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.
I am doing some part-time study at the moment and teamed up with some of my fellow students to look at gamification trends. We had a grand total of just over 2 1/2 hours to score sources for information about gamification and its use in marketing.
Gamification is only new in respect to the way one looks at the problem rather than a new, new idea. When one thinks back to the early days of the web and the way AOL chat room moderators where incentivised this employed gamification before the concept was discussed. In it’s present form however there hasn’t been that much research done about it.
Gamification the way we now understand it from a digital marketing perspective probably goes back to the work done at Carnegie Mellon University about Games With A Purpose.
The incentives that seem to work best are in order of priority:
Status
Access
Power
Stuff
Interested surged in the concept of gamification from the second half of 2010, but the body of literature about it is only a small fraction of that about digital marketing AND the bulk of the literature about gamification is focused at how it can be applied from a technological or business process point of view. From a mainstream media perspective the level of interest has surged since the beginning of the year.
In terms of research, Gartner seems to have led the way in terms of predictions about the growth of gamifying activities within enterprises, this is probably why it is getting so much attention around business processes rather than marketing.
Measurement of engagement according to M2 research revolves around four aspects:
Engagement: unique visits, time spent on site / page views
Loyalty: repeat visits, invite a friend
Virality: sharing, appearance on social channel communications
Monetisation: conversion rates, purchase of virtual goods, registration
Of these four categories the few successful case studies that we found focused on engagement and loyalty. Social networks were used as a conduit and a platform for gamification layers. For instance, allkpop.com used Badgeville to drive increased engagement and sharing of their site content.
Since this is a relatively young area of digital marketing we found some serious gaps in available information about gamifying campaigns including:
Project failure rates
B2B case studies
Examples of commerce / conversion
The critical factor in planning a programme based on gamifying an action seemed to be in the selection and fine tuning of the game mechanic and how it was applied.
The presentation is on Slideshare so may not be available to all readers. More related content here.
Pete Sigrist sent over a link to 33 Digital’s take on gamification, which I wasn’t able to reference at the time. But there you can read it over at Scribd.
Pinterest is an image sharing and social media service. Pinterest is designed to enable saving and discovery on the internet using images, and on a smaller scale, animated GIFs and videos. Things saved on Pinterest are organised in the form of pinboards. Pinterest feels very much like a classic web 2.0 service. Pinterest seems to have managed to sidestep IP related issues. Originally it skewed female in usage with wedding planning, fashion, hairstyles and interior design being popular. Pinterest has tried to broaden its base including Pinterest commerce integration and advertising.
The latest news seems to indicate Pinterest usage has topped out. This could be one off numbers or Pinterest seasonality.
Ferdinand A. Porsche, 76, Dies – Designed Celebrated 911 – NYTimes.com – Butzi Porsche dead. Butzi Porsche came from a family of engineers. His grandfather led the original team behind the Volkswagen Beetle. His father had been part of that engineering team and went on to found what we now know as Porsche. However, Butzi Porsche wasn’t engineer but a designer with technical chops. After an infamous meeting of the Porsche family, no members were allowed to work at Porsche. Butzi Porsche didn’t get to do more after he designed the 911. Instead Butzi Porsche started Porsche Design. Butzi Porsche did product design for other companies. Porsche Design also came out with its own products with Butzi Porsche designing watches, glasses and more. Butzi Porsche resigned from Porsche Design in 2005 due to ill health.
Why Are So Many Americans Single? : The New Yorker – single living was not a social aberration but an inevitable outgrowth of mainstream liberal values. Supported by modern communications platforms and urban living infrastructure: coffee shops, laundrettes
Kraft break-up yields marketing shift: Warc.com – the break-up is ironic when you look at the trouble they went to, in order to buy Cadburys and then break their business down broadly into Cadburys + Jacobs Suchard vs Kraft US.
HK’s rich hesitate to have babies | SCMP.com – interesting takeaways: didn’t want the emotional commitment, time poverty, financial stability / too small a living space and concerned about the local environment not being suitable for children. It was interesting that the education system was given such a hard time, given that it’s better than the UK system (paywall)
agnès b. | VICE – great interview with French fashion designer agnés b
Marketing
Fueling the hunger for The Hunger Games – The New York Times – really interesting comment: …during the 1980s you bought the poster and once a year went to a convention and met your people for something like Star Trek (and Star Wars). It misses out the fact that you are likely to have had real-world friends that you would have talked about it with as well – marketers now seem blindsided to the real-world
The idea of green fatigue encouraged me to reflect on FMCG marketing in the 1980s. In the late 1980s we’d started to see mainstream brands selling ‘green’ products: washing-up liquid and clothes detergents that were more friendly to the environment. Concerns about phosphate-based detergents in water supplies, organo-lead compounds in petrol and the effect of chloro-fluoro carbons on the ozone layer drove a wider consumer awareness of the environment setting a zeitgeist that was ripe to sell more environmentally conscious fast-moving consumer products.
Sales of these products dropped as the recession changed consumers focus from being environmentally responsible to paying down personal debt and worrying whether they would have a job next year.
Ipsos research
According to Ipsos as reported by Le Monde; an increasing number of consumers feel ‘too much is being done about climate change‘. A combination of ‘green wash’ products.
Green conspiracy
It was interesting to see that environmental groups seen to be part of a green conspiracy (just look at your typical Greenpeace campaign and it kind of makes sense). Greenpeace themselves have admitted that they won’t let the truth get in the way of their campaigns. They have also ran some questionable lobbying campaigns in Africa as documented by Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Manifesto.
They also have a feeling that consumers greening efforts don’t move the needle in the first place. Le Monde describes this as green fatigue. Again a good deal of this is down to the nature of the way green campaigning is delivered. What is less apparent is whether there is a wider political aspect to this. Is there a fundamental divergence in values from the progressive consensus around globalist responsibility for climate change?
Gore-Tex Under Siege from Waterproof Fabric Newcomers | OutsideOnline.com – interesting how Goretex waterproof fabric stranglehold mirrors Microsoft’s position in the technology sector. Goretex was historically under threat from a number of systems that had varying degrees of impact. Hipora is a silicon coating structure invented by Korean firm Kolon, Schoeller’s C change which has temperature dependent venting, SympaTex commonly used when you see ‘no brand’ 3-layer laminate, usually lower price products that would lose margin paying for Goretex licensing. Lowe Alpine’s ceramic coated triple point fabric, but managed Goretex to survive and Lowe Alpine didn’t. There are other competitor products including I suspect that the other fabrics will become niche pieces unless they sort their marketing out. Goretex is primarily a branding exercise, that sets minimum standards such as taped seals. Much of Goretex intellectual property has been voided or circumvented.
Marketing is where the Goretex difference lies now, but it is known for a confrontational relationship with partners.
Kwok brothers arrested by HK watchdog – FT.com – Sun Hung Kai is Hong Kong’s largest property company. Surprising that they are involved as the big firms there generally keep their noses clean (paywall)
