Consumer Behaviour

I honestly believed that I would stick with PC based computing.  After twenty years using PCs they’re more familiar than my wife and kids!

Despite all the positive things friends have said about Macs, and even though I have owned an iPhone for the last couple of years, there were good reasons not to change.  PCs have always worked well for me and, on the occasions when I have used Macs, I’ve always found them uncomfortably unfamiliar.

If nothing else, we humans are creatures of habit: it takes quite a shove to push us out of our comfort zone and into unchartered territory.  For me and PCs that shove was Dell.

I enjoy observing my own consumer decision-making and, although I know that much of the action takes place outside of my conscious awareness, my work on the consumer unconscious mind gives me a dual perspective for my own consumer behaviour.

I’ve owned several Dells, you could have called me brand loyal.

When my Dell XPS 420 greeted me with news of a critical drive failure (Windows Recovery did nothing of the sort) my immediate reaction on being told to replace it was to go to Dell.

Within half an hour I had found a specification that worked for me and ordered a laptop.

So, despite the trauma of a crashed computer, I still went back to the company I knew and that had worked for me in the past: call it the “better the devil you know” heuristic.

However, I discovered, after a fairly painful on-line ordering process, that somehow my billing address had been entered into my account, but that my old address – one that I haven’t lived at for four years – was still recorded as the delivery address.

Unperturbed, I immediately called Dell to ask them to correct the address.  To my astonishment this was not possible.

My bank had verified the payment, but Dell’s own systems had held the order up because the delivery address didn’t match the card address (the whole reason for my call and a helpful safeguard against fraud).

However, apparently this couldn’t be corrected with a few key strokes and would take 3-5 days.  This despite the fact that the address I wanted the item sent to was the only one that would have passed their internal fraud checks – the one that matched the card I’d paid with.

Staggered that a computing company could have such cumbersome systems I asked to speak to the department concerned.  I was told that communication with them was only by email.

Frustrated, I asked them to cancel the order.  Rightly or wrongly, my intention at this point was still to order another computer from Dell after updating my address details.

I was told that I couldn’t get confirmation of my order being cancelled for 24 hours – it might not be possible to cancel it. Both the operator and I knew that the order hadn’t been despatched, it was just sitting there because of the erroneous address.  And yet, it couldn’t be cancelled!  (I should add that this wasn’t for a ‘made-to-order’ machine.)

This was the final straw.  I decided that to continue a consumer relationship with a company whose systems were so fundamentally consumer unfriendly was asking for trouble: heaven help me if I had a problem with the new computer.

A visit to the local stores involved the anticipated issue of computer staff who knew less about the products than me (and I don’t know much).  Enquiring about Sony’s power-save feature, which offered the potential of squeezing out more than the pathetic two hours of battery life from their top of the line machine, resulted the ‘revelation’ that it used less power and meant that the laptop battery would last a lot longer if you weren’t using it.

I wandered over to the Apple display, to consider if I could make the switch.  There was a lot to consider: running Microsoft products on a Mac, transferring my old PC files, even running software not designed for Macs.

When I heard a voice ask if I needed help I was ready to say “No thanks” until I glanced up and saw that the person was dressed differently from the rest of the salespeople I’d encountered.  He was wearing a black t-shirt with a white Apple logo.

My heart leapt.

Or rather my unconscious mind fired off a set of associations; all the brand values and social proof about Apple that have permeated through to my unconscious were fired up, along with the creative values that have been shown to be stimulated by (unconscious) exposure to the Apple brand.

“Yes,” I found myself saying, “you probably can help.”

Half an hour later every question I’d had had been answered.

The contrast between the Apple staff and the Dell phone experience could not have been more marked.  Similarly, the contrast between the useless store staff and the ‘branded’ Apple employee was enormous.

Apple was already delivering a nicer life (and I hadn’t bought the MacBook yet).

Being a great brand isn’t (conceptually) hard.  It requires just two things.  An attractive concept and congruent delivery.  Apple get top marks for delivering both.

I don’t intend to become an Apple evangelist: I think my brother is doing enough of that for the UK population, but I can’t hide my admiration for their products and services.

Philip Graves

Philip Graves consumer behaviour, Customer Service Apple, consumer behaviour, Customer Service, Dell

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

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 consumer behaviour, Uncategorized 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