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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 start…

opinion polls, consumer.ology, michael blastland, BBC

Before you ask, no I haven’t been to every train station in the world.  But sometimes you realise that an experience is so bad that it has reached a zenith of consumer misery that would be unsurpassable. In any quest there comes a tim…

I have removed the name of this jeweller from my review because I recognise that on e transaction isn’t a representative sample on which to judge anyone – we all have bad days. However, all my retail reviews do name the retailer…

I once had a conversation with the Marketing Director of a brand that is a household name in which he suggested that no products had updated their brand identities.  We were having the conversation because his main brand was so tired that s…

It’s been a while since I updated my series on getting a book published, partly because I’ve been so busy with book-related activity! The publishing industry works backwards.  That’s not a slur on their approach, just an o…

Yesterday I visited the Marketing Week ‘Insight Show’ at London’s Olympia Exhibition Centre.  I was underwhelmed. For the most part the market research companies who were exhibiting were pedalling the same old methodologie…

It’s often claimed in market research circles that perception is everything. I suspect this stems from the thought that, provided the customer perceives things as being good then that is what matters, be it customer service, product q…

So here’s the thing. If I convinced you that crossing the road without looking was a wonderful, amazing, liberating, life-transforming experience, and I mean really convinced you so that you believed it, what would happen? You would t…