Consumer Behaviour

Be honest, how many of you thought you would ever read that as a headline?

As someone who has worked in and around what is generally known as “market research” for twenty years I was always slightly disappointed that I didn’t have a job that might be called upon dramatically.

“Help!!! Is there a market researcher on the plane?” Is not a phrase I ever expected to hear.

As a brief aside, I was once able to put my consumer behaviour skills to good use with strangers: I was taking a train with a friend and a number had been cancelled, resulting in the sorts of over-crowding that’s not permitted for the transportation of any other mammal.

We’d failed to get on two trains and watched two passengers almost come to blows as one attempted to compress an over-crowded carriage.

When the third train arrived we saw a tiny space, possibly only an illusion based on sixty people inhaling simultaneously, but decided we had to go for it.  Just then two people started fighting their way OFF the train that we wanted to get on.  They were at their intended station and were struggling to get through the packed groups of people between their place and the train doors.

As they made it through they were defiantly angry at the people they felt were blocking their route – in fact they just had no space to move into to get out of their way, and no one was planning on stepping off this train that they had worked so hard to get on to.

My friend and I, emboldened by a sense of mathematical justice – two people had now got off the train, their hadto be room for two more – pushed into the crowd.  Whilst the people we were now pressed against weren’t exactly happy about it, they also had seen the people get off and were, I suspect, torn between personal discomfort and resignation at the fact we were only re-balancing a distasteful equation.

After my friend broke the silence with a cheery “Hello” a conversation sprang up in our area of the carriage – an extraordinarily rare event on any form of London public transport.  After laughing about the fact that a train operator wouldn’t think to have drivers for all the trains they were operating the conversation turned to contrasting the general bonhomie of my friend and I with the couple who had only moments earlier escaped the packed carriage: why, one of my travelling companions asked, had they been unhappy to leave a crowded train whilst we were happy to be on it.

“Ah ah,” I said, pleased that my consumer psychology skills were at last coming in handy in an impromptu situation, “it’s the psychology of loss aversion!  The people getting off the train were anxious about losing out because they want to get home by getting off the train.  My friend and  I were afraid we would lose out by not getting onto a train and not getting home.  So the same psychological mechanism that makes us happy makes them unhappy because of the context.”

So, personally, I’ve been slightly useful but not saved any lives.  Which brings me back to the title of this blog: Market Research Saved My Life!  Has that happened?  Could it happen?  What would you spend on it if it could?

I’ll tell you next time!

Philip Graves

Philip Graves Uncategorized, consumer behaviour consumer behaviour, loss aversion, market research, train travel

Last night I watched Channel 4′s documentary in which American school teacher Jane Elliot conducted a demonstration of how racism feels by dividing a group of volunteers along lines of eye colour and discriminating against the blue-eyed group.

From the outset the blue-eyed group were treated badly by Ms Elliot, being put down and ridiculed by the fierce moderator herself, segregated into an uncomfortable room for two hours, before being put with the brown-eyed group who she had attempted to prime to treat the blue-eyed group as inferior.

Her original aim had been to demonstrate to her own class of all white children how it felt to be discrminated against for something as arbitrary as eye-colour is unfair and illogical.  She described that in her original exercise… “I watched how what had been marvelous, wonderful, thoughtful, co-operative children turn into nasty, viscous, discriminating little third-graders.” 

Leaving aside how unethical her experiment with the school children placed in her care may have been psychologically, the programme provided a fascinating insight into human behaviour, though to my eyes not the one Jane Elliot intended.

The difficulty is that confirmation bias is part of the human condition.  One of the brown-eyed group who contained a number of non-white people who were very sensitive to the focal issue of the exercise, explained to the blue-eyed group that they could have no idea what it would feel like to be standing at a shop counter, next in line, and be ignored in deference to someone else who was behind you in the queue because of the colour of your skin.

[It's probably fair to say that the exercise was compromised by the fact that the blue-eyed group was all white and the brown-eyed group predominantly non-white.]

Of course, most people have been over-looked in a queue whatever the colour of their skin; the issue is to what one attributes the event and what significance one attaches to it.  I’m not saying it doesn’t happen as a result of racism, or in any way excusing something so abhorrent, but the issue is as much one of racial sensitivity in the part of the ‘victim’ as it is racism on the part of the ‘perpetrator’.

For me the programme was much more interesting as an exercise in group behaviour; all of the problems that make market research focus group were in evidence: polarised opinions, people moderating their position before becoming more extreme when they felt support existed for their stance, and so on.

The most positive aspect of the exercise were the people who refused to be drawn into it.  One of the blue-eyed group stood up to the bullying Ms Elliot and was made to leave so as to enable the exercise to continue.  His willingness to stand up to authority in an environment in which someone else was clearly controlling and authoritative is what gives me hope for society.

Most impressive of all was Wanda Summers, a brown-eyed shop manager who despite staying with the process for the duration of the exercise found it so unpleasant, upsetting and unjust that, after battling with her conscience for several hours elegantly undermined the exercise by revealing to the whole group that the brown-eyed people had been given the answers to a test in advance.

Here was someone who couldn’t and wouldn’t sit silently by when injustice was taking place.

She was, in the edit of the programme shown, the only one of the brown-eyed group to do this, but even so it was enormously heartening to see.

Society hasn’t come anywhere near to resolving the problems of racial divide and, given that we humans have a long and lousy history of fear and abuse towards other races, nations and creeds, it’s inevitably going to take some time. 

But I can’t help believing that what the world needs is more Wanda Summers, not more Jane Elliots.  Is there an exercise someone can design to create more people like her, I wonder?

Philip Graves

Philip Graves Uncategorized Channel 4, group behaviour, How Racist Are You, human behaviour, Jane Elliot, racism, Wanda Summers

With my adviser Francis to guide me I’m feeling a lot more comfortable about navigating my way through the world of publishing – not that that’s any guarantee of success – and I will try and share as much as I can from my “industry angel” as I like to think of him.

I sent my proposed submission to Francis to give him a better idea of the sort of book I’m writing, to get some suggestions about what I might do to make it more attractive and to seek his view on whether or not I should try to get a literary agent.

Firstly, he was very complementary about my opening chapter; thus far the few people I’ve shared it with have been very positive about it.  Of course, I know enough about the dangers of the research process so I’m not reading too much into this; nevertheless a little encouragement doesn’t hurt!

Francis advised me to open the summary I was planning to send with maximum impact; the aim is to grab the recipient’s attention and, in the case of a non-fiction book like mine, show them that there is something new being said.

He recommended including a brief outline of my background and professional profile (the point being to show that, since I work with several well-known corporations, I have some gravity in the field I’m writing about).  He also suggested including a reference to any recent books that compete with mine and explaining how my own sits in relation to them.

His advice was to try and secure a literary agent initially.  I get the impression that, in many ways, getting a literary agent interested in your work is a similar challenge to getting a publisher interested.  Here are people who receive thousands of submissions and have simply their own commercial judgment and personal areas of interest to guide them in their selections of who they will represent.

The upside with a literary agent is that they have established relationships with publishers.  “Philip who…?” ringing a publisher is going to result in a very short conversation ending with them asking me to send in whatever they ask everyone else to send them.  A literary agent calling someone he or she has worked with before is likely to result in a much more constructive conversation.

The process is helped (enormously) by the fact that Francis is happy for me to mention him when I contact the agent he has suggested might be a good starting point.  It is, of course, no guarantee of success, but I know enough about the power of testimonials and primed thinking to be grateful of the chance to include a familiar name and recommendation in my opening paragraph.

One note I would add (at the risk of stating the obvious): even if you are fortunate enough to have a contact like Francis, take the time to read the literary agent (or publisher’s) website to see if they have any specific guidelines for submissions.  If they’ve taken the time to say that they want things a particular way why risk irritating them?

So my submission has been dispatched (by recorded mail because I would hate to be sitting here assuming it’s arrived safely) and all I can do is look at the phone and monitor my letter box in the hope that the person Francis thinks might be interested likes what I’ve done.

I’m not expecting to be lucky first time… but it would be nice!

Philip Graves

Philip Graves Uncategorized

So, having decided that I wanted to try and get my book published by a ‘proper/established/traditional’ publisher how do you decide who to send it to?

I had undertaken a course (run by Kevin Hogan) that helped enormously with the development of the book and how  I should approach getting it published, and which included some very good suggestions about what to say when you contacted a publisher, but that still leaves a very big world of publishing and me without much of a road map about where to start.

One of the things I discovered quite quickly is that publishers and literary agents ‘prefer’ to have the chance to consider your submission on their own; in other words they aren’t keen on the idea of me carpet-bombing the industry with my book.  It’s easy to see why this solus approach is in the interests of the publishers and agents and perhaps the risk of ignoring their preference is small, but it only takes someone interested in your book to speak to someone else that you’ve sent it to, and you’ve put that relationship at risk.

Perhaps naively I’ve opted for a ‘one at a time’ approach; I suppose I’ll never know if that’s right or not!

Another question to consider is, should I go straight to a publisher or should I get an agent?

It seems likely that an agent would have more chance of being heard by a publisher than an unknown author, and a good one should provide expertise on marketing and promotion too: along with the publisher it’s another person on the team supporting your work.

Of course, that comes at a price.  A percentage of your percentage would have to go to pay their commission.  At this (optimistic) stage I’m inclined to think that this would be a virtuous addition so I’m happy to pursue that route.

But that still leaves an awful lot of literary agents, so how do you know which of them to approach?

Received wisdom is that you should look for books like your own and see who represents those authors.

There is an alternative.  But it requires networking and the most extraordinary good luck. 

Next time I’ll tell you about Francis; every aspiring author should do their level best to find a Francis (although I fear they are extremely rare).

Philip Graves

Philip Graves Getting a Book Published, Uncategorized

I was lucky enough to be invited to Spinal Tap’s recent “One Night World Tour”.  Naturally they played two gigs because they also played at the Glastonbury festival.

For those not ever so familiar with the work of Spinal Tap, or who would enjoy a reminder, here’s a brief taste of guitarist Nigel Tufnell being interviewed about Stonehenge (a subject that has been something of an obsession for the band and about which they wrote a song):

The guys from Spinal Tap put on a hugely entertaining show…

Had some special guests like Keith Emmerson…

Invited a selected part of the audience to join them…

And had several people join in playing bass on ‘Big Bottom’…

At the aftershow party Justin Hawkins and I discussed the balance on the “Bass Shuttle” he’d designed and he was good enough to let me test it for myself (it’s very well balanced, surprisingly)…

Very little consumer behaviour-wise (I was a guest, so I didn’t even buy the ticket), but if they tour again in another 25 years I heartily recommend revelling in the wonderfully entertaining world of Spinal Tap’s tour!

Philip Graves

Philip Graves Uncategorized

A lot of my work in understanding consumers is based on watching consumer behaviour; people do give away quite a lot.

One of the reference points I also use quite a lot is children.  They aren’t so adept at hiding their feelings and thoughts and so tend to reveal even more of what’s going on in their minds. 

Given that, psychologically speaking, a lot of what makes us tick is well established by the age of two, this provides a wonderful window of opportunity for insights into what’s going on.

Here’s a behavioural example of the extent to which my daughter, aged four, likes reading.  She first revealed that she could read at the age of two, she’d picked it up from being around her brother we suppose, we hadn’t spent any time teaching her. 

I think it’s fair to say that she enjoys reading!

Philip Graves

Philip Graves Uncategorized

Technorati Profile

It turns out that setting up technorati is not as straightforward as it might be with WordPress.

This blog is simply to give technorati the code it wants – hopefully I can delete it soon!

Philip

Philip Graves Uncategorized