One of the challenges with studying consumer behaviour is that the behaviour itself is incontrovertible, but the interpretation of that behaviour is often much more open to debate: what caused what? What can be inferred from what happened Recently, when I casually commented on a reported change in consumer behaviour, the person I was speaking to got quite indignant. You can read about what happened and what I learned in the process here (it’s a sneak preview of one of the articles that will be in my next Mindshop! e-Zine, out tomorrow). And linking to it here gives those who do read it a chance to comment if they would like to – I’d love to hear your thoughts. Philip Graves
The Consumer Need Myth and Why Customers Really Buy
You’d be hard pressed to find any marketing text book that doesn’t talk at some point about “consumer need”. It’s a simple enough concept: the products that will do best are those that meet a requirement that someone has. At the next level you may find there’s a discussion on the types of consumer need. Broadly these break down into physical and emotional needs. So, by way of simplistic example, the former says that, because you’re cold you will buy a hat. The latter that because you want to feel special you’ll buy an expensive hat. This is all fine up to a point. But I happen to think that most consumer behaviour is nothing to do with “need”. This is a problem because the notion of consumer need suggests that, at some level, a consumer is aware of what it is they are getting as a result of acquiring […]
Consumers: Reality is Over-rated Part iii
Having suggested that perception is far more important that the reality of experience in determining consumer behaviour, you might think that finding out how a consumer perceives your brand is a useful exercise. And, of course, you’d be right. You might suggest, therefore, that asking a sample of your target consumer audience or existing customers would be a smart think to do. And you’d be a lot less right. In fact, if you don’t mind me saying so, you’d be wrong. There are a number of reasons for this. Firstly, we aren’t always aware of our perceptions. A lot of our reactions happen at an unconscious, emotional level. We like to believe we’re wonderfully good at decoding this responses consciously and post-rationalising them accurately, but we really aren’t. We just make it up and then convince ourselves that what we’ve just told ourselves is true. This is what I call “the […]
Consumers: Reality is Over-rated Part ii
Judging from the replies yesterday, some of you are certainly familiar with the concept that customer perceptions may not tally with reality. Indeed, it’s fair to say that there are even a few cliches on the subject. And I’m the sort of person who dislikes cliches and enjoys challenging them whenever possible; they can be an excuse for not bothering to think about something. For example, take the old chestnut of which came first the chicken or the egg? It seems pretty clear to me that it was the egg, so using this as a phrase to convey the point that the sequencing of events is unclear to you, simply suggests to me that you haven’t thought about it enough! [Where something evolved to a point where whomever decides such things was willing to say, “Yes, what you have there is what I would call a chicken” it must have […]
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