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.
US newsreader Walter Cronkite narrates a 1967 programme on what the future held in the 21st century. The soothing voice of Walter Cronkite makes the future look less scary
An Unknown Enemy is a Mexican series on Amazon Prime that follows the rise of Fernando Barrientos, Head of the National Security Directorate, Mexico’s Secret Police in the late 1960s
The People’s Republic of Desire documents China’s online streaming culture that has developed over the past few years. The film financed by the Ford Foundation provides an inside view of the direction interaction between personalities and their audience. Young girls become online personalities funded directly by besotted fans. More interaction happens online than in real life. Of course, all this happens under the ever-seeing eye of the Chinese government.
https://youtu.be/auHtqCJV4Rw
Super-excited by an album of Smith & Mighty’s unreleased back catalogue from 1988 – 1994 being released this week. It is available via digital channels, double vinyl album and on compact disc. While the tracks were unreleased, there is no filler tracks in the collection, the quality is all top notch. Here is a taster.
Korea to Fight Smog with Eco Vehicles – The Chosun Ilbo (English Edition) – interesting dual electric / hydrogen strategy in their eco vehicles. Hydrogen makes sense because of its compact nature as a form of energy, that helps with range anxiety and the amount of time taken to ‘fill up’. As a use case hydrogen makes more sense than modern electric batteries, the key challenge to overcome is the current price differential.
Why are millennial-obsessed marketers ignoring women over 50 – when they spend the money? – Mumbrella Asia – gen X is a smaller demographic – so their ‘control of 95% of consumer spending decisions” power of spending might be counterintuitive, youth is aspirational – which is why old age is being redefined by boomers. There is also an argument that focusing on young people is focusing on consumer lifetime spend. The last reason is hard to gel with the overall short terms approach to marketing currently employed
FOMO in China is a $7 billion industry | Marketplace – the Chinese payment for knowledge Podcast business dwarves ad funding and Patreon-like services. Many of knowledge podcasts are like bank analyst type reports as audio books. There is also a demand for knowledge podcasts looking at foreign affairs and current affairs. More related content here.
CTS – conserve the sound – a German project that preserves what would have been familiar sounds of now obsolete technology. Most are interesting, though the Krups coffee grinder sounds exactly the same as my more modern model
The booming male beauty market in China – Daxue Consulting – Market Research China – finding the latest Asian male beauty market trend – Korean idol flower boy image difficult to square with mainstream male beauty products. I guess this male beauty market trend must be analogous to the new romantics of the early 1980s. In that case the new romantics had a high degree of cultural impact that dwarfed the actual size of the movement.
Hayden Cox On Becoming An IWC Ambassador, And The Watches We Should Be Wearing – GQ – interesting choice of ambassador aiming at millennials. Hayden Cox shapes surfboards. He started Haydenshapes when he was in high school. In this respects his career mirrors the old school shapers like Shawn Stüssy in 1970s. Cox’s business is still laser focused on shaping boards as a business person.
It is interesting that IWC focused on an entrepreneur, rather than an athlete, celebrity or adventurer. There is a certain commonality that can be drawn between the craft of shaping and the expertise of the veteran watch maker.
Leading taxi-hailing app providers in Japan and South Korea to collaborate | The Japan Times – interesting move by Kakao. It shows the rise in Korea – Japan tourism. This goes against the wider policy dynamics prevalent in Korea – Japan government relations. Both vendors need to partner to deal with the South East Asian, Chinese competitors and Uber. In technology spheres, scale matters; innovation doesn’t.
Doing One Thing, Well: The UNIX Philosophy | Hackaday – great essay on the design philosophy on Unix. The design philosophy was based around simplicity. Specific pieces of software were built to do one thing well. (That approach was mirrored decades later in web 2.0 design ethos as well). These applications were designed to work effortlessly together. This all made computing simpler and more accessible. It is the foundations that the web from network core, to smartphone clients run on. This post is written using Unix powered laptop and hosted on an instance of Linux (an operating system that apes Unix).
If you work in marketing, you’d have had to hidden in a remote jungle outpost to avoid all the industry big opinion pieces and social discussion over Nike’s latest brand campaign. The outrage was over a social image of Colin Kaepernick supporting the video content below
Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything.
Everything has become political. New Balance got the whip end of it from liberals during the early part of the Trump administration because of its domestic manufacturing plants and his focus on American jobs. The New Balance CEO made positive remarks about the president focusing on domestic manufacturing and liberals burned their sneakers on social media.
So from the beginning Nike was in the ‘not Trump camp’ because of its business model. The question would be should it put its head above the parapet or not? From a marketing history that has worked with directors like Spike Lee – this is almost a non question.
Nike also has demographics on its side, banking on the African American community and urban kids over aging Trump supporters. This will also play well in western European markets.
Nike has trends behind it at the moment. Hypebeast style is on the ascendency, even in preppy lookbooks you are likely to see the blazer and chinos paired with a pair of Air Max in a colour scheme that pops.
In my mind working with Colin Kaepernick was inevitable because it was such a Nike thing to do. Down the road Kaepernick is going to make a stylish articulate spokesperson, think Michael Jordan but with more of a ‘thinking man’ image. (Yes I know Michael Jordan is sharp as a button but he’s got more swagger).
From Nike’s perspective it was a good tactical move. The timing was ideal to get out ahead of the NFL season, rather than being seen as a reaction to it. Scott Galloway went as far as to call it the ‘gangster marketing’ move of 2018. But no it wasn’t particularly brave on the part of Nike. From a Nike point-of-view this kicks the inevitable liberal media cyclical discussion about Nike and children working in third-world sweatshops a bit further down the road. I guess Nike won’t have to worry about yet another set of shoe brands like Starbury, Patrick Ewiing or And1 coming up anytime soon. Commentators tend to forget that they emerged because Nike was seen to be using black athletes to gouge poor consumers out of excess cash and fuelling criminality to have the ‘right’ shoes. What a difference a president makes.
Secondly, there is an issue of has bravery become an overused word?
By using it to sell sneakers and track tops are you cheapening the sacrifices of fallen first responders, civil rights activists or military personnel?
Where do whistle blowers like Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden fit into it?
And what does it say about America when you have to be brave to use your constitutional rights?
Everything has become weaponised, how do we step back from this? More on Nike here.
its a rare one of the columns when I am dealing with two pretty grim subjects in a week. The Register broke the news about western intelligence services declaring a new war on privacy – its a even more alarming when you think about how populist politics has blown up in the past few years. This is the best written reaction that I have seen to it. Schneier is a online security expert and I’d trust his judgement over any politicians: Five-Eyes Intelligence Services Choose Surveillance Over Security – Schneier on Security. Go and have a read, I’ll still be here when you come back.
As you can understand I’d like to lift the mood a bit. The reaction of Japanese people to western swear words once they are explained to them is priceless.
NASA on the Cray super-computers that they used in the mid-1980s
My former colleague Haruka is doing a daily illustration challenge, creating artworks on 1 inch x 1 inch paper square. (An inch is 25.4mm)