Ged Carroll

Category: consumer behaviour | 消費者行為 | 소비자 행동

Consumer behaviour is central to my role as an account planner and about how I look at the world.

Being from an Irish household growing up in the North West of England, everything was alien. I felt that I was interloping observer who was eternally curious.

The same traits stand today, I just get paid for them. Consumer behaviour and its interactions with the environment and societal structures are fascinating to me.

The hive mind of Wikipedia defines it as

‘the study of individuals, groups, or organizations and all the activities associated with the purchase, use and disposal of goods and services.’

It is considered to consist of how the consumer’s emotions, attitudes and preferences affect buying behaviour. Consumer behaviour emerged in the 1940–1950s as a distinct sub-discipline of marketing, but has become an interdisciplinary social science that blends elements from psychology, sociology, social anthropology, anthropology, ethnography, marketing and economics (especially behavioural economics or nudge theory as its often known).

I tend to store a mix of third party insights and links to research papers here. If you were to read one thing on this blog about consumer behaviour, I would recommend this post I wrote on generations. This points out different ways that consumer behaviour can be misattributed, missed or misinterpreted.

Often the devil is in the context, which goes back to the wide ranging nature of this blog hinted at by the ‘renaissance’ in renaissance chambara. Back then I knew that I needed to have wide interests but hadn’t worked on defining the ‘why’ of having spread such a wide net in terms of subject matter.

  • Scratching + more things

    History of scratching

    A brief history of scratching | FACT magazine – a great piece on scratching but skips over many of the greats prior to Q-Bert et al such as Mr Mixx, Cash Money, DJ Supreme and DJ Pogo. Scratching went through massive changes from the mid-1980s to the mid 1990s. Q-Bert et al were standing on the shoulders of other scratching innovators

    Consumer behaviour

    Researchers reveal millennials will take a 25,000 photos of themselves in their lifetime | Daily Mail Online – lifeblogging or qualitative ‘quantified self’?

    Bill Drummond (of The KLF) fame did this really good talk about how the iPod (and you could add smartphones) have changed our relationship with music

    Marketing

    Tic-Tac have put together a great tie-in with local Hong Kong independent musicians and music festival Clockenflap (Hong Kong’s answer to Glastonbury). Budding artists can submit their own video with a chance to play at Clockenflap.

    FutureDeluxe did this great bit of CGI work for the adidas X Primeknit football boot.

    Media

    Cross Device Tracking Creates New Privacy Concerns, FTC Says | Advertising Age – “They do this under the veil of anonymous identifiers and hashed P.I.I. [personally-identifiable information], but these identifiers are still persistent and can provide a strong link to the same individual online and offline,” Ms. Ramirez said, in language that challenges the typical rhetoric from companies that track consumers.”Not only can these profiles be used to draw sensitive inferences about consumers, there is also a risk of unexpected and unwelcome use of data generated from cross device tracking” (paywall) – interesting that cross device tracking is seen as a ‘new privacy concern’ rather than an established one. This delay between regulatory attention and development is why cross device tracking companies have such an advantage over governments and consumers

    TBS is giving eSports its mainstream moment with new weekly program – Digiday – interesting move, US media following normal practice in Korea

    Retailing

    Here’s where teens shop as old favorite stores go extinct | Fusion – Malls still are super important to teen culture as physical spaces you can go to hangout without parents

    Security

    From Radio to Porn, British Spies Track Web Users’ Online Identities | The Intercept – basically you have no privacy, presumably this would allow them to zoom in on Tor users at some point?

    Software

    Google faces new US antitrust scrutiny, this time over smartphones – CNET – the US antitrust scrutiny could turn to action that would  fragment Android distributions quite dramatically… More Google related content here.

  • Green labels + more news

    Green labels

    There are more than 450 meanings behind “green” labels – Eco-conscious shoppers have probably noticed hordes of new “green-approved,” “100% natural” eco-friendly goods—claiming to be “certified” by some organization or other—popping up on store shelves. Green labels have many problems. One of them is that environmentalists can’t agree on what’s green so green labels are challenged. Let’s take take hybrids versus old cars on carbon footprint – since most carbon release is in manufacture, yet the hybrid cars would sell on green labels. Or electric cars overall, we don’t understand the energy requirement to recycle them yet they will get green labels. Ands thats before you look at how electricity is generated where they are being sold. Chinese electric cars may get green labels, but the majority of China’s electricity generation comes from coal-fired power stations.

    Business

    I, Cringely Amazon’s cloud monopoly – I, Cringely – Bob Cringely provides some interesting insights into the market position of Amazon regarding cloud services. It also highlights the challenges that Alibaba, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and SAP in addressing Amazon’s cloud monopoly

    Yahoo, NHL Ban Employees from Paid Fantasy-Sports Sites | WSJ – ethics (paywall)

    Consumer behaviour

    68% of Chinese men are smokers—and millions will die because of it | Quartz – most of the cigarette brands are owned by state owned firms and China has a surplus of males to females. More China related posts here.

    Innovation

    Weekend edition—The lure of Mars, citizen Schmidt, lobster mysteries  – Hot on the heels of the release of the action movie The Martian—and the discovery that the red planet still has liquid water—NASA has unveiled a bold three-stage plan for getting humans to Mars – interesting lessons in messaging and storytelling from this

    Marketing

    adam&eveDDB, Temptations Dress Up Cats for the Holidays – Ad Week – blatant link bait

    Has Essena O’Neill signalled the end of influencer marketing? | Econsultancy – probably not, influencer marketing is too much ‘on trend’ but it does beg the question are the fees worth it?

    Online

    WeChat reading rates are dropping. How much, and why? – In mid-2015, the number of views of WeChat subscription accounts started to decline. Some popular accounts saw a decline of more than 50% in readership. More on WeChat here.

    product insights from wechat — Medium – interesting WeChat insights

    Technology

    Will You Ever Be Able to Upload Your Brain? – NYTimes.com – so your cryogenics is probably wasted

    Web of no web

    Watch How to Eat a Virtual Cookie | MUNCHIES – how is a virtual cookie possible? By altering the taste of food with different visual cues using virtual reality techniques – literally creating a virtual cookie.

    Wireless

    iPhone Vs Samsung: Apple is still the marketshare leader | BGR – Apple still commands more than 90% of all the profits in the smartphone market

  • WeChat Life Report

    Chinese consumers literally live a WeChat life as shown by this great  collection of consumer behaviour data on WeChat. Over the past year WeChat has expanded the services that it provides to include Skype like conference calls, which changes and expands the behaviour in this report. (Presentation on Slideshare)

     

    Key takeouts

    • The ubiquity of WeChat can’t be over stated with over 93% usage in tier one cities. It will grow over time in lower tier cities for a couple of reasons. There will be a network effect that will reach out of the tier one cities and into the lower tiers and countryside. Secondly, WeChat services will start to permeate out of the tier one cities and into the lower tiers. You will then have a virtual cycle due to network effects and ever-increasing ubiquity
    • Call and message data shows how it binds the diaspora back to friends and loved ones in China. The Chinese talk about ‘near and far networks’. But WeChat closes the gap, meals can be shared with photos and videos. Voice messages popular with older users also helps with asynchronous communications over difficult time zones
    • Chinese people tend to exercise during the week, rather than at the weekend according to WeChat fitness data. The idea being for rest is an insight and an opportunity for fitness and sports apparel companies
    • Male shoppers spending 30% more than female shoppers  was an interesting statistic emblematic of WeChat life. Generally men are not as enthusiastic a shopper as women are. They have to save for a home, a car and marriage. My take was that women offer WeChat a growth opportunity in payments; if it can address the underlying cause of this disparity
    • The average social circle on WeChat at 128 is very close to the Dunbar number

    More on WeChat here.

  • Nudges + more things

    The Power of Nudges, for Good and Bad – NYTimes.com – how loss aversion and other behavioural traits  (or nudges) can be used as methods for social change and political change. These elements have already been used in UK government projects and the advertising world. They are the reason why games are addictive and so is swiping on Tinder. (paywall) – more on consumer behaviour including the impact of nudges here.

    Chat App Firm Line Focuses On Services After Adding Just 1M MAUs In 3 Months | TechCrunch – I don’t think that this is as bad as the TechCrunch seems to think. US focused services and China focused services are about the advertising eco-system and scale.  LINE hasn’t really tried to blow out the market penetration beyond Asian markets yet. It does really well in places like Thailand, Taiwan and Japan. It is also a media franchise rather like Sanrio, given the licenceable nature of its sticker characters like Brown. Also ARPU (average revenue per user) is as important as numbers – profit share vs. market share. This has been demonstrated in other sectors such as the smartphone market, where Apple has historically earned 70 to 90 percent of smartphone profits from just 15 percent market share.

    U.S. Technology Device Ownership 2015 | Pew Research Center – good data points on device usage by US consumers.

    Hong Kong pupils at risk of ‘becoming like Foxconn workers’ in education system, says former principal – it is problematic for two reasons. Firstly, that kids will be put in such a high stress position by the Hong Kong education system. The second reason is that Foxconn as become a verb for stressful conditions. That is damaging for both Hon Hai Electronics and their customer base. The idea of damaging stressful conditions being so tightly linked with the company name is damaging. It’s like a really bad version of ‘Hoover’ and vacuum cleaner linkage.  (paywall)

  • Mac vs PC + more news

    Microsoft and partners revive Mac vs PC ads — without mentioning Mac – CNET – This is all a bit odd. If you’re going to do a competitive comparison you have to mention the competition. That and the humour was why the Mac vs PC ads worked. Not mentioning them looks like Voldemort like fear in this context. Yet the ads seem to be run more like a PR campaign where you don’t mention the competitor. More Microsoft related content here.

    Taking Stock With Teens – Fall 2015 – US only research, OTT video increase is no surprise, what is how far Hulu has fallen

    The subprime ‘unicorns’ that do not look a billion dollars – FT.com – Michael Moritz calling out unicorn businesses due to their risks, negative sentiment to Silicon Valley boom. No big deal except that Moritz is a former journalist who knew the likes of Steve Jobs well. He then moved to Sequoia Capital and funded businesses like Google, Yahoo!, PayPal and Zappos (paywall)

    Is Tencent leading the way or lagging behind Facebook? | Walk the Chat

    The CEO of one of South Africa’s largest mobile networks thinks Whatsapp is a freeloader | Quartz – interesting that WeChat clocks in at 7% usage for South Africans

    HKMA warns banks about security loopholes with NFC credit cards – the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) ordered banks Monday to conduct a thorough review of the security of their credit cards

    Hong Kong Luxury Stores See Worst “Golden Week” Ever – overly dramatic but interesting

    New-media firms shift attention to TV  – online a training ground for media mainstream?

    The DraftKings Crash | Slate – Nevada gaming laws may make Overseas expansion a ‘do or die’ requirement

    Lenovo nixed idea of selling Microsoft’s Surface Pro tablet – CNET – interesting that HP and Dell will sell it

    Why mass market VR won’t come soon | GigaOM – assuming you have to run at 4K, HD would be good enough and the content could be immersive but passive like film rather than games. More on web of no web experiences here.

    WSJ: NX could launch in 2016, will be Nintendo’s most powerful console ever – this is a high risk play given how the last console did

    IBM Allows Chinese Government to Review Source Code | WSJ – (paywall)