Consumer Behaviour

The path to writing a book and getting it published is, without doubt, one that winds a lot.

On the way there will be plenty of dead-ends and no shortage of obstacles to circumnavigate.

However, what makes all the anguish worthwhile, are the moments that result from starting out and that are every bit as gratifying as the writer’s block, rejection letters and suggested revisions are aggravating.

I find there are usually three ways to deal with virtually any situation in life: ignore it and carry on regardless, take it badly or use it for inspiration.  It’s no coincidence that there really was something to learn from each ‘bad’ moment along the way.

Writer’s block: (which I hardly ever got) you’re trying to hard, go and do something else for a bit, or skip this section for now, it’s obviously not flowing.

Rejection letters: there’s always a lot of luck involved, but are you sure you’ve sent the book to the people who are most likely to have an interest in it?

‘Suggested’ Revisions: the biggest benefit of having a publisher is someone else who cares about your book almost as much as you do looking at it objectively.  Every single one of the suggestions my publisher and editor put to me have made the book better.  I confess that, once or twice, I had to count to ten, because I thought the book was finished.  Fortunately I made it to the last finger on the second hand, started to look at what they were advocating without the frustration from the process and the book was better for it.

And what about those moments that make it all worthwhile?  I’m reliably told that having the first copy in your hand is one of them, but I’ve not reached that point yet.  Thus far the highlights have been:

• Realising I had the structure of a book that excited me: you’re going to be working on it for a while, so you need to keep yourself interested!
• Every five thousand word threshold as I wrote.
• Finishing the first draft and seeing that I had written a book (even if I did have no clue whether anyone would be interested enough in it to publish it).
• Getting a meeting with a publisher.
• Walking through the door of the publishers.
• Receiving a contract.
• Getting a cheque for the first part of the advance.
• Seeing the cover for the first time.

And here is that cover….

Consumer.ology

It’s still making me smile….

Philip Graves

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

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

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

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

I was working at a client’s store, watching customers for a few hours as I do, but I wished I had been watching my car instead.

It was parked just outside the store, but whilst I was figuring out what was going on in the minds of people looking at products on the shelves, some thieving so-and-so was helping themself to the wing mirror from my car.

My first reaction on seeing part of my car missing was to imagine what would have happened had I seen the thief at work on my car: for a moment I saw myself running across, tapping him on the shoulder and then beating his skull on the side of my vehicle.

However, this fantasy was soon interrupted by a dose of healthy pragmatism: I’m not that brave, I haven’t assaulted anyone since I was in a playground fight at the age of ten and given the way of the world it’s perfectly possible that the person who thought nothing of stealing part of my car would have thought equally little of hurting me.  On reflection it was for the best that I didn’t see the act in progress.

But the loss of my wing mirror did give me a fascinating insight into human behaviour.  I occupy a strange world where, because I spend so much time analysing the consumer psychology I’m observing, I can sometimes analyse my own unconscious behaviour by observing my own actions and reactions.

So what did I learn and how might it be useful in terms of consumer behaviour?

1. Old (unconsciously programmed) habits die hard.

I had to drive an hour home with no wing mirror.  I knew that I didn’t have one – it was a source of considerable annoyance.  Had anyone asked me if I knew my wing mirror was missing I would probably have directed some of my anger at the thief at them.  But… did that stop me looking at the space where it used to be every time I changed lanes? Of course not.

Similarly, where consumer behaviour is established through repeated actions it will take a huge intervention to change it.

2. Fear is a Great Motivator

With my mirror gone I needed a new strategy for changing lanes.  I realised that I usually used a combination of the rear view mirror and wing mirror when looking for a gap in the traffic.  With the wing mirror gone it was feasible to only use the rear view mirror: by looking for a space behind I could see the gap and extrapolate accurately where it would be when I changed lanes.  However, I needed the reassurance of seeing there was nothing in the space I was moving into: so every time I was about to change I had to look over my shoulder before I could make the progress I wanted to on my journey. 

In the same way, consumers need to get past any fears their unconscious mind throws up before they can get to the pleasurable part of buying.

3. Familiar Wins Over Better

Whilst this blind-spot-free method of looking over my shoulder should have been more reassuring I was cursing the fact that I had to do it each time; partly because I was cursing the fact that some git had pinched my mirror.  But what really irked me was that the good (i.e. safe, dependable and efficient) means of checking that I’d been using for over twenty years was no longer available.   [I should point out that my car's mirror did have a blind-spot eliminator - although these still leave a small blind-spot.]

Often companies will get frustrated that a customer won’t buy their product when they ‘know’ it is better than the competitors’: it’s important to factor in how familiar an alternative product is too.

So there you have it; I managed to find some useful reminders from an annoying situation.  I also managed to find a new replacement mirror and fit it myself for £22.00 (rather than the £150 that BMW wanted to do the job).

So if I do find someone helping themselves to part of my car again it may simplest for all concerned if I give them the money… then whilst they’re surprised I can smash their head against the side of my car

Philip Graves

Philip Graves consumer behaviour BMW, consumer behaviour

I pondered whether to use this blog on consumer behaviour to detail my book-writing journey and have decided that, since the book is (of course) about consumer behaviour and market research, it’s fair enough.  And I’ll be explaining elements of psychology that crop up along the way too, so I hope it will be interesting from a number of angles.

So, I’ve written my book. 

And writing a book is quite hard.  Between making the decision that I wanted to write a book and sitting there thinking, “Bloody hell, I’ve finished” there were weeks of sitting and researching and typing and hoping and wondering.

The wondering is quite preoccupying.  Writing is a very solitary process and you occasionally wonder if what you’re writing is worthwhile, whether anyone would be in the least bit interested in what you’re writing about and, perhaps most worryingly, whether you’re capable of writing at all.  The problem is that there’s no easy way of answering any of those questions until you’ve finished, and even then you probably don’t really know.

The best writing advice I received was from published author Kevin Hogan who said that I should never go back and edit before the book was finished.  Too many people end up with a perfect first chapter, or first page, but nothing more.  You just have to write until it’s done, then make it better.

For me the best writing aid was the Microsoft Word ‘word count’ feature.  I’ve always found numbers reassuring and it was comforting to track the progress I made (which I did on an old envelope).  This provided me with the most astonishing discovery; if you write at least a little each day the word count increases and you get closer to your target (I know, astonishing isn’t it).

What I discovered, psychologically-speaking, was that if you want to become a writer you have to pretend to be a writer for a couple of months, after which time you forget you’re pretending and the ingrained habit of writing becomes something you find yourself doing.  Fairly soon the serotonin buzz of seeing the word count tick over another 5,000 word threshold was significantly greater than the low doses available from watching re-runs of Friends or some other TV show that I wasn’t really that bothered about.

I’ve heard people say that you should stop watching TV if you want to make time to write.  Undoubtedly that’s a great idea, but in order to want to do something else like writing you have to push yourself to the point where that something else is more rewarding.   Just like with dieting, wanting an outcome is unlikely to be enough for most people, you’ve got to force the behaviour first.  It’s easy to be smug and say, “Stop watching TV and write”, but it doesn’t work that way for most of us.

So having written my book what now?

Over the coming weeks I’m going to share my experience of trying to get a book published. 

Some of what I’m going to write about has happened (but over such a long time period that you would have undoubtedly lost interest if you’d been living through it in real time – I nearly lost interest and it’s my book!). 

You’re going to meet some interesting characters, a few villains and perhaps even a hero or two. 

One thing is clear, no one knows what the ending will be.

Next time I’ll talk about the different routes to getting your book into print, what I believe the benefits are of each, and which route I plan to take.   I’ll hope you’ll come along for the ride.

Philip Graves

Philip Graves Getting a Book Published consumer behaviour, consumer research, getting published, market research, psychology, writing a book

You know how it is, you think about something for so long that it gets harder to do it not easier!

Today I had a couple of hours free and decided to tackle the long overdue consumer behaviour website make-over.  Of course, once I got started it took considerably longer than a couple of hours, but once you get started it only gets easier to keep going: that first step is always the longest!

I’ve taken note of feedback from the blog; now articles will all appear on one page, but I’ll still link them from the front page too so that visitors to the site can get an immediate indication that there are frequent updates.  I’ll also be changing the main box from time to time as new products come out.

I decided that the video had had so much positive reaction – and I know it has already contributed to increased demand for my services – that it deserved a higher profile position, at least for a while.

Please do pop back here and let me know what you think.

Philip

Philip Graves consumer behaviour consumer behaviour

When it comes to understanding consumers it’s always important to consider the issues from a rational perspective, and then completely ignore what you conclude.

Why?

Because consumer behaviour isn’t, for the most part, rationally based.

Recently I happened across a great example.

The UK supermarket chain Waitrose has always operated at the higher end of the market, catering to customers who are willing to pay a little more for higher quality produce.  Waitrose’s marketing makes much of the fact that they source their products carefully; some of their packaging will state which farm meat has come from for instance.

With the economic downturn all of the supermarkets have been keen to communicate low price messages; which isn’t easy since most of them operated on a low price platform anyway.  Indeed, the big two supermarkets (Asda who are owned by Wal Mart) and Tesco frequently squeeze suppliers brutally hard in order to drive down prices.  With such large shares of the grocery market, an efficient supplier has to decide between saying goodbye to most of their profit, down-grading their product, or losing a large proportion of their sales in an instant.

With most suppliers already squeezed the supermarkets have created new products, sometimes positioned below their already lower-priced own-label offerings, to sell more cheaply.  Sometimes they create new brands for these products, and sometimes they package them as new own-brand offerings.

Waitrose introduced an ‘Essentials’ own-label range and it seemed to be selling well.

I looked at the pizzas.

The ‘Essentials’ pizzas were more expensive than the regular own-label equivalents!

Looking on the company’s website I also notice that, even when the per pizza price is lower, the price per kilogram is higher on their ‘budget’ pizzas.

But they still sell.

Because customers buy the concept.  If the first instance primes them to believe that the product is cheaper, and in particular if that first experience isn’t bad from a quality perspective, then future purchases are made as an emotional reaction: seeing an ‘Essentials’ product is an opportunity to make a worthy purchase – a purchase that feels like a good, money-saving decision in these difficult times.

Few people will check what the actual cost is or how it lines up against alternatives – let’s face it that would make shopping extremely time-consuming.  And so the company can make a greater profit from a lower-priced product!

And to add to their prize the supermarkets, having drawn people in with the promise of lower-priced options, have the opportunity to influence the customers visiting their stores.  Feeling good about the money they believe they’ve saved, some customers will indulge in small ways elsewhere in the store.

Multi-buys will feel like great value, but lead to more products being purchased and, once sitting their on the shelf, the likelihood of their being consumed is high.  Consumption increases because of the constant visual prompt and feeling that a plentiful supply is available. It may even lead to feeling that a similar quantity of purchase is required next time, even if the offer is no longer present.

I’m not suggesting that such practices are admirable, desirable or morally justifiable.  But they provide a useful insight into the workings of the consumer mind.

Philip Graves

P.S. If you want to learn more about consumer behaviour take a look at my eBook, The Secret of Selling: How to Sell to Your Customer’s Unconscious Mind.

Philip Graves consumer behaviour consumer behaviour, priming, psychology, why customers buy

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

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