The True Meaning of Christmas?

In the run up to December 25th I received several requests from broadcasters to talk about Christmas, how much we spend and whether the “true meaning” gets lost in this consumer age of ours. I was happy to contribute to the debate and add my point of view. But the best time to analyse Christmas and its meaning is now, a few days after the event – or depending on how you look at it – still in the middle of it.  Rather than muddle matters with our self-perceptions and idealisations, look back at our Christmas behaviour and see what happened. I believe that, here in the UK, the following generalisations will apply to most people – I could be wrong, this is a blog after all, not a piece of formal research: People get together with family and friends far more frequently and for longer than at other times […]

Customer Service: Sometimes Firms Don’t Get It

Large companies spend a fortune on customer service: implementing it, training people, monitoring it and, yes, even researching it. And yet all too often when you deal with a company it seems apparent that they just don’t get it. Take Barclays – one of the largest financial services companies in the UK.  Last week I was in the centre of Cambridge and, for reasons that weren’t immediately obvious, they had a team of blokes dressed as Grenadier Guards (the ones who wear the bearskin headgear) except with corporate blue tunics rather than red and giving out balloons rather than shooting at people. No doubt this was a bold marketing campaign to draw attention to what a lovely bank Barclays is.  And it must be said that the people in uniform were great; joking with shoppers as they passed by. Unfortunately, the person I dealt with in their customer service department […]

When Market Research Gets it Wrong

With my book Consumer.ology now published I’m starting to hear back from people who have heard about it, read it or read or heard an article or interview about it. One of the very positive upsides to this is that more people are starting to share their stories of market research getting it wrong.  Whilst I managed to unearth a good number of examples for the book, the fact is that it’s not really in anyone’s interests to publicise occasions when money spent on research was wasteful.  Occasionally there’ll be times when someone’s decision was vindicated and they’ll speak about it, but often the people making the final decision are also the ones who have decided to spend several thousand pounds on research, and choosing to ignore it doesn’t reflect particularly well on that decision even if it’s the right thing to do! One reader contacted me to tell me […]