Since we’ve been discussing stories with Kevin, I thought I’d share this one here. Readers of my Mindshop! E-zine will see it when they receive the next edition (sorry for the duplication, but you can comment on it easily here). ———————————————————————————————————————————- I sat looking across the desk at the man holding a set of white boards close to his chest. “We’re really excited about this,” he said nodding confidently, whilst looking up at the rest of us with big eyes that said “please me”. I could feel the energy in the room, the sense of anticipation, the others not aware and not affected by the incongruence between his tone and his body language. I sat back with an impending sense of doom. “We’re sure this is going to be so good for the brand.” His statement did nothing to change my feelings, but the others were shifting on their seats […]
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 […]
What Makes a Consumer Choose?
Persuasion master Duane Cunningham was interested to know what causes a customer to choose a product (and dating expert April Brasswell was curious curious too). I suppose, when it comes down to it, this is the most important question for a consumer behaviouralist like me to answer. The difficulty is that it’s a much easier question to ask than to answer – not that that makes it a bad question, I hasten to add. As it happens I’ve been steadily cataloguing (if that’s the right word – which it probably isn’t) the reasons that customers buy something. You may not be surprised to learn that there are quite a lot of factors that can be involved: thus far I’ve detailed 41. When it comes to any single consumer purchase there may be any number of these involved and the purchase is triggered (I suspect) when enough of them exist with sufficient strength to generate the […]
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