Judging from the replies yesterday, some of you are certainly familiar with the concept that customer perceptions may not tally with reality. Indeed, it’s fair to say that there are even a few cliches on the subject. And I’m the sort of person who dislikes cliches and enjoys challenging them whenever possible; they can be an excuse for not bothering to think about something. For example, take the old chestnut of which came first the chicken or the egg? It seems pretty clear to me that it was the egg, so using this as a phrase to convey the point that the sequencing of events is unclear to you, simply suggests to me that you haven’t thought about it enough! [Where something evolved to a point where whomever decides such things was willing to say, “Yes, what you have there is what I would call a chicken” it must have […]
Consumers: Reality is Over-rated
When it comes to understanding consumer behaviour there’s a tricky conundrum; a consumer’s perception of a brand is far more important than the reality of their experience. But… You can’t trust people to account for their perceptions accurately. So, how can you get any further forward if understanding consumers is important to you? I’ll leave you to think about it and tell you more next time! Philip Graves
The Problem With Eyes
I read recently that a study has found that we don’t see things all the time. Brain activity has peaks and troughs (about ten per second) and when it’s in a trough we don’t see. Then there is inattentional blindness. You know, the thing that happens when a man in a monkey suit walks across a two-ball basketball counting game (it happens all the time, but people fail to see monkey-man because they’re so busy counting the number of passes). And then there’s the problem that my wife can’t find her keys or her phone or her address book (often her address book). Because I understand the psychology of looking at stuff I know that her strategy is a reckless one. It’s no good putting stuff down any old place and relying on your eyes to find it when you start looking. You might momentarily have your attention elsewhere, or […]
New Articles on Consumer Behaviour
I have a couple of new articles on consumer behaviour available on my main site. “How to Make Your Customer Buy” (see the Latest Articles section at the top on the left), reveals what some of the most recent research into what influences consumers has discovered. This is one of those occasions where the information from one of my articles could be used by the unscrupulous to push people into purchases they wouldn’t otherwise make. I hope you won’t misuse this information. “What Other People Think” reviews the implications of some of the latest neuroscience that looks at why people change their opinions when they learn what other people think about something. These are articles that people who have signed up for my E-zine get to know about first, so if you’re interested in the latest consumer behaviour research you can save yourself some time and effort by signing up; […]
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