Consumer Behaviour

As I mentioned last time, I’ve only once found an impromptu use for my understanding of consumer behaviour and consumer psychology, and I certainly never anticipated that a situation might arise where market research might make a difference between life and death.

But that just shows how little I know.

Recently, the UK government has announced that 10% of hospital (NHS Trust) funding will be dependent on patient satisfaction levels.  To put that in financial terms, that could mean around £10billion of expenditure will be dependent on patient satisfaction.

And here’s the thing.  This is, in my opinion, the most profoundly stupid example of using market research that I have ever encountered: it’s going to result in lives being lost.

Let’s go back a few years, before any of us had heard of MRSA or any of the other so-called super-bugs that are resistant to antibiotics and kill people.

How many patients would have walked out of a hospital thinking, “There was a risk of me contracting a life-threatening bacterial infection in that hospital, I’d better market them down to a 5 out of 10.”

Ah, you may say, but people might have said the hospital wasn’t very clean.

That’s true.  But against what standard of cleanliness are patients judging the hospital?  Most of us are fortunate enough not to visit hospitals too often, so can we really judge what properly, hygienically clean looks like?

Of course, now that we’ve been primed to think about something as important as super-bugs we’re very sensitive to how clean a hospital looks.  But we don’t know how effectively they are controlling this type of infection from what we see; that requires expert testing.

It might be useful to know what people are actually doing in the hospital.  Are they reporting toilets that they find are dirty?  Are they cleaning up after themselves effectively where they can?  Are they washing their hands properly?  Are they using the special sanitising products provided?  Are they only coming to the hospital as visitors when they know they aren’t carrying a cold or stomach bug?

There is no shortage of evidence to show that people are hopelessly poor at reporting this sort of information accurately – not that, as far as I know, anyone is proposing to ask them what they are doing.  It’s all about what  they think.

I don’t think the NHS is perfect – far from it.  But I don’t think that I know how to judge how it’s performing in totality.

If someone happens to go for an out-patient appointment and is kept waiting for two hours they would feel bad.  In completing a survey they would probably exhibit be a ‘halo effect’ whereby they misattribute that bad feeling to many aspects of their experience.  Now if the delay was caused because the doctor in question was saving a life elsewhere would the patient realise?

Individual patients don’t have the perspective or the expertise to judge how well a hospital is performing.  But these inexpert, myopic opinions, when collected in their thousands and pressed together in a report, take on a gravity that is totally out of proportion to the base data.

And people will almost certainly die as a result.

Money will be wasted.  It will be wasted on the survey process itself.  It will be wasted on implementing the wrong solutions.  It will be wasted because the hospitals will invest in playing the game – anticipating what they think patients will want to see and hear to give them good scores.

All of these will drive money away from the expert evaluation of hospital effectiveness, drug funding and objective decision-making that should be taking place on the basis of managers doing the best job they can, as experts in the hospitals they are tasked to run.

You may never hear someone say, “Market research saved my life”, but if you’re unfortunate enough to need the UK’s National Health Service and not get the care you need, market research might just be responsible for you not living.

Philip Graves

Philip Graves consumer behaviour, consumer research, market research 10%, consumer behaviour, consumer psychology, market research, National Health Service, NHS, patient satisfaction

There’s no escaping the fact that Tiger Woods’ personal life has become very public in the last couple of  days.

But what, you may well ask, could his “transgressions” possibly have to do with consumer behaviour or market research?

The answer is in Tiger’s statement after his private life became monumentally public.  Here’s what he said on his website:

“I have let my family down and I regret those transgressions with all of my heart. I have not been true to my values and the behavior my family deserves.”

Now none of us can say whether this is what Tiger Woods really feels, or whether this is just the best thing he can think to say in the position he has found himself.  But for the purposes of this post, let’s take Tiger at his word.

He has not been true to his values.

Market research is frequently preoccupied with asking people what they think.  What are their attitudes (something very closely linked to their values)?

And here is classic example of something we all are manifestly capable of: our behaviour not matching our values.  Our attitudes and values are what we like to tell ourselves about how we are; our behaviour is how we actually are.

When it comes to understanding consumers what would you rather know?  What people like to tell themselves or what they really do?  I promise you there is, more often than not, a world of difference between the two.

I believe it’s a very important distinction.  I suspect Tiger Woods’ wife might be struggling to reconcile the two because most people like to think that there is a strong connection between values, attitudes and behaviour.

I’m not criticising Tiger Woods’ actions because I have no idea what he did or what circumstances surrounded it (and, frankly, it’s none of my business), but if Mrs Woods wants to know what Tiger’s values are she will find out from his behaviour not his words.

Philip Graves

Philip Graves consumer behaviour, consumer research consumer behaviour, market research, Tiger Woods, Transgressions

Continuing from yesterday’s post it seems my customer satisfaction is developing into a series.  I really appreciate the questions and comments, I sense an eBook coming on!

Today’s gratitude is due to babysitting maestro Lisa McLellan.  You may wonder what link there could possibly be between someone who is so focused on children and babysitting, and a consumer behaviour expert.  Well, as Lisa’s comment demonstrates, there is a link if you open your mind to it.

Here’s what Lisa said:

“I have found myself giving different answers to basically the same question depending on the wording of the question. I have also found through babysitting children of all ages, that at a particular age, (usually younger children age 2-4)children will choose the last choice they are given when you ask a question giving them a few answers to choose from. For example, you ask, “How did you get that scratch, did you fall down, did you scratch it on the corner of the bookcase, or did the cat scratch you?” 99% of the time, the child will say the cat scratched them simply because it was the last option.”

The great thing about studying children as consumers or, as in this case, as “respondents”, is that they are susceptible to all the same unconscious influences that adults are, but are far less skilled at concealing how they’ve been influenced with conscious filtering. 

Part of the innocence of childhood is the absence of the capacity to process what you’re about to say in advance, to check for social acceptability and, just as critically, self-perception.  In other words, “Is it OK to express this to this group of people?” and, “How will I look to them if I do?”

We soon learn not to repeat the last thing someone says to us, and it’s good we do or we would be too easy to manipulate; but we don’t learn not to let the options determine how we reply. 

Let me ask you a question: “What will you do this weekend? Play with the kids, watch a movie, sit down and relax?”.

You may not answer any of those things – although there’s quite a high possibility that you’ll mention one.  But almost anyone answering will be talking about leisure activity of some kind.

But if I’d asked you: “What will you do this weekend?” Some domestic paperwork, a supermarket shop, cut the grass?” you would probably have talked about chores and duties first. 

Studies have shown that if you ask people “How happy are you?” you will get a totally different response from asking the question “How unhappy are you?”  And if you ask which of two divorcing parties should get custody of a child you will get a different answer than if you ask which of those two parties shouldn’t get custody.

For my dissertation at university I looked at schoolchildrens’ attitudes to statistics.  Following the accepted protocol I used a battery of attitudinal questions (you know the “strongly agree, agree, disagree, strongly disagree type). 

I discovered that even children as old as fifteen were influenced by the orientation of the statement (i.e. whether it was framed positively or negatively).

Another revealing element of human psychology you can see quite easily in young children is emotional misattribution.  In fact, it’s a great way to appreciate that we humans are emotional creatures who retrofit rational explanations after the fact.

A child between the ages of two and seven (and possibly beyond) will often make a totally incongruent responses like: “Shall we get ready for school?” “No, I hate school!” or “Are you going to eat your sandwiches?” “No, I can’t stand cheese!” when you know perfectly well that they have enjoyed their time at school each day for the past year, or that they eat cheese frequently without a fuss.

What they’re revealing is that something has made them feel bad and they are directing that feeling at whatever target seems to fit the circumstances.  This could be an argument with a sibling, tiredness, a lost toy, resentment at having been disciplined for something a few minutes earlier, or any of a thousand other things.  As adults we learn to pick a more fitting target so we don’t get ridiculed, and so that we get to express our bad feeling; but it’s frequently just as misdirected.

Similarly, a toy will lie untouched for a week.  But once one child has it their sibling wants it too; more than anything else in the world.  This is an example of so-called “mirror neurons” in action and reflects (no pun intended) how we can all react by wanting to copy what we see others doing.  Ever yawned because someone else has yawned even though you didn’t feel tired?

So children reveal a lot about what we all do.  If you’re interested in the consumer research process you would do well to observe their inconsistencies and the influence that environment, frame and question wording have on them.

Next time I’ll tell you how you can analyse customer satisfaction.

Philip Graves

Philip Graves consumer behaviour, consumer research consumer research, customer satisfaction, priming, psychology

Following on from yesterday’s post, fitness expert Daryl Pace asked:

That a customer’s answer to a satisfaction survey depends upon the context in which the questions were framed, as well as other possible factors, does seem to make sense. However, if a business did a survey that just asked the question, “are you satisfied overall with the service this business provides you”, it seems that they would get a decent gauge on the general customer sentiment about the business. What do you think?

It’s a great question, and I’m happy to tell you what I think as it gets right to the heart of one of my favourite subjects, consumer research.

The first thing to say is that, if you were going to ask this question, Daryl’s implicit suggestion that you JUST ask this one question (so as to remove the risk of inadvertent framing) would definitely be the best option. 

However, in all my years of consumer research and marketing I’ve never seen a one question questionnaire (although I do use this approach myself sometimes in a slightly different context).  Instead people want to break down an issue into its logical constituent parts or, at the very least, ask people why they think what they do.

In both cases, the fact that you’ve asked other questions or asked ‘why?’ changes the way the brain works, what the person thinks and what they go on to say in reply.

But there are other problems with asking even the single question on satisfaction:

• Asking a question creates a context and influences the respondent’s mindset; different ways of asking produce different results.  How do you know if what you’re getting is a legitimate appraisal of that customer’s satisfaction and not one that is shaped by the dynamic of questioning?  You don’t.
• Asking people to explain what they like and don’t like has been shown to change the overall rating that they give.
• Where you ask and who is asking will change the response.  As will whatever the person was doing immediately prior to your having asked them.  Understanding what is ‘in play’ in terms of response influence is extremely difficult.
• Asking about satisfaction presupposes that satisfaction is a salient issue for the consumer.  If you ask you will get an answer, but customers may very well not be processing the experience in a way that reflects our conscious notion of satisfying or dissatisfying experiences.

Supposing you go ahead and ask and learn that 80% of people are satisfied; how do you interpret that data.  OK, you could look at how that number has changed, but does a drop of 20% mean you have a problem, or are people just becoming accustomed to something that was previously perceived as satisfying?  Over time you have created your own context and people have unconsciously moved the satisfaction goal posts because of what you’ve done for them!

What if satisfaction scores increase but sales decline?  Does that mean you shouldn’t look at your product or service because it’s satisfying people?

I’ve conducted research where people were satisfied with a customer service help desk.  But I knew that they weren’t satisfied at all.

How?

I’d watched them have their customer experience.  It was unpleasant.  They were unhappy and uncomfortable throughout the interaction that was taking place.

I told my client the good news, “Everyone’s satisfied with your customer help desk.”  And then the bad news, “They’re only satisfied because their expectations of you are so low that, provided they get a positive outcome in the end, they’ll accept it.”

So, I think the whole concept of measuring customer satisfaction is misjudged.  Yes you get a number and companies love numbers, but it’s a meaningless one and it doesn’t, or more to the point shouldn’t, make any difference to how a company appraises what it’s offering to customers.

There are better ways of gauging satisfaction.

Philip Graves

Philip Graves Customer Service, consumer research consumer behaviour, consumer research, customer satisfaction

In my recent (very short) consumer behaviour video I made a reference to how unhelpful it can be to ask someone how satisfied they are with their consumer experience.  My point was that, given you don’t know what frame of reference someone has in mind when they respond, it’s really not that useful to know.

Are they satisfied because their expectations are so low that, when nothing terrible happens, they’re grateful?

Are they satisfied because what’s on offer is so formulaic that all they could do is be very dissatisfied if the delivery was below the standard?

Are they satisfied because they have such little interest in whatever it is that “yes” is all they can think to say; they’ve forgotten what happened and assume, because it wasn’t memorably bad, that it must have been OK at the time?

It turns out a recent study has found that people’s ratings of satisfaction change according to the nature of the alternatives they were considering at the time they made their choice.  So satisfaction, rather than being an absolute measure, is going to depend on what the person was thinking at the time they made their choice and, in the case of research, what you’ve framed the question with (particularly if you’ve been asking about other brands that operate in the same category).

You can read my full article here,  and make comments below if you’d like to. 

Philip Graves

Philip Graves consumer research consumer research, influence

With so much consumer behaviour, not to mention human behaviour, happening at an unconscious level, it’s all too easy for something that you say or do to not register in your own consciously accessible memory as significant.

One friend of mine was asked in a survey what brands of lager he purchased.  He wasn’t a big drinker, but would probably make a lager purchase (always of the same brand) every month or two. 

But faced with an interviewer’s question, and without the unconsciously filtered visual prompts of the packaging he couldn’t recall the brand he’d bought all these years (a little-known brand called Budweiser!).  How do I know the visual prompts were unconsciously filtered? Because faced with a bottle, even with a large proportion concealed he would recognise it and name it every time. 

But he couldn’t describe the bottle’s design, because if he could summon up a similar small proportion of the pack detail consciously, he would have been able to recall the name too.

Had the interview been conducted on a different day, or in a different place, he might have seen a visual cue that reminded him. 

It’s all a bit haphazard, don’t you think?

Recently I read an internet survey on mobile phone (cell phone) usage.  One of the early questions asked “When you share your thoughts about computers and IT topics how do you do it?”

A prompted list offered nine choices, and an ”other” and “I don’t share thoughts…” options.

Just how much reliving off the recent past the average respondent is supposed to invoke at this point isn’t clear.

A casual comment on an iPhone application mentioned in a car?  A pointer on the bottom of an email?  Telling someone that their blog formatting is off? 

Frankly, I can’t be bothered to give much thought to a question like this.  And I happen to think that the vast majority of other respondents, blasting through the survey so that they get entered for the sweep-stake prize or to receive some other recompense, won’t be that bothered either.

So just how much should faith should a company have in an answer to a question like this from consumer research?

Not much, is my professional opinion.

As you go about your consumer life it doesn’t matter at all that your thoughtless; in fact, it helps make you efficient at what you do.  Imagine buying beer for the first time and trying to make a “good” decision by reading all the packs, analysing the ingredients, and so on.  It would take forever, and you’d be none the wiser in any case!

But when it comes to trying to understand your own consumers it really is important to understand that consumers are, for the most part, consciously thoughtless.  They may well answer your questions, but you shouldn’t confuse the fact that you get an answer with the notion that the answer has any real relevance to them or people your survey is assuming that they’re representative of.

Philip Graves

Philip Graves consumer behaviour, consumer research consumer behaviour, consumer research

A couple of conversations recently have highlighted just how stupid consumers often are.

Case in point, me.

I like to think I’m reasonably capable, astute, switched on, together. But that’s just what I like to think.

You see, I’ve been following this blog on investment (www.greatwealth.com/).  To begin with I felt sort of obliged to stick with it, I’d said to someone that I would look at it.  But it was a bit annoying.

The investment adviser there (Rod) seemed determined to spell out assumptions people have about investing with the implicit message that they didn’t stack up.  Rod did say he would tell us why, but my resistance was, if anything, increasing as the days went on.

You see I know about investing.  Well, when I say “I know” that’s not totally accurate.  It would be more accurate to say that I have invested money in my time, like a lot of people. 

My “knowledge” is really no such thing.  It’s a market-driven, or rather marketing-driven, perspective of how investment works, derived almost entirely from what I see people doing.

If someone said you should do something just because it’s what everyone else does, you would give them that funny look you like to use just before you walk away dismissively.  And yet we make tacit judgments all the time entirely on this basis.

And I should know.

My biggest professional challenge is pointing out to people that, despite the fact that billions of dollars are spent on it, consumer research doesn’t work.  When it comes down to it, and given that even people who use research regularly find bits they disagree with and so could hardly be classed as true research theists, the main reason everyone does it is because everyone does it!

And as I’ve learned from Rod’s blog, it takes time to point out to someone if prevailing wisdom isn’t very wise.  But most marketing happens in moments, not minutes, let alone hours.  And that’s a big challenge.

Philip Graves

Philip Graves consumer behaviour, consumer research consumer behaviour, consumer research, Marketing

When it comes to observing consumer behaviour, or any aspect of human behaviour, there is an important tip you would do well to keep in mind.  The process of observation needs to be as detached and objective as possible.

It’s also worth remembering that you will learn the most when your presence as an observer isn’t something the people you’re observing are aware of: “I’ve just come here to watch, you carry on as normal” is not going to work. 

You’ve just raised the question of what “normal” is and virtually guaranteed that someone is going to be consciously aware of their own actions.

Yesterday I had a fascinating insight into sexist behaviour.  You know the sort of thing, putting women down, not treating them as equals, pushing people into gender stereotypes.  It can get you a little cross can’t it.

Who was guilty of this?  Would you be surprised if I said a group of middle-aged men?  Probably not, that’s just one of those things you’ve come to expect.

Oh, I nearly didn’t mention, some boys too.

Oh yes, and some girls.

And some women.  Ranging in age from twenty-somethings to ladies in their seventies.  Including one who is a social worker.

In fact, everybody in the room was at it.  It was like a convention for sexism.  Except, in fact, it was the annual draw for Wimbledon tennis tickets.

Each club that’s affiliated to the Lawn Tennis Association receives an allocation of tickets for the championships.  Members of the club were there to watch the draw to decide who would get a ticket.  The earlier your name came out the sooner you got to choose which day of the tennis you would attend.

So the choice people made was a good indication of what they wanted to watch.   What was first to go?  Centre Court tickets on men’s final day, of course.

What was last to go?  Any day the men weren’t playing (ladies’ quarter finals, semi finals and even the ladies’ final).

So whilst the organising bodies in women’s tennis have achieved equal pay in the main tournaments, it seems that the tennis-watching public isn’t seeing things as being equal.  Of course, if you asked the ladies present if the prize money should be equal, they wouldn’t hesitate to say “yes”.  But what people say, and what they reveal through their behaviour are rarely the same thing.

Whilst this was going on I was sitting next to a lady with a baby, just five or six weeks old.  On three occasions she had cause to go up to the board where the choice of tickets was displayed and, on each occasion, she passed the infant to someone to hold.

She always passed it to another woman.  She never asked me.  Nor did she ask any of the other fathers in the room.

Was this all sexist behaviour?  I’m pretty sure it was.

You see, despite what we like to tell ourselves about what we think, our behaviour will give us away.

Our unconscious works ahead of our “nice to have” conscious notions, to find the safest route for us to pursue.

To be honest, the chance of a woman knowing what to do with a baby are much greater than a man; it’s not guaranteed, but it’s a safer bet.

And tennis elitism is a male preserve; fewer errors, better movement, higher quality (this is all statistically verifiable); not that that matters.  People know what they’d rather watch: a first round men’s match featuring a great male player, than a grand slam final featuring two of the best female players.

So if you make sure those conscious pretentions don’t get in the way - your own value judgments and those of the people you’re interested in - you may be surprised (or disappointed) by what you see. 

But however you feel about it, it is the way things are.  You can try and fight it or you can recognise it and tailor your marketing accordingly.

For example, if you put a mixed sex group of people in a room to watch a TV programme, and asked a lady to start the DVD player, but fixed it so that it wouldn’t work, who do you think she would turn to?  Would she look at one of the other women or one of the men when she realised she needed help with something technical?

Trust me, I know plenty of very technically competent women and, for the record, my golf teacher is a woman, but I’m fairly sure most of the time the person would look towards a man.  So if you’re putting a voice-over on your TV ad for an electronics product or retailer, does the choice of a female voice make sense?  I suspect not.

It’s a shame that we should have to choose between pragmatism and idealistic values, but I would never recommend to one of my clients that they embrace the latter over the former.

Philip Graves

Philip Graves Advertising, consumer behaviour, consumer research Advertising, consumer behaviour, consumer research, marketing communication

One of the subjects that I think should be of interest to all consumer researchers is the law.

Not all that Jerome Vs Willensby in 1869 case law stuff, I can’t see much application for that, not studying the statute books either.  I’m talking about evidence, how it’s collected and how much weight can reasonably be attached to it.

Given their importance in the legal process, a lot of work has been done to examine the accuracy of eye-witness testimony.  It strikes me that if there were any question over people’s ability to accurately report on an event they witness involving someone else then similar problems may well exist when relying on a person’s ability to accurately report their own experiences.

In fact, given the role of the conscious mind as a post-rationalising device that has no direct access to the unconscious mechanisms that trigger our behaviour, there is reasonable argument to expect self-witnessing to be even less accurate.

So do these studies suggest eye-witnesses are reliable?

In a word, no.

One recent study for the journal Law and Human Behaviour found that false eye witness testimony contributed to more than three quarters of wrongful convictions (that were accurately resolved using DNA evidence).

A recently released study by psychologists at Iowa State University faked a crime in front a group of students and asked them to identify the perpetrator from photographs of five suspects, none of whom was the actual thief.  Just 16% of the 200 people interviewed said none of them was guilty.  Those who had picked rated their confidence in their selection as, on average, six out of ten.

When the witnesses were told that one of the five had confessed over 90% picked out one of the people from the line up and the average level of confidence increased from 6 to 8.5.  Remember, the thief wasn’t any of those pictured.

There are numerous theories about why these inaccuracies occur.  One study has found that  people focus so heavily on one dramatic or traumatic aspect of a scene (such as the gun in an armed raid) that they don’t really see much of anything else. 

Another has found that people have a very limited capacity for retaining information; as little as two pieces of information may be all that is retained from an event in the past.

From my own work, the nature of the questioning process is such that people can be unconsciously appealed to be helpful and to please the person asking the question, as a result they unwittingly (and equally unconsciously) prioritise trying to say something that will satisfy the interpersonal exchange that’s taking place at that moment over a ruthless reappraisal of the past.

This issue is just one of the reasons I’m incredibly wary of relying on consumers’ accounts of their consumer behaviour when I conduct research for clients.

My consumer behaviour company works on the premise that, when it comes to designing consumer research studies, it’s far better to assume customers can’t tell us what they think than to believe that they can or will.

Philip Graves

Philip Graves consumer behaviour, consumer research consumer behaviour, consumer research, eye witness, psychology

You’d be hard pressed to find any marketing text book that doesn’t talk at some point about “consumer need”.

It’s a simple enough concept: the products that will do best are those that meet a requirement that someone has.

At the next level you may find there’s a discussion on the types of consumer need.  Broadly these break down into physical and emotional needs. 

So, by way of simplistic example, the former says that, because you’re cold you will buy a hat.  The latter that because you want to feel special you’ll buy an expensive hat. 

This is all fine up to a  point.  But I happen to think that most consumer behaviour is nothing to do with “need”.  This is a problem because the notion of consumer need suggests that, at some level, a consumer is aware of what it is they are getting as a result of acquiring the product, and in my experience that’s often not the case.

Have you ever noticed how much some people’s lives are taken up with shopping; for some people human behaviour is consumer behaviour, almost exclusively.  When they aren’t shopping, they’re thinking about shopping, or watching TV programmes surrounded by ads, or reading magazines that are promoting consumerism directly through their copy or indirectly through their adverts. 

And some people will talk about shopping for hours; granted they’re not talking about the physical act of buying, they’re talking about something they’re thinking about buying, or something they’ve bought, or what happened when they tried to buy something.

All of this is has precious little to do with how cold someone’s head is.

I suspect that we’re collectively so preoccupied with shopping because of how our brains work.  Studies show that the brain works by estimating risk and reward, and then sending out extra dopamine (the feel good factor) when a decision is proved correct.  This increases the strength of the the neural pathway, essentially increasing our perception that what we thought would happen did.

I won’t explore the many fascinating implications of this mechanisms now, but when it comes to shopping I suspect it’s so prevalent because it’s so predictably rewarding.

Most of the time when you go out to buy you successfully do so.  The process is completed and you now own something new.  Owning stuff feels nice.  In fact, studies like the one I talked about recently in my eZine (The Importance of Touch) show that we get very attached to things we hold very quickly.

In evolutionary terms it’s generally been advantageous for us to have stuff: stored provisions, items we can use as tools, things we can defend ourselves with, mechanisms for protecting ourselves from the elements and so on.  So our brains have evolved to reward us for having things.

Rarely is shopping disappointing or dissatisfying.  When it is we learn quickly to change our expectations or to avoid places that fail to satisfy, and we can quickly find substitutes.

In essence shopping is low risk, high reward behaviour, and our brains get a kick out of that.

Philip Graves
P.S. You can sign up for my eZine here.

Philip Graves consumer behaviour, consumer research analysis, articles, consumer behaviour, consumer research, psychology, why customers buy