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.
As ever, the guys at Thoughtful China have come up with some quality content. In this episode David Wolf talks about how Chinese brands are looking to go global. It’s brands but not as you know them
Beauty
Beauty products brand Kiehl’s outreach to men could school a lot of luxury brands. Just check out this mini-film which highlights the use of space age materials in its products with a small spacecraft sent to the edge of space
Culture
The Asia Society posted this presentation by MTV World General Manager and Senior Vice President Nusrat Durrani on cross-pollination of popular culture. While New York was considered to be a global city, Durrani was surprised by its cultural isolation and introspection compared to other parts of the world.
Japan
Lastly, Sanrio’s Hello Kitty celebrated her 40th birthday in a collaboration with Bandai to create a Hello Kitty Chogokin mecha
Privacy As A Competitive Vector | AVC – Fred Wilson on the market for privacy. The difference that I don’t think Wilson addresses is the demand for privacy and the price people put on it. I think that there is a market, but the business model is critical as I don’t think consumers put a high price on privacy yet
ZTE to cut smartphone models by half | SCMP – cut half of its smartphone models available in the domestic market this year, while expecting total shipments in the world’s biggest smartphone market to remain stable, a company official said yesterday (paywall) – potentially smart move to reduce number of SKUs
Expert calls for network security protocol vetting – Xinhua | English.news.cn – I don’t blame the sentiment expressed given OpenSSL vulnerability Heartbleed and IPSec flaw; however it would be good if the Chinese government contributed positively to the open source community rather than it being a one-way street. What the great unknown is how often the MSS has exploited zero day flaws in protocols in the way that the NSA used the IPSec flaw. There is also a presumption that bugs are deliberate in nature. Which makes one think about the sloppy code in Huawei products
China denounces US tech ‘pawns’ | FT – expect huge government backlash against non Chinese brand devices, this gives them a free hand while still being within WTO guidelines
Why Chinese Booze Costs More Than Fine Wine at Auction – WSJ – 540 milliliter bottles of Moutai produced in the 1980s sold for between 60,000 yuan ($9,700) and 70,000 yuan ($11,300). That was up from between 50,000 and 60,000 yuan last year, and around 30,000 yuan at the end of 2012. – Aged Moutai does well as new bottles get cheaper
B52 receives first tech upgrade since 1961: Now with color screens and wireless networking – this is a credit to the engineers that designed and manufactured to the B52. The longevity there was something dieselpunkish about mixed analogue and digital controls that appeals to me though. The B52 was originally designed as a nuclear bomber, but has only been used in action with conventional weapons. The B52 served in Vietnam, the first Gulf War, Afghanistan and Iraq. The B52 may serve for close on to a century in the US Air Force
Kakao And Daum To Merge, Creating One Of South Korea’s Largest Internet Companies | TechCrunch – this is a really big deal in South Korea. Daum is big in areas such as mobile search and social networks, KakaoTalk has gained ubiquity amongst Korean phone users and made a profitable business from games and stickers. I wonder what Tencent’s share will be in the combined company?
U.S. Companies Hacked by Chinese Didn’t Tell Investors – Bloomberg – which is pretty shocking. They would have at least been at a disadvantage trading with Chinese state-owned companies and the disclosures may have impacted goodwill as partners would be concerned about what information was disclosed. I would have thought all of this would have been meaningful to the share price?
Microsoft’s golden era in China coming to an end | WantChinaTimes – Microsoft will not only lose government purchase orders, but will also lose the central enterprise purchases and OEM market–the three major revenue sources for Microsoft in China – according to a Chinese newspaper, if true then this clobbers Microsoft in China
Web of no web
Watch Skype translate a video conversation in real time | Quartz – you know that time when you first saw the internet and it was a thing of wonder, rather than where you go to work? That’s how I felt when I saw this, mixed up with feeling dirty realising that Skype is actually Microsoft
Am I Crazy For Wanting A 4-Inch iPhone 6? | BusinessInsider – good points in terms of usability. It does beg the question do consumers actually want a phone anymore? I suspect some of them do, but handset manufacturers tend to disagree if one where to believe the big screen trend
The South China Morning Post wrote an article about what it perceived as a rise in usage of feature or retro phones. The article cited Lëkki as an example of such handsets becoming trendy, rather like retro re-issues of Nike Air Jordans or the adidas Originals range. In reality:
This isn’t a new trend, UK site, Retro Fones have been going since the mid-noughties, vintagemobile.fr and Lëkki has been around since 2009 and 2010 respectively. There are have been eBay stores going even longer specialising in supporting Nokia’s 6310i for well over a decade – since retro phones nature of these models of handset worked so well for business travellers. The 6310i and related models of retro phones (6110, 6150, 6210i and 6310) had a reputation for reliability, being hard to damage and connectivity. Add to that early support for Bluetooth, iRDA and a 400+ hour battery life. Which is why Mercedes Benz included these retro phones in its S-class range until 2006.
It isn’t as big as the article would make one believe, this is a small craft business at best, it would make vinyl records and print photography look like major corporate concerns in comparison
It does highlight a number of weak points in smartphones. The designs don’t cater for self-expression, they don’t provide a ‘switch-off’ button from their electronic lives, they aren’t perceived as being robust, their battery lives are poor, they aren’t a convenient size for everyone and their call quality leaves much to be desired
Network technology is changing which will ‘brick’ these old cellphones once and for all. A move away from 2G networks to give spectrum to 3 and 4G technologies in developed markets effectively kills off these phones
Probably one of the best options to get the benefits of a feature phone is Nokia’s 515, which looks like a traditional candy bar phone and supports 3.5G networks. Supplies are apparently thinning out, but you can still get one new for around 100-115GBP on eBay. More related content here.
