Monthly Archives: August 2013

To Sell More Think Sheep!

To Sell More Think Sheep!

Would you say you were more of a loner or more a herd-minded creature? A bear or a sheep, that’s the question?  (The other question could be, “What the heck’s this got to do with consumer behaviour or marketing?” Hold on, I’m getting there, I promise.) Most of us like to focus more on our individuality when we answer this question, but if you look at the way we live there’s as much commonality about what each of us does as there is with sheep. OK, so the range of activities is smaller, but if you drew up a list of the things we do, places we go, even the times of day that we do them, you’ll see that everyone starts to look fairly similar. So whilst we cling to the illusion that it’s just them and not us that’s part of the herd, what can we learn about […]

The Perils of Focus Groups

The Perils of Focus Groups

Focus groups have become part of the business and political landscape. They have acquired what you might call ‘cultural validity’: since lots of people use them, and lots of people talk about them, and lots of people have even participated in them, they must be okay mustn’t they? Sometimes clients ask me whether or not they should use a focus group and what sort of consumer research this approach is best suited to. I give one of two answers: the short answer, that it is safest never to use them, and the longer answer which I will share with you here. There are six fundamental problems with focus groups: 1. The Nature of Thought It would be one thing to explore consumers’ thoughts within the dynamic of a group if one believed that our thoughts are plucked from some preordained mental pot. When prompted, someone would go to their pot, […]

The Perils of Focus Groups (Part Two)

The Perils of Focus Groups (Part Two)

Continuing my article on the problem of using focus groups to investigate consumer’s thoughts, feelings and behaviour. (Part one is here.) 4. People are Lazy Another problem that stems from our thoughts not being created in the vacuum of our own minds is the laziness of our thought processes. If I ask you to think of a number now, what would you say? Seven is most likely, for some reason it is the number of people tend to pick, but it is also likely that you would pick a number between one and 10. Most of the time when people say ‘pick a number’ it is in this range.  Rather than go to the mental effort of questioning what parameters the questioner might have in mind, the easy thing to do is pick on this basis. What’s interesting though, is what happens when you prime someone to think of a bigger […]

Cheer Up, They’ll Buy (shhh… it’s a secret)

Cheer Up, They’ll Buy (shhh… it’s a secret)

Despite what consumer research would have us believe, people are very bad at working out why they’ve really done something. To be fair we are all taken in by the vain illusion that we are in conscious control of pretty much everything we do. But it is just an illusion. When you’re marketing a product it’s easy to focus on the rational features and benefits, when in fact what’s going on around the edges may have just as much to do with whether or not a customer buys from you. It’s often all about emotion. Don’t you hate it when someone you know, who’s had a bad day, takes it out on you? You make an innocent remark and all of a sudden you find you’re being yelled at for no reason. You’re pretty sure that had you said the same thing on another day it would not have led […]