Monthly Archives: August 2013

Frequently companies are concerned about customer satisfaction. Are customers satisfied with the products and services on offer? It seems a sensible enough concern. And if you want to find out it’s a good idea to ask, isn’t it? Many organisations track satisfaction measures, both for their own company’s products or services, and for their competitors. A quantitative tracking study enables satisfaction to be gauged and tracked over time providing a gauge against which company performance can be assessed. But recent research suggests that measuring satisfaction may not be as useful as you think. It turns out that asking may well be pointless. If you work for a company that uses customer satisfaction ratings to evaluate your performance you should be very concerned by now! And if your interested in product evaluation, another area consumer research frequently investigates, you should also be concerned. Researchers presented research participants with products and asked […]

Everything’s relative. Except for truth, apparently. Philosophers point out that if you say “everything is relative” you’re making an absolute statement, rather than a relative one, and you’ve just defeated your own point. Philosophers are like that. One thing that is relative is what consumers think about the products they encounter. Which is a little odd, because we all like to believe that we know what we think; if we’re not sure of that everything feels a little precarious. However, this is just one of those conscious delusions we use to feel good about ourselves. This is all well and good when you’re simply telling yourself that you’re a great person who’s fabulous at everything, but less helpful when you want to understand consumer behaviour and exert maximum influence with your marketing. A recent study has uncovered a surprising dimension to the way in which consumers are influenced by what […]

Picture the scene, the Rolling Stones have left the stage, having got plenty of satisfaction from the reaction of the crowd and dripping with sweat, they’re ready for a refreshing beer (or six) and something to eat. “Let’s have pizza.” Mick says, spotting a pizza menu pinned to the dressing room wall. As usual he’s keen to establish himself as the leader of the group, but forgets the fact that he was once punched by Charlie Watts for asking, “Where’s my drummer?” “Yeah man, I need to eat now, man.” Keith surprisingly agrees without a fight and now no one will rock the boat by suggesting anything else. The tour manager finds his phone and gets ready to dial, before realising that this ramshackle bunch of multi-millionaires almost certainly won’t settle for any old pizza, they’ll have a favourite. So which brand of pizza will our musicians choose? Probably the […]

Getting something free is great. You can save yourself no end of money on market research by simply assuming that customers would like your product, provided it doesn’t cost them anything and they don’t have to give up anything else to get it. Honestly, you’ll shift thousands of whatever it is. But, of course, you won’t make any money. And that’s not ideal. One ingenious way around this problem is to give away something for free at the same time that a customer is buying something else. That way you get to send out all those irresistible messages that there’s something free to be had, whilst making the money you need from the revenue on other product. By virtue of a cunning piece of mental accounting you can split the profit across both products and, providing you haven’t ignored the cost of the two, still make a profit. Unfortunately, recent […]