Consumer Behaviour

One of the advantages of understanding how the process of asking people questions influences them is that you can have fun demonstrating its impact.

I was recently invited to speak to a local business group and took the opportunity to demonstrate the frailty of asking questions and the nature of the unconscious mind.

Whilst the samples were too small to be scientifically valid, the differences in responses to my fake research were both predictable and entertaining.

I set up a taste test using three very similar products: one was from a value range, one from the ‘standard’ range and one the premium offer.  Everyone was led to believe that they were taking part in legitimate market research and that they all had the same questions.

In fact there were five different questionnaires, all asking the participants to taste three products and answer some questions.

What was I able to demonstrate?

1. People will express a preference when given identical products to rate.
2. People’s taste preferences are influenced by branding.
3. People have no clue how much most products normally cost.
4. When asked to analyse aspects of a product (like sweetness and texture) people reach a different conclusion about which product is best (compared to when asked simply to select a favourite).

Philip Graves consumer behaviour, market research market research

It’s always interesting to see what ideas a web giant like Amazon is evaluating, particularly when the change is more than just a subtle adjustment.

At present they’re trying out a very different home page.

One thing Amazon does that is super-smart is split test.  They don’t rely on the vague irrelevancies of what customers tell them in market research to decide whether a change is worth making: they send customers to the new look at random and check to see what the impact is on behaviour (and particularly on conversion).  This means the evaluation isn’t done as an artificial conscious exercise, people don’t know they’re taking part in research: as a result the unconscious drivers of consumer actions are still ‘in-play’ and the artificial influence that comes from asking questions isn’t an issue.

From this perspective it doesn’t really matter what I or anyone else thinks when they evaluate the new design.  You may love its clean look, the absence of clutter, the way it works properly in a wide screen format, enjoy accessing menus when you choose (rather than having them forced on you)… but if you end up not searching so effectively or not clicking on the day’s promotions, Amazon will quietly revert to a more profitable previous look and go back to the drawing board.

Tiny changes can have a big impact on conversion.  In Consumer.ology I recount a number of examples where changing a photograph, moving a logo or reducing the number of items returned from a search all increased conversion significantly.  Whilst as a consumer psychologist I can help identify what might work, and can speculate on what has made a change effective by explaining how it has connected with unconscious drivers of behaviour, it’s only through carefully conducted experiments that we can know for sure what the outcome of a change will be.

Fortunately, split testing is relatively straight-forward on-line, it’s actually reasonably straight-forward in most consumer scenarios, given a little thought: and it’s an investment that is well-worth making because what you get is genuine learning.  If you apply the AFECT criteria for psychological confidence, you will realise why you can trust the results of such a test far more than anything from a survey or focus group.

Philip Graves

Philip Graves consumer behaviour, market research Amazon, design, website

The title the ‘International Journal of Market Research’ (IJMR) sounds undeniably impressive.  Generally speaking journals are good things, bringing together peer reviewed papers from people pushing the boundaries in a particular field.

But I wonder… do astrologers have a Journal of Astrology?  Google suggests that they do, sort of – it looks as though it might just be one astrologer selling predictions.

There’s a National Journal of Homeopathy – I wonder, to paraphrase Tim Minchin, if they’ve had any papers on how water forgets about the wee and poo it’s had in it and just remembers the traces of medicinally advantageous ingredients?

My point is that it’s easy to get a false sense of validity from a name.  In Consumer.ology I describe market research as a pseudo-science and, arguably, having an ‘International Journal’ is all part of the industry’s mystique.

I must declare a personal interest at this point: recently the IJMR reviewed my book; the reviewer hated it.  But the review, a viewpoint article and one of the papers made for particularly interesting reading: let me explain…

[Curiously, the reviewer's reading skills didn't extend to my name: I was called Robert Graves and Peter Graves, but never Philip.  I wonder if the book had him in such a rage that he struggled to focus on all the words.]

Pedantry aside, the IJMR’s choice of reviewer was somewhat self-satisfying.  As far as I can tell, the reviewer earns his living conducting the research that Consumer.ology questions the fundamental validity of.  How is such a person to address the evidence from psychology and neuroscience that shows people aren’t very good witnesses to their own behaviour and that the process of asking them what they think influences them to say particular things?

The somewhat strange thrust of the review is that the market research industry knows all about the problems that lead me to believe asking questions isn’t worthwhile – “… they have long been widely recognised by many in market research.”  Strange then that if you look at the Market Research Buyer’s Guide virtually every single one of the companies listed is offering the sorts of research that is beset by these problems.

Do they tell prospective clients all about these “widely recognised” problems when they come to them requesting a survey or focus group be commissioned?  I suspect not.  Partly I suspect this because no research company has ever mentioned them to me when I was commissioning research.  And partly I suspect not because, were they to mention the problems, the research wouldn’t go ahead.

Entertainingly, the review was, I assume, written before the recent Scottish Parliamentary elections.  My rejection of opinion polls was described as ‘…simply not justified by reality.’  He adds that, ‘When it became clear a few years ago that something was going awry in the accuracy of such polling, the industry effort aimed at addressing these issues was remarkable…’  Remarkable until they got the results wrong again in the Scottish elections.

Election polls conducted close to the date of an election should be quite accurate, and yet even they prove problematic to the research industry.

Elsewhere in the same edition two contributors attempt to reconcile market research with behavioural economics.  In a ‘Viewpoint’ article Nick Southgate attempts to align asking questions with behavioural economics by pushing it into the gaps that a behavioural approach can’t fill. That behavioural economics can’t identify (at least not directly) the content of people’s decisions, doesn’t mean that market research can.

In a (presumably) peer-reviewed paper (market research peers, of course), Wendy Gordon draws the astonishing conclusion that a new branch of (dynamic) market research can help provide behavioural economics with “the practical skills and applications that they need to solve the problems that face them in an increasingly complex world context.”

Psychology and behavioural economics have provided the basis for identifying the folly of traditional market research (evidence that is quoted in the paper): expecting the people whose work up to this point has been so clearly undermined to be the custodians of a new approach is, it strikes me, somewhat risky.

This risk is evidenced when Gordon advocates “not throwing the baby out with the bath water” before going on to suggest that qualitative research has strengths in certain areas including identifying values and beliefs: behavioural economics has demonstrated that espoused values and beliefs can be (and frequently are) irrelevant, when examined alongside actual behaviour.  Surely, that’s a case of pouring the bathwater back in again.

The problem for the IJMR is that people don’t approach anything with an open mind.  We arrive burdened with associations and experiences that colour how we interpret what we find.  It seems that the IJMR wants to take the challenges from outside its field and force its existing techniques onto that evidence.  Put another way, how can someone who has spent their entire career asking questions reconcile themselves to the information that there is little evidence to support the validity of asking questions and much to undermine it as a reliable tool?

The belief that you can ask people questions and what you hear back will be an accurate insight is just that, a belief.  It’s an apparently plausible concept that fits with people’s view of themselves as the conscious agents of their actions.  Its reinforced by those times research appears to confirm something we believed, or appears to be born out by what happens next: of course, the same benchmarks are what perpetuates the use of things like astrology.

With so much that is central to market researchers’ beliefs questioned in Consumer.ology, I would advise them not to read it.  Or at the very least, they should consult their horoscope to see if it’s a good day for reading a book.

Philip Graves

Philip Graves consumer research, Getting a Book Published, market research consumer.ology, IJMR, market research

Every now and then I receive an invitation to complete an on-line survey.  They’re normally hopelessly poor tools at understanding real consumer motivations.  They interrogate the wrong part of the respondent’s mind (the conscious mind) and unwittingly influence the part they should be targeting (the unconscious mind).

So today, I thought that, as I plod through the survey, I would include a running commentary of what’s bad, just in case anyone else is thinking of running an on-line survey any time soon. 

The First Few Questions
A few classification questions to see where I live, when I was born, to check that I watch television (the subject of the research) and to check that I’m not involved in marketing, market research, journalism, advertising, public relations or television: arguably I’m involved in all of these but, just like any other respondent, I’ll be ticking the answers that suit my purpose: “None of these”.

Questions
The first proper question asks me what channels I can name, other than the five original terrestrial channels.  This awareness question has evidently been written without any awareness that memory is context-based.  Sitting in front of my computer I may recall one set of channels, but when it comes to watching a programme I will select in a completely different environment and mindset.  Has anyone correlated top of mind channel awareness with anything?  What, you many well ask, will this question prove?  I suspect that a TV channel has been advertising itself and thinks that unprompted awareness is a good measure of their advertising impact; I’m betting they can’t substantiate a link between the two.

I’m now presented with ten channels and asked to say how often I watch it, of if I never watch it, if I’ve heard of it.  My options are “most days”, “at least once a week”, and so on.    I select a programme by the programme’s title, I don’t always know which channel I’m watching.  Fortunately, the television companies have tracking data from boxes that actually monitor what a sample of UK viewers watch: why, you may well ask, are they inviting in this meaningless self-reported data?  Presumably it will drive questions later in the survey, but since I suspect I don’t know which channels I watch when I flick through, this isn’t going to be very accurate.

I’ve just seen I have to do this for sixty programmes; who would volunteer for this kind of pain normally?

Now I’m invited to say “how I feel about each of these channels” ranging from a “channel I love” to “no strong feelings”.  So I will rationalise my feelings about a channel.  What, you may ask, would it say if I watched a channel a lot that I didn’t love?  Or if I love a channel but don’t watch it often?  There is an implicit assumption in the questionnaire – in my case one that is misfounded – that I know what I’m watching and can match my viewing to a channel. 

Oh Dear
I realise this might seem like a writer’s licence, but I have actually been going through and documenting my thoughts step by step.  Having reached this question about “channels that I love”, the on-line survey has broken.  I’ve tried two browsers and several refreshes, but the page doesn’t work.  The table of pre-coded responses and channels has disappeared.  Nothing I click helps.  Going forwards delivers a warning that I need to give my answers, but I can’t because it won’t let me.

So, regrettebly, I can’t get to the heart of the survey.

But already I know that no one should attach much significance to this survey’s results.  At it’s heart is a fundamental assumption that people link their viewing to the channel they are watching.  A lot of TV viewing is done in a very ‘withdrawn’ mental state.  We let a familiar programme wash over us like a sort of brain support system: there’s processing going on, but it requires no effort or involvement from us.

Ask yourself this: what did you watch on television the night before last?  The chances are that, unless it was a significant sporting event or a film that you had actively selected, you won’t remember the titles of the programmes, never mind the channels.

I’ve been commissioned to study viewing behaviour and programme selection behaviour in the past, and neither has very much to do with the conscious mind. 

As always with poor market research, the waste in terms of the money spent on the survey is probably minor in comparison with the cost associated with making the wrong decision and not acquiring

Philip Graves

Philip Graves consumer behaviour, market research commissioning, market research, on-line survey

Developing a logo is an interesting experience.  Recently several organisations have found that the internet provides a platform for dissenting voices to grow into active movements to oppose designs that they don’t like.

Gap, who some have suggested were really undertaking a publicity stunt, Starbucks and the Portland Timbers have all experienced an adverse reaction when plans of their changes came to light.

Recently, the Iranian Olympic Committee has said that they think the London 2012 logo is racist, spelling out the word Zion.  There are a number of reasons not to pay too much attention to this complaint:

1. It doesn’t spell out Zion, it says 2012.
2. If it did spell out anything in English it would be “Zo in”, since we read left to right and, with no hyphen, the second line should be taken as a new word.  Perhaps animal welfare groups should be boycotting the Olympics instead!
3. If you want to say that a 2 looks like Z, is it reasonable to also claim it looks like an N?  So that would mean it spells out Zoin.

Choosing a new logo is hard.  I should know, I’ve just been through the process for my website (it should be appearing there in the near future).  It’s tempting to outsource responsibility for deciding what design to choose to other people; I could have asked my friends or conducted a poll with people who have signed up at my website.

But if I don’t know what conveys my brand, what perspective are other people expected to respond from?  They might tell me what they think looks nice, aesthetic taste is understood to be intrinsically personal.  They might tell what they think my brand is about and what conveys this to them. 

But this is my chance to communicate a little bit more about me.  If I already convey everything I want to, if the status quo is so important, why would I be creating a new logo at all?

One comment famously suggested the London 2012 Olympic logo looked like Lisa Simpson performing a sex act; lots of people agreed.  But they only agreed when one person said it and that comment was picked up by the media (at which point its humour and astute observation caused it to spread as only a meme can).  I don’t doubt that, had the designers had this pointed out to them, this design would never have seen the light of day.

However, just because, once it’s pointed out, you can see it, doesn’t mean it would ever occur to you to think along those lines independently.  Consequently, you could ask one million people for their views on the logo, but if you don’t ask the person who makes that specific association your research will be irrelevant (assuming the media find and propagate the comment subsequently).

It’s one thing to run a logo design past a fresh set of eyes, to check that you haven’t inadvertently conveyed something directly that is offensive to people who will see it, but it’s reckless to let a consensus market research opinion drive the representation of your brand.

I often think researching a logo is a little akin to asking someone to dress and behave a certain way when they go on a date with you: in theory it should make for a perfect evening, but the fact that someone is just playing back what you want isn’t a substitute for the genuine experience of two people being themselves and enjoying each other’s company.

So by all means run a design past a few pairs of eyes, and ideally have people from different cultures check you aren’t offending them inadvertently, but don’t suppose that other people can tell you how you should be.

For the record, I have always liked the 2012 logo, I never liked the Gap logo, I like the new Starbucks logo and the new Portland Timbers logo appears to me a substantial improvement.  But my view on these doesn’t matter.  And whilst I hope you like my new logo when it appears at my website, if you don’t, well, perhaps it was just never meant to be between us!

Philip Graves

Philip Graves market research 2012, design, logo, market research, Olympics

The Olympic Park Legacy Committee board will soon be making a final decision on exactly what should happen to the stadium after the 2012 London Olympics.  At the heart of the debate is the question of whether a football club should be allowed to take over the stadium and what provision will exist for athletics if they do.

As is so often the case, someone (in this case the BBC), decided that it would be a good idea to find out the opinions of the public.  The results have subsequently been reported in a way that would appear to anyone reading them as facts.  Unfortunately they are nothing of the sort.

The questionnaire was very short, but nevertheless made several critical mistakes that introduced bias to the results (none of which were presented alongside the results in the media).

Firstly, despite my best efforts, I have been unable to find out exactly what questions one and two were.  These are of particular importance, since each question can serve as a prime for subsequent ones.

Personally I see no value in opinion polls.  They are implicitly artificial in focusing an issue in a simplistic way.  Secondly, they are ENORMOUSLY sensitive to the broader context in which they are conducted.  This poll, conducted between 21st and 23rd January 2011, coincided with extensive media coverage about what we, as a country, had promised would happen after the games.  The reporting of this promise made the bid of West Ham United seem immediately more palatable than that from Tottenham.

However, despite what appeared to be an obvious solution for the stadium, namely letting West Ham have it, the Olympic Park Legacy Committee making a recommendation on the decision, felt they needed more time than originally intended: either it was a committee of monumental dimwits, or else this decision was more complex than was being portrayed in the media.

Perhaps part of their thinking was the thought that athletics is in decline as a spectator sport.  It’s hardly the case that stadiums up and down the country are routinely filled with tens of thousands of excited athletics fans: a large empty stadium may not be such a great asset for the sport.

The first question in the data supplied by the pollsters (Com Res) is Q3.  It makes the classic error of not allowing people the option of not having an opinion.  Granted, even with this option I still wouldn’t like the poll, but not including it has been shown to transform poll results (I recommend reading David W. Moore’s book “The Opinion Makers” if you want to learn more about this). 

Curiously, since this is a finding that was not reported in the articles I read, only 4% of respondents, that’s right FOUR PERCENT, said they wanted what is actually being proposed by the probable winner, West Ham – to use the stadium for a mixture of football, athletics and concerts.   So if we’re going to take note of opinion polls (not that we should) shouldn’t we take note of this finding?

So when, in Q5, people say they think that the West Ham bid should win, how is this contradiction with Q3 to be reconciled?  The answer, I suspect, is people don’t really know that much about the subject.  That’s fine.  That is, after all, why we appoint teams of people to consider and scrutinise such issues and make decisions.  What role such superficial, contextually-media-influenced opinion polling has to play in the process, I have no idea.

Disturbingly, statistics are beguiling things.  Numbers are, in themselves, concrete and tangible.  Statistics benefit from their representation as numbers, albeit proportions; but when they are derived from surveys, frequently have no such validity.  But now the media are representing this survey’s results as justification for the West Ham bid winning over Tottehnam’s; it is, they say, what people want.

So, at best, all we can say in light of this survey is that somewhere between 4% and 70% of people wanted the West Ham bid to win in the context of the media representation of the subject in and around January 21st.  Good.  That was BBC licence fee money well spent.

I don’t think the world is a better place for the media’s polarisation of complex debates.  In my view, opinion polls contribute considerably to this tendency and, as a result, do far more damage than they ever do good.

Philip Graves is the author of Consumer.ology: The Market Research Myth, the Truth about Consumers and the Psychology of Shopping

Philip Graves market research BBC, Com Res, Olympic 2012 stadium, Olympic Park Legacy Committee, Tottenham, West Ham

People aren’t desperately honest creatures.  Through no fault of our own we’re victims of the way our brains have evolved; it’s wise not to take the things people claim at face value.

Among the many issues affecting market research the quality of respondent recruitment is reasonably frequently debated.  It’s not something I got into in Consumer.ology mostly because even when you recruit the “right” people, asking them questions throws up a whole world of other issues.  

However, over the last couple of days I’ve had a fascinating insight into the recruitment process and can, at no charge to the market research industry, offer them a high quality recruitment tool. 

I was contacted by a television network who wanted to interview me about a story that has been in the news regularly over the past few weeks; the cost of filling your car with petrol (or diesel).  Prices have risen substantially over the past few weeks and since January 2009 the cost of filling your car has increased by almost 50%.

The television network wanted to talk to me about consumer behaviour, they also wanted to interview someone who had changed their driving behaviour as a result of the soaring prices.

Having heard lots of people complaining and discussing the issue, not to mention talking about what they were going to do differently - let’s face it, it hurts to refuel your car these days – I thought it would be easy to find someone who would talk to a journalist about the changes they were making.

So I sent out an email to a hundred or so people locally; people encompassing a wide socio-economic spectrum.  The researcher working on the programme contacted various other people and organisations to find someone.

The response?  Not one person was willing to stand in front of a camera and explain how their behaviour had changed.

Now, of course, not everyone likes the idea of being on television, but given the concern in the media about this issue it would be easy to presume that people are doing something differently.  Then again, the story “Petrol prices are skyrocketing, but people are still buying it like usual” wouldn’t be much of an attention-grabber, would it?

Talk, as they say, is cheap.  Airing your anxieties, thoughts and feelings is pretty much an everyday occurence.  But actually accounting for your behaviour, and feeling that you might be held to account for your behaviour, is quite a different matter.  [This is one of the reasons that when I do ask questions I use interview techniques that don't allow people to talk about their thoughts and feelings.]

With the jury of your peers in the pub, who see you on TV talking about the fact that you now “cycle a lot more” or “take the bus instead of the car” or “can’t afford to drive”, there is someone on hand to poke you in the side and laugh at your fanciful exaggerations (or at least you are afraid that there might be).

I suspect that the conscious introspection triggered by realising that they would be accountable for their answers was at least a contributory factor in people’s unwillingness to speak to the press.

So, when it comes to market research recruitment you should probably recruit people on the basis that their responses will be broadcast to the nation, that way you can be more confident there’s some substance behind their claims.

Talk is cheap, research talk is even cheaper, but claiming you’ve done things you haven’t in front of your mates can be expensive.

Philip Graves market research consumer behaviour, market research, petrol prices, research recruitment

With my book Consumer.ology now published I’m starting to hear back from people who have heard about it, read it or read or heard an article or interview about it.

One of the very positive upsides to this is that more people are starting to share their stories of market research getting it wrong. 

Whilst I managed to unearth a good number of examples for the book, the fact is that it’s not really in anyone’s interests to publicise occasions when money spent on research was wasteful.  Occasionally there’ll be times when someone’s decision was vindicated and they’ll speak about it, but often the people making the final decision are also the ones who have decided to spend several thousand pounds on research, and choosing to ignore it doesn’t reflect particularly well on that decision even if it’s the right thing to do!

One reader contacted me to tell me about the conclusions of a focus group for a beer that was being tested with consumers in the UK, with a view to importing it.

The conclusions from the research were that the beer was “weak”, “watery”, “gassy”, “… like kissing your sister!”.  It certainly wasn’t a real man’s beer.

However, the autocratic head of the business decided to push ahead with launching the beer in the UK.  His name was August A. Busch III; you may have seen the product around here in the UK since then… it’s called Budweiser.

If you have any market research stories you would like to share, please do get in touch (philip(at) philipgraves.net)

Philip Graves

Philip Graves market research Budweiser, consumer.ology, market research

It’s not just the publication of my book Consumer.ology here in the UK that is putting market research under spotlight.

I recently had this article on the BBC website by Michael Blastland forwarded to me:

Beware the Don’t Know Brigade

He has hit on a topic that was covered in part by David Moore’s book “The Opinion Makers”; in it the former Gallup man revealed some of the dramatic differences you get to questions, depending on whether you offer the option “Or don’t you have an opinion.”

As Blastland points out this is only part of the issue.  The wider context is all important in determining how we react to something, as is the detail of the issue in question.

“Do you want your children to have a wonderful state education?”
“Would you like to end world poverty?”

Many people would say say an unhesitating “Yes” to these in a survey.  But such initiatives come at a price.  The focus of the question, and often the questions before it, may do a great job of sensitising respondents to the social issue concerned (particularly if a self-interested party is behind the research), but such visions are much more difficult to cost (so the fact that 90% of your income will be taken in tax to fund this educational reform isn’t discussed).

Of course, I’m being extreme to make a point.  But the reality is that even if any one question were to be accurately described from a cost perspective for a research study of this kind, it wouldn’t exist in the vacuum it does for the research: respondents don’t know about the separate polls being conducted for other initiatives that will require their tax pounds to fund and, even if they did, it is unlikely they would create an accurate total in their own minds before responding so focused would they be on the issue being deconstructed for the research.

As I point out in Consumer.ology, there are a whole host of reasons why people can’t give accurate responses in opinion polls; the fact that, arguably, a lot more people should be “don’t know’s” is the tip of much, much larger iceberg.

Philip Graves

Philip Graves market research consumer.ology, opinion polls

I once had a conversation with the Marketing Director of a brand that is a household name in which he suggested that no products had updated their brand identities.  We were having the conversation because his main brand was so tired that sales were in decline and customers didn’t see its packs on the shelves of their supermarkets: it looked exactly the same as it had a decade earlier (and it was hardly the most relevant product back then).

When I used Skoda as an example, he moved the goal posts to FMCG products. 

Then when I referenced other FMCG products that had dramatically redesigned their brand without disaster he argued that these weren’t in the same category as his product.

So his point was, that since none of his competitors had successfully updated their brand identity, he shouldn’t be the first one to risk it.

Except, of course, all of his competitors were either so new they hadn’t reached the point of needing a freshen up, or else they had updated their brand, he just hadn’t noticed.

It must be said, this manager was one of the most risk averse people I’ve ever met: it was a surprise that he took a chance of putting his feet in socks each day – who knows what could have been lurking inside them!

One of the best examples of rebranding is the British Royal Family (granted they aren’t a fast moving consumer good).  Before 1917 the royal family was a branch of the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.  However, by that point in World War I associations with Germany weren’t desperately popular.  Matters were hardly improved when the German’s starting dropping bombs from their Gotha G.IV on England.

George V (or his advisers) decided a rebranding and repositioning job was called for.

It was decided, presumably without the need for a million pounds of design consultancy and consumer testing, that the rather more quaintly English ‘Windsor’ would do a better job of endearing the monarchy to the masses.

Crucially, this wasn’t just a case of calling the same snack by a new name and hoping people would accept it.  Yes, pretty much everything remained as it had been before. However, there were some important tweaks that, given that the broad support for the monarchy hadn’t yet been entirely eroded, were sufficient to edge things back in their favour for the next century or so.

He changed the rules about marriage; it was now possible for members of the British royal family to marry British people. 

The King also allied the monarchy to the emerging social forces: the honours system was changed and anyone in the country could receive an OBE (Order of the British Empire) award if it was felt they went beyond the ordinary: this included trades unionists and people who did voluntary work.  Now the monarchy wasn’t the enemy of “the people”.

One less fortunate change came when the Russian Tsar, a cousin of George V, turned to him for help when the Russian revolution took hold.  The King, fearing he would be seen as putting other nation’s interests above those of the British, refused to provide him with a safe haven: the Tsar of course was executed by the revolutionaries.

I think there are good lessons to learn from this event about the nature of rebranding and human (or consumer) psychology:

• If you want people to perceive your brand differently, you need to do more than just change the name – but changing the name gives you a chance both to create new associations and to harness those that already exist (provided you choose wisely).
• Provide a clear benefit that people can positively associate with the change.
• Once you’ve made a stand for something new, you need to act consistently with those values if you want them to be credible.
• Rebranding can’t easily transform ill will.  But it can catch people before they feel alienated and can give people a reason to reappraise how they feel if they are becoming ambivalent.

Back to that marketing director I mentioned.  Eventually he was persuaded to accept a minor updating of his brand.  It wasn’t everything that it could be, but it turned the brand from declining sales to growth for the first time in years.

Philip Graves

Philip Graves consumer behaviour, market research, Marketing consumer psychology, rebranding