It seems from many of your comments about focus groups that many of you have experienced some of the problems I mentioned in relation to asking consumers about their perceptions. To be fair to focus groups I should point out that I was talking about research more generally. There’s little doubt in my mind that the focus group, per se, is far and away the most useless, unreliable, misleading and distorting ‘tool’ in the marketers armoury. Actually, I should qualify that a little. A focus group in a viewing facility is the pinnacle of disastrous research techniques, but the focus group part of that is no small component. I would really appreciate hearing more details from those of you who have had bad experiences with focus groups. Please email me if you have any stories to share (and I’m happy to respect requests for confidentiality). Back to the subject at […]
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 […]
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 […]
Too Much Choice
Following on from my post yesterday I thought I’d go into a bit more detail on the problem of choice, from a consumer perspective. Choice is attractive. Tell people that you have lots of alternatives and, for the most part, they will be more inclined to come to you. From this perspective more choice is better. But that’s not the whole story. Once consumers arrive and are required to actually make a choice, more options can lead to confusion (congnitive dissonance). That confusion can take several forms: Difficulty choosing between similar options. Difficulty selecting any one option as the better. Confusion over which product variable or attribute to attach most importance to. Anxiety about how they will feel about a choice they’re inclined towards, knowing that a particular (and also attractive) alternative was available at the time they chose. Customers may simply run out of energy (studies show cognitive processes burn […]
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