Learning from Bus Buddhists

Learning from Bus Buddhists

In psychological terms, context is almost everything. Much as we like to think that we know how we will act and react in a given situation, without the richness of the real context we tend to ignore factors that make a huge difference to our behaviour. We ignore them because they involve reactions of our unconscious mind. At the same time, if we are wondering how other people will react it can be very hard to see the world through their eyes; our own unconscious biases and prejudices creep in. And, because they too reside in our unconscious mind, we often don’t even realise that we’re distorting things because of our own lens. Recently I got involved in some research for Greener Journeys who wanted to promote ‘Catch the Bus Week’. As part of this I worked with Mindlab to devise a survey to look at bus users behaviour; and […]

Why the Opinion Polls were Wrong (and an inquiry won’t help)

Why the Opinion Polls were Wrong (and an inquiry won’t help)

It’s official, the opinion polls conducted in the run up to the UK general election were wrong – even the polling companies have said so. The good news is that there is going to be an inquiry into the pollsters’ failures. The bad news is that this is going to be carried out by the British Polling Council – an organisation that clearly has a vested interest in perpetuating the use of opinion polls. This is a much like asking the Astrological Association of Great Britain (and yes, there is one) to conduct an inquiry into why your horoscope has no useful insight into your future. If your starting assumption is that there is a relationship between astronomical phenomena and events in the human world you aren’t going to be looking for answers with complete objectivity. Similarly, if you believe that people can reliably predict their future actions and will […]

The Customer Loyalty Myth

The Customer Loyalty Myth

The suggestion that customers can be loyal is odd. Think about it for a moment; who are you really loyal towards?  Your family, your friends, your colleagues?  Loyalty exists for a reason; it is the glue that makes us do the right thing so that we can have the benefit of being part of a group.  The reason that we have the capacity to be loyal is because evolution has determined our chances of survival are better if we team up with other people. There is no loyalty towards brands.  As consumers we know that our money gives us the power to choose.  If we switch brands we don’t feel the psychological counterbalance of shame and guilt about the company we’re leaving behind.  In fact, we feel precisely nothing about our ‘ex’ brand. Describing someone’s repeated use of a brand as ‘loyal’ is a projection of emotions that simply aren’t […]

Why Discount Supermarkets aren’t All They Seem

Why Discount Supermarkets aren’t All They Seem

The news today has been dominated by the announcement from the UK’s biggest supermarket chain that their profit fell by 6% to £3.3bn. Having just been invited to participate in a discussion on national radio about this news, what intrigued me was the psychology of the debate. The results create a negative prime and most of the callers into the radio show started their ‘reaction’ with a stinging indictment of Tesco’s customer service, products or prices.  In fact, had a Martian been listening to the vehement critique of the retailer he would surely have assumed that the company was down to it’s last store and that tumbleweed was blowing down the aisles where shoppers used to be! In reality, Tesco still meets the supermarket shopping needs of more customers than any other company. Undoubtedly they have struggled under the competitive pressure from both sides of the economic spectrum: Waitrose has […]