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.

  • Observations from Shenzhen, China

    I spent some time in Shenzhen recently and here is some of the things that I found during my stay.

    The pace of development is slower than it was before, the number of cranes I saw and ready-mix concrete wagons on the road was less than before. There is still a lot of building work but there is less of it

    Odd products showing up in Shenzhen.

    A case in point being an Orange-branded MiFi router that I used whilst I was there. It was your standard Huawei mobile internet Wi-Fi router as sold to Orange customers across Europe. We used it with a China Unicom 3G SIM in the device. It wasn’t just a case of badging, the device had an Orange admin page and served Orange-branded ‘no internet connection available’ error pages.

    Just how did this device end up in Huawei’s back yard? Did the product ‘fall off the back of a wagon’? Are they being dumped in the marketplace? Is there some black market ‘carousel’ sales tax scam going on?

    Smartphone users

    Talking about mobile devices: a quick poll of a mix of people I met:

    • Advertising agency owner: Apple iPhone 5S
    • Creative industry entrepreneur: iPhone 5C for personal use, an iPhone 5S likely to be gifted
    • Professional photographer and interior designer: iPhone 4S
    • 7 taxi drivers: 5 Samsung, 1 iPhone 4 and one Xiaomi handset
    • Businessman who owned a pharmaceutical distribution business and various properties: Samsung
    • Businessman: Samsung
    • Museum/ gallery curator: Samsung
    • Professional driver: Samsung

    It is hard to explain the ubiquity and usage of:

    • Weixin (WeChat) – running out of your data package cuts you off more than running out of voice minutes. My friend has her 70+ year old mother WeChatting her incessantly
    • TaoBao – the impact of TaoBao can be seen on the streets with a volume of delivery people darting around the city. Electric mopeds were banned in Shenzhen for anyone who didn’t work for a delivery company as the devices were a silent killer who ran over unsuspecting pedestrians. Shenzhen still has electric bikes (more professionally handled) by delivery people delivering online shopping. TaoBao and its sister site TMall are the e-tailing game. Apple recently opened a store on TMall in parallel to the Chinese version of its familiar online store

    The Chinese creative industries are coming on in leaps and bounds. I met with an advertising and design agency owner and was bowled over by the quality of the branding design that they had done for a new creative hub. Having worked alongside western big branding agencies in China working for Chinese clients I can say that the work was equal, if not better in quality.

    This is also matched by the creative infrastructure that the Chinese central and regional governments are putting in alongside private enterprises. A classic example of this is the continued development of the OCT LOFT complex. This was once an area of factories run by Overseas Chinese as a separate Town, these sturdy concrete buildings have been converted into retail areas a la the Truman Brewery, offices, studio spaces, co-working spaces and social clubs.

    There is a live performance space in OCT LOFT called B10 with a really well engineered sound and lighting system. This has managed to attract sponsorship from the likes of MINI. China is serious about building a creative class and is doing something meaningful about providing all infrastructure needed within a cluster.

    Talking of live performances, I got to see a local band play at B10; I don’t know if this was just this band but the crowd did much more interaction with the band on stage, singing along, dancing, synchronised clapping and a lot less viewing the performance through their smartphone than I had been used to in the UK and Hong Kong.

    Electric vehicles are big business; Shenzhen now has blue and silver taxis from local firm BYD that are electric powered. BYD is a famous battery company and Warren Buffett is a shareholder. Admittedly, the electricity probably comes from a lot of coal-fired power stations as well asnuclear-powered ones, but China is serious about the future of transportation.

    Hailing a cab is pretty much done by app, the Chinese version of Hailo is as ubiquitous on peoples phones as Weixin.

    Changing perception of western country brands. This is just anecdotal stuff speaking to a couple of people, but the brand of the UK in China has changed over the past couple of years. It used to be that the UK was thought to be a great nation to do business.

    David Cameron’s recent trip to China and launch of a Weibo account was seen as an act of desperation to try and capture inbound investment. Now the view that I heard expressed is that Britain is a good place to visit and shop (for luxury goods), to get an education or learn English – but that’s it. Entrepreneur visas didn’t hold that much appeal to the people I spoke with.

    There is a change in what it means to be made in China. Over the past few times that I have been in China there has been a move away from products that are good enough to providing a quality experience. Brands like retailer Emoi have been at the head of it, alongside Oppo whose Blu-Ray players give Denon and Onkyo a run for their money.

    This time friends of mine have set up a venue, one of the primary purposes of the venue is to showcase quality Chinese-made products from craftsmen made ceramics, to furniture, modern art and vacuum-tube hi-fi amplifiers. Just as China is raising it’s creative game, it is also looking to make better quality products. However this isn’t a universal move; there are still value-orientated companies, particularly those in the business-to-business space. More china related posts here.

  • Tangerine ten questions

    If you don’t follow Tangerine NY’s blog, I would recommend that you do for the curated mix of zeitgeist and Tangerine ten questions interviews. The Tangerine ten questions:

    Where are you right now?
    What did you want to be when you were a child?
    How do you think we can keep talent motivated?
    What are you reading now?
    What is you latest ‘must have’?
    What is your favorite piece of technology?
    What subject do you wish you’d paid more attention to in school?
    Where is your favorite place for a drink?
    If you could have one superpower what would it be?
    What is one thing about you that most people would be surprised to know?

    I think that the Tangerine ten questions are a gateway to creating clever engaging content for a number of reasons:

    • They’re human. They provide an idea of the world view of the person
    • They provide useful content depending on the context
    • They encourage the interviewee to provide smart content
    • There are only two lame questions in there and they’re at the end. If you look platforms such as dating platforms you quickly realise that people have more in common, and are less differentiated than you think. The hardest questions in the Tangerine ten questions also have the least value. But eight out of ten is still really good

    My answers to the Tangerine ten questions

    Where are you right now?

    At home sat in front of my laptop sipping a can of Fanta

    What did you want to be when you were a child?

    I could remember that I was more gripped by concern that I managed to get a job when I left school rather than what role it would be. Joblessness was a worry. My parents had moved from Ireland when the economy there was bad and at the time I was in infant school the UK was getting a bailout from the IMF. Later on factories were closed on a daily basis.

    How do you think we can keep you motivated

    I have always marched to beat of my own drum and been self motivated

    What are you reading now?

    Online, I follow hundreds of sites via an RSS reader. Offline, I read Wired magazine religiously. I also enjoy reading non-fiction such as The Dentsu Way.

    What is you latest ‘must have’?

    Rhodia notebooks. I find the paper of a better than Moleskine notebooks, but the Rhodia still has the same useful design features of Moleskines

    What is your favourite piece of technology

    My favourite piece of technology continues to be my Mac.

    What subject do you wish that you had paid more attention to at school?

    I wish I had been allowed to study economics rather than being put into a science track without any input into the matter.

    Where is a favourite place for a drink?

    Alchemy is a small chain coffee shop down the road from my office in Hoi Wan Street in Quarry Bay.

    If I could have one superpower, what would it be?

    Wisdom.

    What is the one thing about me that most people would be surprised to know?

    I was an extra in Chariots of Fire. The experience was very underwhelming and I didn’t get paid.

    What would your answers be? More related content here

  • Galaxy Gear + more news

    Galaxy Gear

    No shanzhai Galaxy Gear smartwatches – Shanzhai is the innovation / counterfeit ecosystem in Chinese manufacturing. They make fake iPhones and feature phones with a built in razor, or modelled after a Coke can. So why should Samsung be worried about a lack of Galaxy Gear clones? Shanzhai manufacturers have many faults, but you can’t fault the way they have their finger on the pulse of consumer desires for the latest gadgets. There is no Galaxy Gear because there is insufficient consumer interest for Chinese manufacturers to want to pirate them

    Beauty

    Nu-Skin reacts to ‘brainwashing’ report – disclosure I advised the Nu Skin team at my agency

    China

    Opinion: Rethinking “Made in China” « Gear Patrol

    Consumer behaviour

    MediaPost Publications Trust In Government ‘Decimated,’ Business Now Leads 01/20/2014 – seems to be across countries

    Economics

    Is China’s Slower Growth Good or Bad News? – WSJ

    Ethics

    Government sugar tsar works for Coca-Cola and Mars – not terribly surprising

    Finance

    WMPs in China pose challenge for ICBC – WMP (wealth management product) – different types of securitised debt, in this case it looks similar to a junk bond. Many of these are being used to fund China’s real estate bubble. This sounds like a slow disaster in the making. The Chinese government will be able to unwind it when it goes wrong, but there will be pain and western investors involved will be screwed

    How to

    Discoverly provides unified access to LinkedIn and Facebook

    Ideas

    Tech Trends 2014 | frog

    Innovation

    IBM Turns to Semiconductor Packaging Post-Moore’s Law | EE Times

    10 Things I’ve learned at the d.school so far – need finding is the critical first step that leads to problem solving

    Luxury

    Indian luxury business underwhelms

    Marketing

    Liushen focuses on heritage to attract younger consumers

    Pivot Your Content Mindset: From Marketing to Distribution [Infographic] | – context and away from traditional PR strengths

    MediaPost Publications Paul Donato And The Final Frontier 01/19/2014 – merging of intelligence technologies and market research. It can be done, but should it? Is it an inevitable aspect of the technium?

    Survey Data on the Growth/Shrinkage of Web Marketing Channels in 2014 – Rand’s Blog

    Media

    Verizon buys OTT TV assets from Intel

    Online

    News Feed FYI: What Happens When You See More Updates from Friends – Facebook Newsroom – marketers need to change their approach

    Facebook plans suite of standalone mobile apps for 2014 | The Verge – interesting move away from their general purpose network approach

    China’s Twitter is bleeding users – The Tell – MarketWatch – how many of those accounts are real accounts?

    More Than 11 Million Young People Have Fled Facebook Since 2011 – Skeptics of Facebook’s business model have long pointed to anecdotal evidence that the social network is losing its luster with teens as evidence that the firm will ultimately be unable to justify its $140 billion valuation. However this signal is lost in the noise of increasing members from emerging economies as the rest of the world comes online

    Retailing

    How Amazon. Avoids Wal-Mart like reputation

    The Tipping Point (E-Commerce Version) | Jeff Jordan or the technium blitzes large parts of the retail sector

    A Sneaky Path Into Target Customers’ Wallets – NYTimes.com

    JD.com launches mobile messaging app – Tencent going into logistics and payments in WeChat for in-app e-tailing, Sina partnering with Alibaba to do social commerce over Weibo – the messy world of online media and e-tailing in China

    Security

    A disaster in the making: 95% of ATMs still run Windows XP – quelle surprise

    Smart devices hacked into botnet – fridge sends out spam emails

    Software

    When Apple reached parity with Windows | Asymco – its speculation

    Web of no web

    MIT’s cool new transparent screen tech could mean better heads-up displays

    Baidu’s image-recognition software isn’t perfect, but it’s super smart and will make you laugh

    Mobile Opportunity: Google the Conglomerate: After Nest, No Industry is Safe – Michael Mace on Google

    I, Cringely The Internet of Crap – I, Cringely

    Is your car spying on you? – yes it is, welcome to the inevitable march of progress aka the technium

    Wireless

    Here’s Why Apple Is Putting So Much Emphasis On Selling iPhones In China

    30% of post paid Verizon customers have a feature phone

    A smart form for the smartphone?  – the “smartphone” is a term we are all very familiar with; first coined in 1997 by Ericsson

  • Mobile laboratory: Hong Kong

    According to a commentator in the Hong Kong Economic Times: Hong Kong consumers spend 129 minutes a day on their mobile devices, 90 per cent of that time is using applications and mobile internet-enabled services.

    According to Hong Kong government statistics mobile penetration is 223% compared to 128% across the EU, though many of these are accounted for by cab drivers who double as a booking office for other taxis using a string of handsets spread across their dashboard.

    Sometime after the summer in Hong Kong, the MTR (think Transport for London running the tube system) changed the message on escalators to the following in a grating passive-aggressive female voice:

    Please hold on to the hand rail, don’t keep your eyes only on your mobile phone

    Your mobile bill comes with a 12 dollar surcharge to contribute towards the cost of providing mobile access on the underground rail system, yet people don’t talk on the phone, they watch videos, play games, use messenger applications or update their Facebook page.

    WhatsApp enjoys an email-like ubiquity, with AllthingsD claiming 50 per cent penetration for Hong Kong back in August this year. That sounds a bit low based on my empirical experience.

    There are five mobile network operators for a city of seven million people resulting in price and feature competition:

    • Mobile data is basically all you can eat
    • LTE and Wi-Fi are easy to come by
    • Free local calls
    • Competitive IDD services
    • OTT video services are commonplace for Cantonese speakers
    • Some operator brands, notably 1010 try to differentiate by customer service and providing a sub-Vertu concierge service to business customers

    Mobile tends to start filling micro-pockets of time when one might read a book or a paper, on the commute, in a taxi, at a restaurant or bar. It is often common to see couples sitting together at a table, not talking or acknowledging each other’s existence instead engrossed in their smartphone or tablet.

    All of this phone use means that consumers have a battery pack that they take with them which can recharge a phone or a tablet over a USB connection. It is no coincidence that Huawei’s Ascend Mate 2 incorporates this battery pack functionality into the tablet, as the primary upgrade this time around.

    More information
    Hong Kong Economic Times commentary on ‘digital’ over-use (in Chinese)
    Office of the Communications Authority – Key communications statistics (in English)
    The Quiet Mobile Giant: With 300M Active Users, WhatsApp Adds Voice Messaging | AllthingsD
    CES 2014: Huawei announces Ascend Mate 2 | NDTV

  • Bakrie Group + more news

    Bakrie Group and Path

    Indonesia’s Bakrie Group leads Path’s $25 million Series C round – Indonesia is the world’s largest muslim country. It is also the country where BlackBerry was popular. If you’re not Indonesian, the Bakrie Group won’t sound that familiar. The Bakrie Group is a conglomerate, it has interests across various industries including mining, oil and gas, property development, infrastructure, plantations, media and telecommunications. The Bakrie Group is one of the largest firms in Indonesia, with 10 subsidiary companies listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange.

    Consumer behaviour

    The Top 10 Global Consumer Trends for 2014 – trends include an overwhelming desire globally to indulge in luxury goods, download more apps and document experiences visually through social media

    I Bought an E-Cigar and My World Has Changed | Motherboard – probably the biggest story out of CES is the rise of e-cigarettes and other nicotine vaporisers

    Economics

    Forget the Unemployment Rate—People Still Don’t Have Jobs – Businessweek – people know that there is long term unemployment despite the numbers

    China inflation slowed

    Ethics

    The corruption of Britain: UK’s key institutions infiltrated by criminals – Home News – UK – The Independent – why the UK could learn from Hong Kong and the ICAC

    FMCG

    L’Oreal pulls Garnier brand out of Chinese market｜WantChinaTimes.com – this is about the price point at which Garnier products came in at, which exposed them to domestic brand competition

    Hong Kong

    Hong Kong triads supply meth ingredients to Mexican drug cartels | South China Morning Post – a modern day version of the British opium trade run by the Hongs like Jardine Mathieson but in reverse

    How to

    Search Animated GIFs on the Web – Giphy

    Innovation

    Designing the Next Wave of Computer Chips – NYTimes.com – interesting move, particularly when one thinks about FPGAs, ASICs or even MEM devices

    Hardware Commoditization revivisted – if you want a good enough design. However you can get out of this if your hardware design is sufficiently good

    Online

    Ad ‘Experiments’ Come To Delicious As It Updates Social Bookmarking API With Authentication, Rate Limits | TechCrunch – delicious now ranks at around the 1,000 mark on Alexa and is declining. It is most popular in India and most likely to be used in school. Not too sure how attractive that is going to be to advertisers?

    Retailing

    Amazon preparing to battle it out with Korean e-commerce sites in 2014 – Korea won’t be the pushover of a market Amazon probably thinks, for every example of success in Asia (Amazon Japan) there are car crashes (Amazon China) where they have had their butt kicked by T-Mall / TaoBao

    Software

    everpix/Everpix-Intelligence · GitHub – interesting raw data on a web service

    US Air Force turns up dubious Autonomy accounting in reseller contracts probe • The Register – interesting how will this affect Mike Lynch et al?

    Technology

    I, Cringely Final 2014 prediction: the end of the PC as we knew it – I, Cringely

    Web of no web

    Don’t fear the Internet of things | Jack Shafer – I think that the author is a bit optimistic, when one looks at the way cars surviel their drivers (not only if you have an insurance company-fitted black box) or milling machines that won’t allow you to move them around a workshop or factory, the internet of things is changing the very fabric of ownership and not for the better, let alone the privacy implications. Society needs to adjust or legislate to deal with these step changes and it hasn’t happened yet

    Wireless

    Xiaomi offers refund for fans unhappy with latest model｜WantChinaTimes.com – show the danger of spokespeople over promising