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.
Six hundred pairs of Nikes in a custom-built house
The six hundred pairs of Nikes are owned by a Japanese lady who now is head of marketing for Ugg in Japan. Previously she’d spent over 20 years in sales and marketing for Nike. Her house was designed around her shoe collection and the double height ceiling in the room to host the six hundred pairs is worth watching for alone. There are more than six hundred pairs. Some of the stories about the six hundred pairs of shoes are fascinating such as how Nike Air Max 95s were responsible for thefts and muggings in Japan.
Tom Ford
Everyone needs a Tom Ford in their life. From personal life hacks to interior design and grooming all in the space of a few minutes. This sounds as if the interview as done around about the time that Ford was bowing out of his fashion and beauty businesses.
Gibbs SR toothpaste
Along with Close Up and Aquafresh; Gibbs SR toothpaste was one of the toothpastes I remember most from childhood. Unilever bundled it eventually into Mentadent and it was quietly taken off the UK market in 2018.
I didn’t realise that Gibbs SR toothpaste was the first advertisement shown on British television. UK law had changed the previous year allowing for commercial television. The creative behind the ad was Brian Palmer of Young & Rubican (now VML).
So, I was listening to the Uncensored CEO podcast Jon Evans when he had Les Binet and Sarah Carter on. One of them mentioned that the above ad was tested recently and scored top scores. It might be novelty, but is unlikely to be nostalgia that drove this test score. What’s more interesting it that Y&R managed to get the creative so high performing decades before the kind of tools that we have now.
Hyper-reality
Keiichi Matsuda took what Apple would call spatial computing to its logical conclusion in this 7 year old film HYPER-REALITY. There are a number of clever aspects to it. Watch when the device reboots in the supermarket and the glyph wearing criminal who escapes identification by the system.
In reality, hardware will restrict how useable that these products will be. Which is the reason why the Apple Vision Pro looks so cumbersome. More related content here.
John Glenn
Great interview with Mercury and Apollo programme astronaut John Glenn covering different aspects of his experience as an astronaut. We hear how astronauts became so involved in the engineering and safety aspects of the Mercury and Apollo programmes.
Razors are one of a series of tools that I use for problem solving. They sit alongside the idea of ‘chunking’ that is breaking a problem down into more manageable and solvable constituent parts. Razors aid in decision-making and analysis.
Razors are rules that guide your way through a problem, or ‘cut’ your way through a problem. They simplify, they not be right in all circumstances but are right in the vast majority of them.
They were first used by philosophers, but as we know more about the world around us, we have developed more razors and they have become more useful in a general context.
This is going to be hard, isn’t it?
Not really, we use razors in our lives all the time, often without thinking about them. The most famous one is Occam’s Razor.
Occam’s razor
pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate, “plurality should not be posited without necessity.”
Or to put in simpler terms, out of two or more explanations, the simpler one is mostly likely to be the right one. In certain circumstances what’s simpler is a matter of perspective and culture. Secondly, Occam’s razor prioritises simplicity over accuracy.
The classic example of Occam’s Razor failing is the classic crime fiction trope of the death that looks like a suicide and is considered by authorities to be one. Yet by dogged investigation, it is actually proven to be a relatively cleverly executed murder plot.
Other razors
Here’s some razors that I have found useful over time. A good many of them have come from fields beyond the study of philosophy.
Gall’s law
Gall’s law “A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked.” John Gall was a modern-day renaissance man in turn author, scholar, and pediatrician. His law comes from a book he wrote as a critique of systems design: Systemantics: How Systems Work and How They Fail… When working on customer experience related work don’t try and cover every option first, build up complexity to cover all the options from a ‘simple system’. When dealing with clients, sell the simple system as baseline framework and see how you get on. Ironically, clients are more likely to buy the simple model and then build into it over time as an additional activity.
Hanlon’s razor
Hanlon’s razor – “Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.” Probably more useful when pondering third party actions rather than strategy in depth, but nonetheless very useful to bear in mind in work circumstances. It featured in joke book Murphy’s Law Book Two: More Reasons Why Things Go Wrong: Bk. 2 compiled by Arthur Bloch and was attributed to Robert J. Hanlon. It probably won’t get you promoted, but might keep you sane.
Hick-Hyman law
Hick-Hyman law – the time it takes for a person to make a decision is a function of the number of possible choices. Psychologists William Edmund Hick and Ray Hyman, found that increasing the number of choices will increase the decision time logarithmically. This one is handy for bearing in mind when thinking about customer experiences and engagement strategy. There is such a thing as the tyranny of choice for consumers.
Hitchen’s razor
Hitchen’s razor – what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence. Christopher Hitchen popularised a version of a latin proverb in his book God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. Quod grātīs asseritur, grātīs negātur – what is freely asserted can be freely deserted. This works quite nicely with Sagan’s standard below in terms of providing evidence. Storytelling and narrative is important, but so is evidence for the deductive leaps sometimes involved.
Hofstadter’s law
Hofstadter’s law – “It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s law”. Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter is a book about the nature of “maps” or links between formal systems. Hofstadter posits that understanding these maps could be the answer to what we’d now call general artificial intelligence. Where Hofstadter’s law comes in terms of being useful for strategists is in assessing the scope of unusual or bespoke strategic asks prior to the start of a project.
Sagan’s standard
Sagan’s standard – extra-ordinary claims require extra-ordinary evidence. This was popularised by Carl Sagan’s documentary series Cosmos. Sagan had also used it in essays for various publications, which were collected in the essay compilation Broca’s Brain. It encapsulates similar ideas by thinkers over the centuries. I have found this particularly helpful when reviewing colleagues decks that make big deductive leaps. The narrative might be compelling, but make sure the right amount of proof is in the right place.
Sturgeon’s revelation
Sturgeon’s revelation – ninety percent of everything is crap. The Sturgeon in question reviewed science fiction and noted that while the genre had its critics one could see a similar distribution of quality in other genres and fields. George Orwell and Rudyard Kipling made similar observations but Theodore Sturgeon got the credit. When you see mediocre advertising being derided in some LinkedIn post or other, bear in mind this observation. As for Sturgeon, while he was highly regarded in the early 1960s as a science fiction writer and script writer for the original Star Trek television series – his memory primarily lives on through his revelation.
Twyman’s law
Twyman’s law: “Any figure that looks interesting or different is usually wrong”, an extension of the principle that “the more unusual or interesting the data, the more likely they are to have been the result of an error of one kind or another”. The Twyman in question is Tony Twyman, was a veteran market researcher in the UK. For strategists that erroneous piece of data can be like a shiny metal object to a magpie. Look at how you can verify it further and if it can’t be done, seriously consider walking on by – particularly if it fails under Sagan’s standard as well.
Vierordt’s law
Vierordt’s law states that, retrospectively, “short” intervals of time tend to be overestimated, and “long” intervals of time tend to be underestimated. It’s named after Karl von Vierordt who was a 19th century German medical researcher whose body of work spanned research into blood flow and also psychology. It is worth bearing in mind and testing, particularly when you are relying on a small number of qualitative research interviews.
Early last year, fashion started to pillage the late 1990s and early 2000s for fashion inspiration, which became a Y2K trend on social platforms and in the fashion media. But this divorced Y2K from its original meaning. Y2K was technologist short hand for a calendar problem in a lot of legacy systems that were designed around a two digit date for years.
The rise of micro-processors had meant that the world had more computers, but also more computer control of processes from manufacturing to building air conditioning systems.
The HBO documentary Time Bomb Y2K leaned into the American experience of Y2K in an Adam Curtis type archival view, but without his narrative.
Millennium layers
There was so much to unspin from the documentary, beyond the Y2K bug, including the largely alarmist commentary. The run-up to the millennium had so many layers that had nothing to do with Y2K, but were still deeply entwined with anxiety around what might happen with Y2K.
This included:
Internet adoption and more importantly the idea of internet connectedness on culture through the lens of cyberpunk – which in turn influenced the spangliness of fashion around this time and the preference for Oakley mirror shades that looked as if they were part of the wearer. The internet was as much a cultural construct and social object as it was a communications technology. It memed AND then got people online.
Telecommunications deregulation. In the United States the Telecommunications Act of 1996, saw a levelling playing field be set out and allow for new entrants across telecoms networks to television. They also defined ‘information services’ which internet platforms and apps fitted into giving them many freedoms and relatively few responsibilities. You had similar efforts at telecoms deregulation across what was then the EEC. This saw a rise in alternative carriers who then drove telecoms and data commuunications equipment sales, together with a flurry of fibre-optic cables being laid. There was a corresponding construction of data centres and ‘internet hotels‘ to provide data services. With these services came an expectation that the future was being made ‘real’. Which in turn fed into the internet itself as cultural phenomenon. The provision of new data centres, opportunities for computer-to-computer electronic data interchange (EDI) and services that can be delivered using a browser as interface also drove a massive change in business computing.
An echo boom of the hippy back to the land movement, many of the people involved in that movement were early netizens. Hippy favourites The Grateful Dead had been online since at least 1996 and were pioneers in the field of e-commerce. The Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link (or The WeLL) had founders from hippy bible The Whole Earth Catalog. There was also a strong connection through Stewart Brand to Wired magazine. Long time ‘Dead lyricist Jon Perry Barlow created a Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace – a libertarian totem for netizens up to the rise of social media platforms like Facebook.
Millennial religious fervour. The Heaven’s Gate cult committed ritual suicide in 1997, and even posted about it on their website. The disastrous FBI showdown with the Branch Davidian cult in Waco, Texas had happened four years earlier and even today is a point of discussion amongst right-leaning Americans.
The confluence of noise around Y2K drove some anxiety and a lot of media chatter.
Advertisers did their bit to fuel insecurities as well.
However by October 1999, American consumers who responded to a poll by the Gallup Organisation were pretty confident that glitches would be unlikely
55% considered it unlikely ATMs would fail.
59% believed direct deposit processing wouldn’t be a problem.
60% said they felt that temporary loss of access to cash was unlikely.
60% believed credit-card systems were unlikely to fail.
66% felt that problems with check processing were unlikely.
70% had received Y2K-readiness information from their banks.
90% were confident their bank was ready for Y2K.
39% said they would definitely or probably keep extra cash on hand.
Y2K: More Signs of the Time | Computerworld (January 10, 2000)
Experts had felt that the Y2K challenge had largely been beat, but some prudent advice was given. I worked for a number of technology clients at the time including telecoms provider Ericsson and enterprise software company SSA Global Technologies. I had to keep my cellphone with me in case anything went wrong and we would have to go into crisis mode for our clients. Needless to say, I wasn’t disturbed during my night out at Cream by THAT call.
Technology experts like Robert X. Cringely were rolled out to advise consumers on prudent precautions. Have a bit of cash in your wallet in the unlikely event that card merchant services don’t work at your local shop. Have some provisions in that dont need refrigeration in case there is a power cut. And a battery or solar powered radio just in case.
All of these are still eminently sensible precautions for modern-day living.
Why were we ok?
The warning
There were several people who voiced warnings during the 1990s. Some of the most prominent were Ed Yourdon and Peter de Jager.
Risk management
During the 1990s company auditors were informing boards that they had to address Y2K. Failure to follow this would affect their ability to trade. Their public accounts wouldn’t be signed off and there would be implications for the validity the insurance policies need to run a business.
Approaches
IT professionals took Y2K very seriously, which meant that there was little to no impact. Some academics such as UCL’s Anthony Finkelstein posited that the problem was taken too seriously, though it is easier to say that in retrospect. There were a number of approaches taken to combat the risk of failure due to Y2K. In order of least to most ambitious they were:
Systems testing
Rip and replace
Recode
Systems testing
The Russian military had tested their systems for vulnerability to the millennium bug and announced this in the last quarter of 1999. Meanwhile businesses were often passing the testing out to contractors like Accenture with teams based in India, the former Soviet Union or the Philippines. There was a thriving market for auditing software to check if applications used two-digit dates or not. One of these was Peregrine Systems ServiceCenter 2000 Y2K Crisis Management software.
Testing highlighted problems at Oak Ridge Laboratories who process American nuclear weapons, the alarm systems at Japanese nuclear power stations and some kidney dialysis machines.
Problems would then be addressed by ripping and replacing the systems or recoding the software.
Rip and replace
Apple used Y2K as a sales tool to get Macs into businesses, including this campaign from early 1999 where the HAL computer from 2001: A Space Odyssey featured in Apple’s Super Bowl advert.
Two years earlier IBM CEO had the company re-orientate an offering that he called e-business. There was snazzy advertising campaigns ran over an eight year period.
Mainframes and high powered UNIX workstations became internet servers running multiple instances of Linux. IBM Consulting learned as they went building the likes of internet retailer Boxman (which would go bust due to IBM’s cack-handed software and the rise of Amazon).
Timely replacement of business systems with e-business systems, paired with new personal computers like the latest Apple Mac allowed the firm to avoid Y2K and make speedier approaches in digitising their businesses.
German enterprise software company SAP launched SAP Business Connector in association with webMethods in 1999, this provided an integration and migration layer for SAP and other business software applications. It also allowed the business software to be accessed using a web browser and for it to trigger business processes like email updates.
Articles (like Robertson & Powell) highlighted the wider business process benefits that could be generated as part of a move to rip-and-replace existing systems with ones that are Y2K compliant. Reducing the amount of systems in place through rationalisation as part of Y2K preparation would then provide benefits in terms of training and expertise required.
Recode
Where rip and replace wasn’t an option due to cost, complexity or mission criticality recoding was looked at as an approach. For PC networks there were a few off the shelf packages to deal with low level BIOS issues
IntelliFIX 2000 by Intelliquis International, Inc. Their product would check hardware, DOS operating system, and software. This version was free and ran a pass/fail test. The full version, which could be purchased for $79, would report the issues and permanently correct date problems with the BIOS and the CMOS real-time clock. In 1999, Stewart Cheifet of the Computer Chronicles rated the product as a very good all-in-one solution for hardware and software.
National Museum of American History: Y2K collection
Products similar to IntelliFIX included Catch/21 by TSR Inc.
Longtime software makers like Computer Associates and IBM provided large companies with tools to audit their existing code base and repair them. IBM’s software charged $1.25 per line inspected. OpenText estimate that there 800 billion lines of COBOL language code out there. So having one of these tools could be very lucrative at the time.
You might have mainframe code on a system that might not have been altered since the 1970s or earlier. Programmers in the developed world who had skills in legacy languages were looking at the end of their career as more of this work had been outsourced to Indian software factories saw Y2K as a last hurrah.
COBOL is still very robust and runs business processes very fast, so is maintained around the world today.
Y2K impact
Professor Martyn Thomas in a keynote speech given in 2017 documented a number of errors that occurred. From credit card reading failures and process shut downs to of false positive medical test results across the world. But by and large the world carried on as normal.
Academic research (Anderson, Banker et al) suggests that the most entrepreneurially competitive companies leaned hard into the Y2K focus on IT and used the resources spent to transform their IT infrastructure and software. Garcia and Wingender showed that these competitive returns were shown to provide a benefit to publicly listed company stock prices at the time.
There were also some allegations that software companies and consultants over-egged the risks. Hindsight provides 20:20 vision.
IT spending dropped dramatically during 2001 and 2002, and by the middle of 2003 technology started to see replacement of software and equipment bought to address Y2K. But the US department of commerce claimed that was no more than a transient effect on economic growth. This was supported by the Kliesen paper in 2003, which posited that the boom and subsequent economic bust was not as a result of Y2K preparation.
The train of thought to this post about Hong Kong measurements started with a friend’s class learning do-it-yourself skills. I had rented an apartment when I lived in the city and had no need to do home repairs myself. I wondered past hardware stores, saw metric drill bits and rules.
Metric
My supermarket-bought groceries had their measurements on in metric. Hong Kong measurements go back to history and culture. I knew more about traditional measurements from traditional Chinese medicine shops and period Hong Kong cinema than the local ‘wet’ markets.
I didn’t drive, but the speed limits were all in Km/H like Ireland. Pedestrian signs for the most part didn’t need distances because everything is so compact and the public transport so good.
If I had driven, I would have seen distances in kilometres on the expressway. In fact, the only time I can remember using distances on pedestrian signs were on hikes like this one below, with distances in kilometres and approximate time that the walk should take.
What became apparent in my discussion that that Hong Kong measurements are more complex than would appear at a cursory glance.
Inches and pints
The method of instruction in the do-it-yourself was predominantly imperial measures with a metric equivalent being secondary. Timber could still be provided in 2×4 inch planks. Both imperial and metric drill bits were available to buy.
You could order a pint, though like many other countries, you will be served a 1/2 litre glass in most bars.
The laws governing weights and measures in trade is covered by the Weights and Measures Ordinance. This was drafted in 1988, came into force in 1989 and has been amended for formatting since. The related Weights and Measures Order of 2021 added US units were different alongside imperial measures, metric and traditional Chinese measurements. Though this seemed to be for reference, rather than encouraging the active use of American measures in Hong Kong. American products usually come with the equivalent metric sizing for items like drinks cans volume.
Taels and Cattis
Hong Kong uses Chinese traditional measures alongside more standard measures in certain markets – from fresh produce bought in the ‘wet’ markets to sales of gold and silver.
Before I had got to Hong Kong I had hear of taels and cattis. Taels is the traditional unit by which gold (and silver) had been sold amongst the wider Chinese community from Liverpool to Shanghai. If you’ve sat through enough old kung fu movies, you will have heard of a bounty or reward to be paid in taels.
However like other pre-Metric weights like hundredweights and tons; taels and cattis now mean different dimensions in different markets.
Hong Kong hews to the traditional weights and measures for this. Taiwan’s taels and cattis are more related to the measures of the Imperial Japanese empire. Taiwan may even refer to taels and cattis using different words. Mainland China went through a period of simplification during communist rule from Chinese characters to measures. Their taels and cattis are more aligned to metric measures.
Singapore struck much more closely to the metric system which it has adopted from 1968 – 1970. While traditional measures are included in the statutes for reference and fabric discussions still happen in terms of square yards, you will be charged for the metric measure. This was because post-independence Singapore had to make its own way in the world without the mother country of empire. China was closed off at the time and the city state had to think of its place in terms of global scale.
So why is this all important?
Measurements are essential to our points of reference in everyday life. The variance of points of reference can affect perceptions around attributes like value for money, or whether something is big or small. It affects how we think about tasks to be done or distances to be walked and things to be carried.
It can be a ‘grain of sand’ in the shoe level of dissonance, familiar, yet different. Rather like the average European pondering the American distance definition of ‘a block’. Our cities aren’t built on grid systems for the most part, so we don’t have the same feel for the measure. Speaking to a New Yorker friend; a block was considered by them to about a tenth of a mile. BUT, different cities have different sized blocks and it isn’t a formal definition. It’s a quintessential American cultural artifact and yet very inexact.
For a business there are additional factors to consider
Complexity of regulations.
Additional complexity in terms of product instructions.
Descriptive copywriting and advertising claims.
Pricing strategies and arbitrage opportunities. For instance, while Hong Kong gold might be duty free – does the differing weight from one’s home affect price considerations?
While Hong Kong is being reintegrated back into mainland China, even apparently small issues like measurement units could become political in nature.
As they are product of a unique history and emergent culture not shared with the mainland, rather like modern Hong Kong Cantonese. The Cantonese language evolved from being similar to that spoke in Guangdong province in the early 1960s to develop its own Hong Kong-specific idioms, lone words (from English, Japanese and South Asian languages spoken in the territory by minorities). Now with the increasing influx of mainland immigrants there is use of mandarin code switching added into the mix.
The use of multiple measures allows Hong Kongers and their businesses to be commercial ‘citizens of the world’ in their transactions. Hong Kongers have also taken these measures abroad. Going to a China town jeweller or pawn shop will allow you to buy gold taels, even though the weight on your receipt might be in troy ounces or grams.
Alongside Hong Kong-specific cuisine, the unique mix of measurement units may be its unique informal contribution to the world alongside archive films, long after the city becomes just another city in China.
My mind cast back to one of the first modules I studied at college. There was a lecture on the role of complaint resolution as part of customer services. The idea was that effective complaint resolution engendered trust in a customer service function and was more likely to increase brand loyalty and recommendation to other people. In reality Ehrensberg-Bass Institute have explored this area in more depth and found that customer penetration is more important than customer loyalty.
US National Archives: Approaching Logan Airport. 05/1973 by Michael Manheim
I suspect that the benefit in complaint resolution is more around a premium brand positioning rather than the business benefits of loyalty. This is an interesting frame to consider AirHelp’s global airline ranking. Unlike SkyTrax that focuses on experience, AirHelp weighs its ranking heavily on complaint resolution.
British Airways came 82nd out of 83 airlines assessed, which won’t be a surprise to anyone who has flown with them over the past four years.
Many airlines that would have a high SkyTrax service ranking, didn’t perform as well on complaint resolution.
So there wasn’t a clear correlation between experience resolving lots of customer complaints or a highly evolved service offering.
Emerging car brands scrutinised by Bloomberg and Grant Thornton | Manufacturer – “Chinese brands are dominating the scene with good products, big screens, and impressive interfaces.” However, the challenge arises when considering pricing, as Chinese EVs like the XPeng’s G9 SUV was 72,000 euros competing against the likes of BMW and Mercedes. So they’re going to find it very, difficult and it’s going to come down to price.” Dean pointed out MG’s success in the UK market was achieved by hitting exactly the right sweet spot in terms of pricing. The MG ZS, the second-best-selling battery electric vehicle in the UK, is priced at an average of £31,000, making it compelling in terms of competitive pricing especially in a country where consumers are not fiercely loyal to specific brands. – interesting reading. The way for Chinese vendors to win would be to have Chinese incentivised lease financing, particularly in a time of higher interest rates a la Huawei in the telecoms markets.
American men are dying younger. – by Richard V Reeves – I just don’t think this can be addressed in the current climate of othering and privilege. It would be like trying to hold a meaningful discussion on immigration a few decades ago.
Xi in Nanning; Shanghai and Beijing real estate tweaks; More Hong Kong bounties; Sim Love | Sinocism – the Hong Kong puts bounty on the head of US citizen who has criticised the Hong Kong government in the US. They are all ethic Chinese. So China and the Hong Kong government think that ethnic Chinese wherever they are should be loyal to their respective administrations – in essence their face is their passport. Not even Israel does something similar with the the world’s Jewish community, or Ireland with our diaspora.
Innovation
Quantum Breakthrough: Caltech Scientists Unveil New Way To Erase Quantum Computer Errors – Researchers from Caltech have developed a quantum eraser to correct “erasure” errors in quantum computing systems. This technique, which involves manipulating alkaline-earth neutral atoms in laser light “tweezers,” allows for the detection and correction of errors through fluorescence. The innovation leads to a tenfold improvement in entanglement rates in Rydberg neutral atom systems, representing a crucial step forward in making quantum computers more reliable and scalable.
