Consumer Behaviour

One of the many challenges in product design is making colour choices. It feels (and is) extremely personal, but new research gives us some clues about what consumers want. Quite a lot of research has been done on individual colours, their connotations and how they influence consumer behaviour. Much of this is driven by the unconscious associations people have with those colours. For instance, if red has frequently been associated with warning signs or danger, it is helpful that our unconscious minds have adapted to notice that colour first: it wouldn’t be great if we allowed ourselves to get distracted by the millions of other visual elements in the landscape when what we need to see is the “Beware of imminent death” sign someone has considerately placed next to a hazard. As I wrote about previously, these unconscious associations can have unexpectedconsequences. But what about the use of different colours? […]

At the moment I’m doing interviews with the media about my book, Consumer.ology; there is quite a lot of concern about the extent to which consumers are open to manipulation as a result of retailers understanding consumer psychology better. My view is that optimising the retail environment is a sensible thing to do. Customers would expect a shop to make its window display look attractive – without necessarily understanding how that might be priming their experience – why not have it smell ‘right’ and sound ‘right’ too? Nevertheless, I do accept that the unscrupulous retailer can take advantage of other aspects of consumer psychology (and yes, these are explained in Consumer.ology). In particular, by exploiting heuristics (rules of thumb), it is very easy to influence someone to feel differently about a product than they otherwise would. My view on under-taking this sort of marketing activity is that it is foolish. […]

A lot of people are superstitious. The funny thing about superstitions is that we hatch an idea (or are told) that there is a connection between one thing and another and, if it suits us, we’re prepared to go on believing it even when there is no sensible basis for there being a connection between the two. Horse shoes are lucky. Finding a four leaf clover will bring you good fortune. You should carry around a rabbit’s foot for good luck (yours that is, not the rabbit’s). Many elite sportsmen and women have superstitions about when they put on their shirt, which ball they serve with after they’ve served an ace or what order they do things in before a big game. Of course, they do all these same things on the occasions when they don’t win, don’t serve an ace or get carried off the field injured; but that […]

Tell me all about it, you naughty thing. or Tell me all about it, you naughty thing.       No one likes to feel self-conscious. Recently I listened to interview with the actor, author, comedian and TV presenter, Stephen Fry. He was asked to sing a song called “Big John” that is essentially spoken rather than sung. Fry has made no secret of the fact that, despite his love of music, he can’t sing a note. As an actor, you might have thought that this task would have been well within his capabilities, but he stammered and stuttered and then stopped; “You’ve made me all self-conscious!” he declared. There are few things more unsettling than being made self-conscious. And yet, most market research invites the conscious mind to look in on itself; it asks the respondent to become self-conscious. It’s something we’re hopeless at. Partly because we’re unaware of […]