adwords process, so this will work, but a little bit more elaborated. To help in my explanation, please see the following example of part of a small survey:

a) Let’s talk about beauty care creams. Do you use beauty care creams?

b) (If yes) Which of the following brands do you know, even if just the name sound familiar (Presentation of Brands and places to answer)

c) Which of these brands (if any) do you use on a daily bases?

d) Do you use creams to prevent the appearance of wrinkles?

We can stop here, it’s enough. Now I’m going to put myself in the Google side. I can sell to the client different services, from basic specifications to very elaborated engineering. A basic specification could be something like this:

- pick up the more important keywords presented in the survey or search terms associated (ex: “beauty”, “care”, “care+cream”, “care+cream+brands”, “day+cream”, “night+cream”, “skincare”, “wrinkle”, “wrinkle+prevention”, “ageing”, “skin+problems”, “Nivea”, “Boots”, “buy+skincare+products”… and so on). The idea would be to “Tagalyze” the survey, and that would be Google responsibility.

- When someone searches on Google using any of these terms, a pop up appears inviting the person to respond to a survey on personal care creams. If the person responds properly, that survey goes directly to the platform to be processed.

This is just an idea. If I work in the Googleplex, I would create lots and lots of configurations. Some examples (more accurate)? Try these ones:

- The pop-up with the survey just appears when someone search 3 consecutive times using terms defined for the survey.

- The pop-up with the survey just appears when someone stays in a link obtained by a query with at least one of the specified terms for 15min or more + type, at least, one brand of skincare products.

- The pop-up only appears if, on the 3 days before, in every day, the user typed one or more of our keywords 5 times + the length of the search within the 5 times are 30min or more.

- The pop-up with the survey only appears if just some pre-defined keywords are typed -  eg: “Nivea” and “wrinkles” – in a sequence of 5 searches. If someone searches this sequence: skincare + skin problems + wrinkles + wrinkles and brands + Nivea, this person is eligible to respond. If she types the following sequence: Donna Karan + wrinkles + ageing prevention + skin erosion + skincare catalogue, she wouldn’t be selected, because “Nivea” wasn’t typed.

All this configurations can give more accuracy to the selection process of respondents than the basic specifications early written. The underlying thought is that someone doing a research about personal care products on Google, has some interest in the issue in a sufficient level to respond to a survey, even if, during the survey completion, she needs to be eliminated for not passing the screener. Google function is to help the client in order to obtain the maximum responses to the survey in the shortest time possible. And this strategy could be a valuable approach. More involvement with the key terms specified, more interest, more probabilities of getting someone inside client’s criteria.

Let’s see what could be a “very much elaborated approach”:

- using IGoogle personal configurations and apps to find the interest level of a person about personal care products, without even type a single query. A kind of personal profile of Google users. If someone has lots of apps about beauty, skincare brands, diets, fashion or so, this person is close to our target

- using the search history of someone to catch a “personal care products” profile

- using the Google alerts

- using the queries on Youtube

- using the search history via Google News, Google Books, integration on Google groups, Google Picasa…

- using data from a Blogger account

- using marks and favorites from Google toolbar or Firefox toolbar

As you see, there are plenty of options to touch a target from any market research study. So, Google has the opportunity to create services driven by different dimensions: market research by geographic location, by sample dimension, by number of days the survey is “on”, by panel versus random sample, by target, by omnibus studies, by using cell phone answers (via Android OS) or not…

Part Two – A new advertising solution

 

Google can have lots of revenues from this approach. Some time ago, I presented this idea to a top person that work in the Google Company, with local leadership functions. His answer was something like this:

“This is a good idea, I understand its value… but it won’t succeed: Google only cares about advertising revenues. You can try, but you won’t get a positive answer…”

Seeing the potential revenues of this process, Google philosophy sustained for this answer just took my breath away. At that time, Facebook was a teenager, Linkedin had less than half the members and Twitter was still a baby. Throw away a revenue source seems to me as a bad strategy. I ask Google: with all the war we have now between search engines and social media players, can Google afford not to explore the Marketing Research industry? Can Google only rely on Google Analytics or Adwords/Adsense strategies? There isn’t a kind of paranoia related to “paid search”, “Ranking results”, “PPC”, “Search Engine Optimizations” and other stuff? Why revenues need to come from this type of advertising?

The state of the art tell us that the “pay per click”, the biddings, the Adwords and so are the main sources of revenues to Google (in the order of billions of dollars).

But Behavioral Advertising is possible within Marketing Research… and more powerful. If you type on Google the word Flower, is very likely that you will have some sponsored links on the right side of the results, something like florists, houseplants providers or fertilizers, for e.g. I believe it works (or no one will bet on this kind of schema), but the bound between something we search (Flower) and something that is advertised to us (Florists, fertilizers, houseplants providers) is a week one. It has not the critical weight to provide massive success for clicking the advertisement.

With the process explained in the Part One of this post, it’s possible to create advertising schemas engaged in a different way (and consequently, more revenues possibilities).

Remember the section Google could use the main page to do overall Market Research directly, for itself? Well, the next framework is applied to that case. 

Pay attention to the next two questions, part of an imaginary survey:

a) Respecting to the last 30 days, which of the following brands do you use or did use for skin care?

X   Avene

X   Vichy

      Boots

X   Clarins

      Helena Rubinstein

      Lancome

X   Roc

X   Nivea

      …

b) In your opinion, which of the brands you use or did use in the last 30 days showed better overall results? (Please, choose 3 brands from the one’s you use/did use and organize them hierarchically)

1^st Avene

2^nd Vichy

3^rd Clarins

These answers give us stronger bonds than the typical AdWords mechanism. In the AdWords system, a query generates an ad related to the keywords typed. It’s a week association, and time dependent (there is no “history” – coming from the computer where the keyword was typed – that could be used to generate another ad, with a more intense level of relationship between the Google surfer and the advertising showed. It’s a here & now association, just that).

With the use of surveys presented in Part One of this post, answers like the above could represent gold. If someone searches for skincare products, the probability to respond to a survey about those products increases. If someone expresses preference or satisfaction with some brands during that survey, this means Google can activate specific ads to that computer… about those skincare brands. The difference is that Google can create new marketing metrics to present ads and get more from the clients, because (i) ads can be placed at different times and not only when trigger keywords are typed on that computer, (ii) the relationship between the ad and the preferred brands unveiled in the survey is strong and leads to better rates of ad clicking.

But there’s more: Google Analytics experience could be used to improve results analysis and link different variables that can increase drastically behavioral advertising. Personal ads can be displayed, with coherence and logic. All this, using survey results.

This kind of framework is not new – I’m sure – to search engines or social media. But it as lots of potential, that is not being used right now. Search engines cover bigger targets and situations, so the framework can result perfectly. Instead, Facebook and social media have lots of users, but lacks diversity to really global Marketing Research. Social networks could be more valuable when qualitative information or profile information is required to do good MR.

Every search engine or social networks as lots of things to develop. Hope my contribution helps Marketing Research industry and Internet giants to boost new limits of cooperation.

See my Linkedin public profile : http://pt.linkedin.com/in/franciscojteixeira

The opinions expressed in this blog, despite they are supported by practical and scientific knowledge, are just that: opinions.

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Shopping and influence of other consumers

Some weeks ago, I’ve done a kind of “personal investigation” in Consumer Behavior, about an issue I think scholars don’t take too seriously into account. It’s about that situation where someone, (you, the reader of this article, for e.g.), is choosing a product from the shelf in any place (supermarket, street market, pet store, whatever) and another consumer is near you (less than a meter) doing the same thing – let’s call him/her “X”.

I wondered if there is any kind of influence in the buying behavior when “X” is near to us in the shopping scene: so I’ve made a survey and sent it to my personal e-mail list and (in this case) Linkedin connections here in Portugal. The idea was to invite them to answer and spread the survey link (a kind of snowball sampling approach).

And I did it very well – 281 responses (these are the good news). But, as I expected too, the sample represents a non random pattern of my connections and connections of my connections. It’s a very high sample concerning the educational level (these are the bad ones). Consequently, we may think that socially and economically this is an high sample too, but this is just guessing (if this connection is true, the picture gets even worst)

As I said, this is a personal curiosity, nothing commercial, so we must live with this constraint. So many thanks to those who helped me filling the questionnaire. And, if you find useful, you can do whatever you want with the data, I’m sharing the results with you. This is open innovation.

So, the sample is “as is”:

N=281

Country: Portugal

Man: 121 (43% of the sample); Woman: 160 (57% of the sample)

Ages: 18-24 (6%); 25-30 (22%); 31-35 (30%); 36-40 (22%); 41-45 (12%); 46-50 (5%); 51+ (3%)

Education: Less than 9 years of scholarship (0%); Completed 9 years (2%); Completed 12 years (7%); In university right now (8%); Graduation (40%); Graduation + specialization (27%); Graduation + Master (14%); PhD (2%)

So, let´s begin with results for question number 1 of 13:

“X” handles/choose products near you.
How do you feel about this situation?
(choose a value between 1 and 5. Scale limits>>> 1=I don’t like it, I prefer to have the space only for me and 5=I don’t mind to share the shopping space)

Quick feeling: For this sample, is not very easy to share the shelf space. 30% is more likely to be alone choosing the products than being “accompanied” by other consumers. Of course 42% falls in the positive side of the scale, but 60% don’t like to share the space or are divided, and maybe this is more interesting from a statistical point of view. If we imagine a little store, with small shelf space, maybe the presence of others could be of dramatic importance in the buying behavior. Consumers like to have all the conditions to choose and buy, and space is not something they are ready to give up easily.

Question 2 of 13

“X” handles/chooses products near to you.
How do you feel about this situation?
(choose a value between 1 and 5. Scale limits>>> 1= Do not disturb the decisions about what I intend to choose and 5= Disturbs a lot  the decisions about what I intend to choose)

Quick feeling: For this sample, it seems that the presence of other consumers don’t has a significant impact in the choosing process. Again, education and social/financial status is relevant to this: they have all the tools to be informed citizens and that gives a sense of control in their buying decisions. I wondered what happens if education, status and financial independence were low: maybe the (lower) control feeling and misinformation would break the defenses and consumers were more likely to be influenced. Note that the question only focus on the disturbance aspect, not in the value (positive or negative, change or not my decisions…). That type of evaluation is highly dependent on the context, the knowledge of the consumer “X” and the subject, it’s appearance, and so on. Choosing the specific aspect of “disturbance” does not give us the Saint Graal… but gives us a more secure point of view to take some outputs.

Question 3 of 13

“X” handles/chooses products near to you. Usually, how much do you pay attention to what “X” says, do or observes?

Quick feeling: For this sample, some of the principles of prior question can be used. A consumer with good education and status can give himself the pleasure of a decision on its own, without the need of observing others consumers in the same situation. As we can see, the left part of the graphic as more weight. But instead of having 62% of the answers in the left positions (1 and 2), now we have just 49% and a huge proportion on the central point (position 3). It’s not a subtle difference. It’s like saying: “Your behavior does not disturb my decisions, but… I pay some attention to what you do.” It’s a question of comparing choices? It’s to confirm our decisions? It’s to find potential alternatives? It’s just pure curiosity? How it would be like if we had another sample structure?

 

  

 Question 4 of 13

“X” handles / chooses products near to you. You have not yet decided on any product.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            To what extent do you agree or disagree with the following phrases?
(Choose a value from 1 to 5, where 1 = Strongly Disagree and 5 = Strongly Agree)       

                                                                                                        

Quick feeling: Nothing new on this one. Our sample declines clearly the influence of other consumer’s actions in his/her choices. And the graphic provides strong evidence that our respondents usually follow their own criteria when choosing products in the buying scene, no matter what “X” says or do. At limit, they can take some ideas from “X” behavior to decide, but still decide following their personal scripts and rituals.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            Question 5 of 13

“X” handles / chooses products near to you and you take the opportunity to ask for an opinion.
Which of the following statements corresponds to what happens to you more often?

I ask “X” an opinion about the products I intend to choose   …………………………….. 39%

I ask “X” an opinion about the products he/she intends to choose ……………………… 30%

I ask “X” an opinion on the products that are in the shelf and on which none of us has expressed its choice  …………………………31%

 Quick feeling: Well, I assume this was not an easy question. It’s worth noticing that the majority of the questions in this survey were forced (respondents only could choose the answer options I gave them). The idea was to force respondents not to take the easy way out, and effectively think about the question. During fieldwork time, some respondents write to me saying that they cannot think about things this way. I agree – there are questions that simply don’t work – I’m afraid this is one of those. And the results don’t help me much.

But, at least, I need to tell you the underlying thought. When we usually face this situation and ask (more often) an opinion about what “X” intends to buy, maybe this means we are more curious and open to other alternatives as consumers. Instead, if we often ask others about what we intend to buy, maybe this means we want to confirm our decisions or expectations. One way or another, remains the intention.

Question 6 of 13

Imagine you’re shopping in a store and there is no staff in your area.
You need an opinion to choose a product that any consumer could give.

How much embarrassing is for you to ask for an opinion to another consumer?

Quick feeling: This one is overwhelming. In this sample, almost 50% of respondents (45.6%, to be more accurate) chooses option A. I would like to see this kind of question in countries like India, Morocco or in most of  African countries, where culture encourages proximity and bargain is a national entertainment. Of course this answer enclosures other aspects: for e.g. people can anticipate that other consumer wouldn’t like to be confused as a staff member. Or the customer itself could see the majority of choosing situations as a personal issue, were other customers could be of little help or even not welcome. Or the customer simply think that his question is trivial, and demonstrate some inferiority for not knowing the answer. Or, in other angle, the sample is too polite or introspective in situations like this one. But the truth is that 70% says clearly “I would not ask for an opinion”, even if it’s an opinion that any consumer could give. It’s a cultural matter? Any help on this one?

Question 7 of 13

“X” handles/chooses products near to you.

In the times where exists interaction with “X”, which of the following situations happens more often?

I ask “X” for an opinion/help so I can decide.      > 11.7% 

“X” asks me an opinion/help so he can decide.    > 88.3% 

Quick feeling: Another undoubtful answer. This respondents are resistant to ask for help or for an opinion; normally, others ask them. Are these results (plus other prior answers) a mirror of well informed Portuguese citizens, from higher social classes or this is just an “image” they want to give (and reality is different)? It’s not uncommon situations where surveys gives us “wishful” behaviors, instead of real behaviors. That’s why is so difficult to evaluate attitudes toward situations or brands: explicit evaluations (“I would not buy white brands!!”) sometimes are incongruent with implicit behaviors (unaware, they take a chocolate bar from a white brand into the cart). In this case, I would risk that a proportion of those 88,3% is filled with people that want to give an idea of well informed, independent, that as no need for help, with a good intern locus of control. A provoking question: what if two people from the sample encounters and both need an opinion? 

 

Question 8 of 13

“X” handles/chooses products near to you.

In the times where exists interaction with “X”, which of the following situations happens more often?

I give “X” an opinion/help so he can decide.      > 84.7% 

“X” gives me an opinion/help so I can decide.    > 15.3% 

Quick feeling: This question is a kind of reverse of question 7. Here we can see clearly that our sample is ready to give opinions, instead of receiving them. There is consistence within these two questions: More instructed people usually is asked for opinions and usually give answers to help others to decide.

Question 9 of 13

“X” handles/chooses products near to you.

When there is an interaction with “X”, which of the following sentences applies best to you?                                                                                     

1)    I ask more easily an opinion/help to “X”, if “X” is a person of the opposite sex   >   37%

2)    I ask more easily an opinion / help to “X”, if “X” is a person who has the same sex I have     >   63%

Quick feeling: Well, I think this is an expected pattern. The overall sample asks more easily an opinion if “X” is from the same sex. Maybe a question of comfort and confidence. Or maybe, you know… “Man stuff asks for men opinion; or women stuff asks for women opinion. In the meanwhile, some persons have more comfort asking to the opposite sex, and this does not happens only in shopping – in other contexts (e.g. emotional) people from opposite sexes communicate better, and feel great about it. But let’s rewind to the buying scene, where I find something interesting. When we see question 9 in the light of gender, things are not the same. 63% of men, choose option 1; in contrast, 83% of women choose option 2. Eh, eh, I think this question is not a dating issue (laughs). If we think about the empire of massive shopping – supermarkets – we find that women are queens. Now things are changing, but I think that in this kind of stores women still play cards. It’s (unfortunately) very common to see couples doing shopping like this: the woman chooses and asks; the man make some company, pay the bill and drive the car. This is what happens in Portugal, despite a good evolution in the paper of men in shopping, housekeeping, taking care of children… Who knows, 5 years from now maybe men will be as comfortable as women in supermarkets. And this is my interpretation: men asks more easily to woman, not because it’s “easy” to ask, but because they need some expertise they don’t have right now. Just a theory, nothing more.

Question 10 of 13

“X” handles/chooses products near to you.

When there is an interaction with “X”, which of the following sentences applies best to you?        

1)    I ask more easily an opinion/help to “X”, if “X” is younger than me   >   2%

2)    I ask more easily an opinion / help to “X”, if “X” is about the same age than me     >   66%

3)    I ask more easily an opinion/help to “X”, if “X” is older than me         >   32%

Quick feeling: I take two clear conclusions with this results: (i) people of the same age, normally, have more interests, opinions and knowledge in common. It’s statistically more common to be in the same life stage when people have about the same age, so communication and interactions is not affected for any generation gap, language differences or even different products to choose – it may happen, but is less common. (ii) when the issue is buying and choosing, people rely less in younger fellows. It’s the “you’re still very young stuff”. Could be a matter of experience, knowledge, communication… there are lots of hypothesis to justify. However, if we are talking about computer games, IT or television channels, we may be surprised.

Question 11 of 13

Imagine “X” handles/chooses products near to you.

Please, indicate 3 types of products for which is more likely that you pay attention to the actions of “X”

 

Quick feeling: (click the picture) this question as some juice in the results, although we cannot draw causal conclusions. If we think about  “paying attention to the actions of X” as an indicator that we need some help, advise or support to decide regarding some products, then food & beverage counts for 24% to the whole picture. Food & Beverage, Personal products (e.g. Perfumery), Technology, Clothing and Cleaning products for the house, represents 76% of all products type where is most probable that we take an eye on our fellow neighbor in the shopping scene.  This still show us that there are some products where we need to have some “knowledge” about the quality of a product. If we don’t have, we must rely on the observation of others in order to buy a good product instead of a bad one. Specially in the Food & Beverage sector, the study demonstrates that is on eatable fresh products that we can see this more clearly: fruit, fish, meat and vegetables are the products where consumers need to pay more attention to the surrounding consumers, looking for clues that help in the decision process. And this happens with men and women! Other important items are wine, yogurts, cakes/chocolate/cookies and bread. Gender differences? Not quite. Food & Beverages, house cleaning products and books are quite the same in both sexes. Differences appear with Perfumery/personal Care/Beauty, Clothing and domestic appliances – products in which is most common women look at the action of “X” than men. Buying Car products, Computer/computer accessories and Technology/gadgets are situations where men look more to the actions of “X” than women.

Question 12 of 13

Concerning the last 7 days, approximately how much times happened to you to be choosing something, and being another consumer near to you choosing products (less than one meter)?

 

Quick feeling: answers higher than 15 times were merely residual. 76% says that in the last week, the “X situation” happened 5 times or less. I’m quite skeptical about this proportion – I think the situation happens more often than we are aware. Maybe we forget, don´t pay attention or other explanation. But what we have is this.

Question 13 of 13

Imagine that “X” handles/chooses products near to you.
Which of the following situations happens more frequently when you ask “X” an opinion?

Quick feeling: When a customer asks something to another costumer, answers will probably be different than if he/she asked the same question to a staff member. For e.g. option E, when asked to the staff, would probably have an answer like this: “It’s not because I work here, but clients say very good things about it and in my opinion they are better than those you see in other places. Honestly…” Within customers, and if the communication context is adequate, answers will be less convenient – or terribly glamorous if we find someone that loves the product we are asking about. So, my interest was to know how consumers ask opinions to other consumers, not to the staff. And more than a third of this sample asks opinions directly about the product itself. The underlying thought was to understand if customers asks in terms of products, categories, characteristics, brand or place when they need an opinion. And results show that the product is the basic metric when they look for information. They don’t want the macro level (the “place”, the “category”) or the micro level (the “brand” of the product or “characteristics” of the product) in the same intensity than they want to know about the product. Of course we have here a bias, because the example “Do you know if this yogurt is good”” has great similarities with “Is this yogurt too sweet?”: in the final, we are asking about characteristics. Too late. L

It’s done! If you survive to the reading of this article and want to contribute with your thoughts, please comment!

See my Linkedin public profile : http://pt.linkedin.com/in/franciscojteixeira

The opinions expressed in this blog, despite they are supported by practical and scientific knowledge, are just that: opinions.

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Events or clips presented in advertising campaigns: How many, how fast and how much connected

Many campaigns – especially institutional – are quite long, containing many events or clips. With lots of illustrative images of important moments of conviviality between the brand and its customers, sometimes at a rapid pace to “tell all”, these campaigns seek to show consumers how much the brand is close to them, as a long time friend. It is communication in all its splendour.

However, the way events are presented is of crucial importance to the effectiveness of the final set. I will emphasize three aspects:

Number of events presented
The human being has a limited ability to integrate events or sequential information. In 1956, Miller termed “chunk” the information unit: pure or composite. Based on several studies, Miller showed that, typically, the human can recall, in order, up to 7 items of information previously absorbed in its short-term memory (although a good deal of variation exists between 5 and 9 items). For instance, a phone number like 964312367 is still within the range of Miller’s theory – we have nine units of information. However, if we consider the 96 as the identifying number of the operator X, and dividing the remaining number as 431 23 67, then we have reduced the total number to four units (chunks) of information, which allows a more efficient memorization (X + 431 + 23 + 67).

Thus, advertising campaigns with many sections or clips presented are less likely to be remembered than more concentrated and direct campaigns (eg, three units of information). Another aspect to consider is the fact that the more elements appear in an ad, the more learning of each one is hampered by the mere existence of others. In a sequence of four clips in an ad, the first clip will generate a greater atencional focus, which will reduce the ability to memorize others. The second and third will probably suffer from what we call “interference”: the memorization of the 2nd clip will decrease the storage capacity of clip number 3; in turn, the 3rd will remove some information retained in the second. The same applies to the number of elements within each clip – the more they are, more interference. This entire mechanism deteriorates further if the speed at which they are presented is pronounced.

The speed with which they are presented
The sequence of events presented in a campaign (eg TV or radio) should not be too quick – and that mistake is made frequently. When we receive some information, we must give it time to settle down in the short-term memory. It should be borne in mind that the information is saved – roughly – in three stages: first in the sensory memory (where information is stored for a few milliseconds), then in the short-term memory (one important store in which are recorded the information that allow us basic actions of our daily lives) and, finally, the long-term memory (information that reach this stage can stay in our memory the rest of our life). Now, what does the information solidify along these three steps is the ability to pay attention to it and the possibility of being rehearsed. Rapid sequences of sounds or images do not allow proper attention to the messages stored in the short-term memory and, consequently, gain meaning to allow their retention.

How they are interconnected
This is a key issue in which advertisers can show all his ability. It is normal to see campaigns that display various parts or events and then, at the end, brand name appears triumphal. Even the more vivid and emotional campaigns could lead to a final result advertisers fear: “I saw the other day an ad on TV… it was fantastic… showing various situations with babies playing … it was about … they were so cute … but I do not remember the brand!” Often, there is a logical reason: our atencional capacity is not unlimited: we cannot cover a wide range of events, especially when items are very different.. What can we do? The best would be to reduce the number of elements that are presented to us, as we saw above. But … what if we cannot do that? What if we have to present several different types of information and in a large quantity? In this case, we must present events like they are only one, and introduce some “glue” in the ad. In other words, create a chunk. When we interconnect items in a proper way, it results better.
Notice figure 1:
It represents a TV ad. As the ad unfolds, the viewer must pay attention to six different events – more or less interconnected. Although the brand is the last event showed (which is good, because latest information stay in memory more time – is the effect of “recency”), it is still one more element to view by the public. In order to circumvent this problem, the (good) agencies do rely upon one or more agglutinators, to interconnect as much as possible the clips (see Figure 2).
There are stronger agglutinators and weaker ones. My personal suggestion is towards considering agglutinators focused in the brand as the most important – all other (focus on a benefit, a belief, competitive price, humorous tone, create a story, focus on the product category, what ever … ) will be less important. This is a logical option: even if the campaign is less effective than we expected, at least the brand should stand out! If we focus on (for e.g.) a benefit, we run the risk of our brand not to be memorized and – paradoxically – to be assigned to the market leader and not to our brand as we wanted.  Of course, this always depends on the way things are done.

I conclude with some agglutinators focused on the brand in order to get campaigns connected. More agglutinators combined, the stronger the connection. An important warning: even within the agglutinators centred on the brand, the visual ones are more effective than the auditory ones (except radio campaigns or based on the hearing’s sense).
Agglutinators centered on the brand:
 - Colour – brands with a distinctive colour can create campaigns based on this characteristic, presenting the colour in different clips (e.g. the red colour from Vodafone is a great agglutinator)

- Form, illustrations, type of stroke … from the logo (e.g., logo appears as a watermark or some basic element of a clip or image)

- Music or sounds associated with the brand (e.g. the Nokia’s greeting sound was for years a powerful unifying tool)

- Using mascots (e.g. portuguese pioneer web portal “Sapo”, is a brilliant example of how a mascot can act like “glue” between various clips and a brand – the frog garantees an harmonic flow of all ads over time, without forget the brand image associated)

- phonetic puns similar to the brand over the clips

- Imbue the clips with stories, images or situations that are immediately and clearly associated with the brand image (if not, may later be associated with competition) or the signature of the brand

- Generate mystery (which may well be looking for something positive or the opposite: to find a solution to something negative), being the signature or the brand a fundamental and distinctive part of the solution

As you can see, the agglutinators centered in the brand that I present are just a few – but they are strong. The agglutinators that are not focused on the brand everyone knows: it may be a story, draw attention to benefits, focus on a target group, stress values, get emotional, “sensory experiences “, to bet on green marketing, to draw attention for the unusual … among many other innovative solutions. But be careful because you may be creating free advertisements for your competition.

See my public profile on Linkedin: http://pt.linkedin.com/in/franciscojteixeira

The opinions expressed in this blog, despite they are supported by practical and scientific knowledge, are just that: opinions.

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The forgotten brother of Marketing

It is true that Kotler, with its “Principles of Marketing”, did two things: affirmed the marketing as a structured discipline, able to allow her safe replication across a mass of professionals eager to have order where there was some chaos, but at the same time, its touch was so strong that the word “marketing” blinded all around, creating a paradigm that is rarely put into the test and serves as a bible for students and professionals.
But everyone knows that the “bibles” destroy the creativity and innovation. It’s hard to innovate with a work that has the power to create ways in which we cannot leave the trail. And, in passing, Marketing forgot some important players that I would not call their children, but brothers. This applies to Consumer Psychology, major science and perhaps most scientifically substantiated than the marketing itself.
It is there, bricked alone in some chapter of some book of Marketing. But I wonder: Marketing, the strategic tool for the promotion and development of brands, is the sun around which the Consumer Behavior moves like a satellite? Or will it be the Consumer Behavior the great player, the one that uses marketing as a tool to overcome – and exceed – customer expectations?
Consumers now occupy the center of the economy. The brands will lose their power to them – they choose, they match, they do it themselves, they plan, they customize, they give meaning to the product. Fewer and fewer consumers purchase “brands”: now they buy “things”  and categories of things and imprint their personal signals and dreams on them. There are brands that strive to manufacture products in order to be used to do X, but consumers give them the use of Y. The consumer is aware of what brands want, and sometimes they don’t want that, they are more demanding nowadays.
Regarding this context, marketing got stuck in time. Please compare the major marketing textbooks over the past 25-30 years, and you will always find the same chapters, the same marketing-mix, always the same linearity. Marketing is not dealing right with change, especially in the last five years, led by a democratic giant called Internet.  
Where is the solution? Rethink the marketing, empowering his forgotten brother - Consumer Behavior Psychology. If the consumer guides the economy, Consumer Behavior is the discipline closer to him, closer to their eccentricities, their fantasies, their stubbornness in doing what they want and when they want. Good Marketing, as a discipline applied by teachers, consultants, employees … do things right from the beginning: marketeers do market research to know what the customer wants. But after that step, Marketing is governed by its principles and checklists. Not bad, but could join to the recipe the know-how of Consumer Behavior and unite the best of both worlds.  

A new paradigm of market has emerged . What do you think about this?

Francisco Teixeira
Consumer Behavior Specialist

See my public profile on Linkedin: http://pt.linkedin.com/in/franciscojteixeira