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.

  • Marzipan & other news

    Marzipan

    Daring Fireball: Marzipan – Gruber posits that Marzipan is a unified development environment that allows programmers to create apps optimised for iOS and macOS. Marzipan means that the only have to write the app only one time, rather than having to rewrite completely for each platform. It makes more sense than the original Guzman article on a future merging of iOS and macOS

    Business

    Behind the Fall and Rise of China’s Xiaomi | WIRED – interesting analysis of how Xiaomi made mixed retail / e-tail strategy and smart home products pull their business

    Apple Took the Lion Share of Smartphone Industry Profits in Q3 2017 at Close to 60% – Patently Apple – there are many ways to cut this data. Apple is still doing well, Samsung has made big strides to get back into the game over the last year and the largest Chinese manufacturers are still living on thin margins of $15 per handset. Huawei’s numbers are likely to be mixed. The Honor handsets will have a much lower margins and so pull down Huawei’s aggregate value.

    Consumer behaviour

    The politics of social status: economic and cultural roots of the populist right – Gidron – 2017 – The British Journal of Sociology – Wiley Online Library – the answers may lie on the ‘supply side’ of political competition, where recent movements in party platforms have made the populist right more attractive to many voters. A convergence over the past three decades in the economic platforms of the centre-left and centre-right toward the right have reduced the appeal of the centre-left to the working class. In this context, many voters now complain that no one speaks for them. At the same time, parties on the populist right have moved their economic platforms to the left, making them more plausible providers of jobs and social protection. Moreover, in order to mount distinctive appeals at a time when the differences between parties on economic issues has narrowed, many parties have put more emphasis on identity or values issues, which often draw middle-class voters to the left but working-class voters to the right

    Finance

    China puts US$15,000 annual personal cap on overseas bank card withdrawals | South China Morning Post – further clamping down on capital flight, overseas property investment etc

    China moves to impose order on mobile payments boom | FT – $76/day usage limit is going to kill their usage abroad since they have mostly penetrated duty free and high-end department stores (paywall)

    Marketing

    The Jeanius Style of Steve Jobs – Levi Strauss – wait a minute; Levi’s used to give billionaire Steve Jobs free jeans? Why?

    Daring Fireball: Italian Company Calls Itself ‘Steve Jobs’ – expect overpriced mock turtlenecks in any colour you want so long as it’s black

    Legal

    Trump Says U.S. Post Office Should Charge Amazon `Much More’ | Ad Age – actually a fair point, the problem is that Amazon has got too large and too powerful (paywall)

    China takes popular news app Toutiao offline for 24 hours over pornographic content | South China Morning Post – it was only a matter of when this would happen

    The Most Expensive Mile of Subway Track on Earth – The New York Times – public officials have stood by as a small group of politically connected labor unions, construction companies and consulting firms have amassed large profits. – When does pork barrel politics start to look like organised crime?

    Huawei executive detained on suspicion of taking bribes | HKEJ Insights – it is worthwhile bearing in mind that Huawei is a big ass company, so the odds of at least some employees being bent is a sure thing, just on the scale of numbers. It isn’t necessarily proof that the company is rotten. Huawei has its cultural foibles but corruption isn’t necessarily one of them

    Security

    Tencent denies storing WeChat records after Chinese billionaire reportedly questions monitoring | South China Morning Post – how does it comply with Chinese law for monitoring etc? Interesting privacy now a minor issue at least in China. I had heard of people moving to Ding as they didn’t trust WeChat

    China’s Huawei flags slower smartphone and overall revenue growth | Reuters – I thought that 5G infrastructure and continued enterprise sales would kick in for Huawei, they are still desperately trying to increase their slim margins on smartphone sales

    The strange story of “Extended Random” – A Few Thoughts on Cryptographic Engineering – you can deploy a cryptographic backdoor, but it’s awfully hard to control where it will end up

    Technology

    Researchers Made Google’s Image Recognition AI Mistake a Rifle For a Helicopter | WIRED – interesting implications for black SEO

  • You are not safe

    You are not safe was a theme that echoed through a period drama on Silicon Valley yet is equally applicable today.

    IBM 360 Announcement center

    I have been catching up on Halt and Catch Fire. It is a fiction based on various aspects of Silicon Valley lore. I have enjoyed watching it immensely to a point.

    I was especially struck by  episode eight in the third series. One of the main characters in series three hacks his employer and releases their anti-virus software online for free. But its the mid-1980s through a thoroughly modern lens. It resonates because it speaks to our age, not to the 1980s or even the mid-1990s.

    YOU ARE NOT SAFE

    I, Ryan Ray, released the MacMillan Utility source code. I acted alone. No one helped me, and no one told me to do it.  I did this because ‘security’ is a myth.  Contrary to what you might have heard, my friends, you are not safe.  Contrary to what you might have heard, my friends, you are not safe.  Safety is a story. It’s something we search our children so they can sleep at night, but we know it’s not real.

    Yes, there was software piracy, it was a mainstream part of computing culture which had sprung up from the ‘homebrew’ mentality.  Prior to founding Apple, Steve Wozniak used to give out the schematics of what then became the Apple I. Punched paper tapes of software used to be exchanged between members when they met up in aMenlo Park garage and later on in an auditorium at Stanford University.

    Back then the narrative was overwhelmingly positive in terms of technology. The main problem was whether the Japanese, Microsoft, Intel or IBM was going to crush the rest of the technology eco-system in Silicon Valley. Consumers  had a bright new world of technology ahead of them.  Video games were still a niche interest compared to VCRs (video cassette recorders). VHS versus Betamax was as important a format war as Windows versus Macintosh.

    Here’s the thing. This show (rightly or wrongly) may frame the way a lot of people think about this part of the digital age. For those who aren’t well read about the history of Silicon Valley OR didn’t live through the 1980s – it will colour their view of history. That detail rankled me a bit; I’m not quite sure why.  Part of it is knowing where we’re going is understanding where we have been in past.

    That’s all very nice, but why does this matter? It provides you with perspective and the ability to critique ideas. Either way you are not safe. More related content here.

  • The media of me

    media of me post

    Wadds came up with 13 theses about the media of me with more than a nod and a wink to The Cluetrain Manifesto. The main thrust of it is that the media model is broken, technology has a lot of the blame at its door.

    Picking through it are some worthy aspirations, but it was diagnosing symptoms rather than causes. I believe that the main problems in the media of me are wetware, not software. People and civil society rather than networks and servers.

    Technology has its own momentum

    As with many things, the reality and where we are going is much more complex. Kevin Kelly posited that technological progress is a natural force of its own. He called this force the ‘technium’. It is not moral, it doesn’t understand good or bad. It can be slowed down for a time, but never stopped.

    Even during the European dark ages, the golden age in Muslim countries saw Arab scholars:

    • Collate classical knowledge
    • Translate it into their own language
    • Build upon the body of knowledge

    This knowledge came back into Europe. It helped provide a foundation for the renaissance.

    We’re not going to be able to stop bots or algorithms. As they improve; their impact will be harder to discern. There will be a tension in online platforms; shareholder value versus good citizenship.

    Digital is a winner takes all world

    As with many previous technology markets such as the PC and smartphone operating systems online is an oligopoly of two. Digital media provides a disproportionate amount of benefit to very few platforms.

    Facebook and Google count for 85-90% of online advertising growth.

    In China, online media is dominated by Tencent and Baidu. We could ‘Balkanise’ the media landscape. But that would mean a poorer experience for users outside the US and China. The technology sector does not have:

    • Commercial scale in funding
    • Sufficient talent
    • Comparable addressable markets

    Timms & Heimans hypothesis of ‘new power vs. old power’ rubs up against technology as an uncomfortable vector.

    This all means that the tensions in society, civic society and societal discourse is accelerated and amplified.

    From the perspective of technology platforms this isn’t their problem. They are only tackling it with reluctance, they don’t have a silver bullet solution.
    In their eyes:

    • ‘Online’ isn’t a problem, it is the breakdown in social norms, which are then amplified and gamed online
    • In the real world we’re insulated from views unless we chose to explore alternatives. Algorithms have amplified this process further to create a filter bubble. Algorithms are only mimicing our natural desires. This is mirrored in the lack real-world discourse and polarisation of views
    • Algorithms are accused of having a reductive effect on an individuals breadth of media consumption. News feed algorithms jobs are to make platforms money. Before their widespread use netizens widely flocked to chatrooms and forums with a similar narrow focus. News readers using RSS which would allow individuals to read widely have proved to be only a niche interest

    Reading widely is important to be being well informed, but its a conscious choice that people have to make. But in order to read widely one has to be:

    • Sufficiently educated to be confident in their reading ability
    • Confident enough to ignore any scorn that might come from ‘books, learning and being an expert’
    • Sufficiently curious to have the motivation to read
    • Having sufficient time to be able to read

    These bullets are affected by quality of education, social norms and income. If you are just getting by with a series of side hustle jobs you might too time poor to read widely.

    These are not universal traits in society. In the UK the idea of the self-educated literate working-man who goes to classes at the Mechanics Institute is long dead. That wasn’t done by Facebook or Google.

    The notion of an easily swayed populus wasn’t an invention of Cambridge Analytica, Google or Facebook. The Roman poet Juvenal famous for the concept of ‘bread and circuses’ would see something similar in populist politics. From Brexit, to Germany’s AfD the focus on diversion, distraction and immediate satisfaction ‘palliative’. A significant amount of common people are selfish in nature and often pay little attention to wider concerns.

    A quote from near the end of Jean-Paul Satre’s play No Exit sums it up quite well

    “All those eyes intent on me. Devouring me. What? Only two of you? I thought there were more; many more. So this is hell. I’d never have believed it. You remember all we were told about the torture-chambers, the fire and brimstone, the “burning marl.” Old wives’ tales! There’s no need for red-hot pokers. HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE!”

    Whilst in a democracy, all opinions should have the opportunity to be voiced; should they have a right to be heard? Should politicians really reflect the will of the people? I think there is a strong argument to be made against it. I am not advocating authoritarian rule, but that we need leaders who reflect on the greater good. Edmund Burke – one of the founding fathers of British conservatism is a widely cited example of a politician who didn’t reflect the will of the people. Burke recognised that democracy can create a tyranny over unpopular minorities. He didn’t consider politicians to be delegates; conduits for votes without moral responsibility.

    He is widely cited as being a better man for it:

    • Burke viewed the British conduct in India under the East India Company immoral
    • He advocated representation for American colonists
    • Acknowledgement of wrongdoing by the Crown in America and an appropriate apology

    Facts versus Emotion

    Facts and emotion have always duelled and facts have frequently come off the worse for it. Western politicians from Adolf Hitler to Barrack Obama have little in common except being successful exponents of rhetoric and emotion in their speeches. Technical skills and knowledge don’t make the cut. A classic example of this is the dissonance between the advice of John Redwood as a strategist with Charles Stanley versus his political stance on Brexit. Mr Redwood knows what works as a politician.

    Those that wield emotion now, have a greater understanding of how it works. It is why populist organisations win. It is why experts fail to persuade voters to act in their own interest. That won’t change with technology but with stonger, harsher electoral commission powers.

    Fact versus Fiction

    Yellow journalism and fiction has been with us for as long as civilisation existed. It’s modern roots are in the American media industry of the late 19th century, as publishers battled for circulation. They work because audiences love ‘good stories’. A good story is one that:

    • Surprises
    • Entertains
    • Reinforces our own beliefs

    American journalist Frank Mott listed the following characteristics of :

    • Scare headlines
    • Lavish use of images
    • Faked expertise: misleading headlines pseudo-science and false learnings

    All of Mott’s points sound like a thoroughly modern media playbook. Yellow journalism pioneers Hearst & Pulitzer were only stopped by public vilification and shame. The Pullitzer Price, like the Nobel Prize was a penitent act at the end of a successful  commercial career in media. Hearst & Pullitzer were owner-proprietors, it is a lot harder (though not impossible) to shame a public company today. The bigger issue is that a century of mass-media practice has lowered the bar in standards for ‘new media’ companies. A brutal legislative machine that would replace compliance through guilt with compliance through fear is a possible solution. However the legislative executive by its nature tends to favour the wealthy.

    More information
    What Technology Wants by Kevin Kelly
    Trend Watch: New Power v. Old Power by Beth Comstock
    No Exit and Three Other Plays by Jean Paul Sartre
    Satires by Juvenal
    Media of me: 13 theses

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  • Hyphbot + other news

    HyphBot

    How Adform discovered HyphBot – one of the largest botnets to ever hit digital advertising. The full HyphBot impact on all Adform’s platforms was extremely limited, costing less than $1,000 USD per month, the impact of HyphBot may have more extensive on other online advertising platforms  (PDF)

    Consumer behaviour

    Have we reached peak smartphone? – Kantar – ‘Younger mobile users aren’t simply listening to less music or reading fewer books; instead, the way in which they are engaging with entertainment and the devices they are choosing is evolving. For example, we have seen a decline in younger mobile users listening to music on their mobiles, but the purchasing of vinyl and streaming music through home virtual assistants is on the rise. Social networking has held steady, with 87.8% of 16-24-year-olds using their phones for this purpose (87% in 2016), so as new (or retro) technologies come onto the market the role of the mobile device for younger users will continue to change.’ – a certain amount of this is BS

    Ethics

    To predict crime, China’s tracking medical histories, cafe visits, supermarket membership, Human Rights Watch warns — Quartz – Minority Report in action

    Media

    When fake news will be made by pros – Monday Note – opportunity for PR industry? ;-)

    Interviews Come Back — With Cringely’s Answers – Slashdot – Slashdot’s proto-AMA with Robert X Cringely from 2000

    Software

    Sweating bullets: notes about the creation of PowerPoint by Robert Gaskins – (PDF)

    Google – The colour purple. | Radio Free Mobile – interesting support for Swift in the Fuchsia build

    Technology

    Facebook launches collaborative Stories for Groups and Events | TechCrunch – Storify / Moments for Facebook?

    Social Media Is a Denial-of-Service Attack on Your Mind | Nautilus – (paywall)

    Web of no web

    Apple wins one of their First Augmented Reality Patents related to Compositing an AR Scene – reminded of the locative art from William Gibson’s Spook Country. More related content here.

  • Sony Walkman WM-R202 – throwback gadget

    sony wmr202
    I got a Sony Walkman WM-R202 and loved it, though it was only for a short while. It was delicate and fragile, or I had a lemon; but it was the kind of device that stuck with me and made sense for me to profile as an iconic throwback gadget. Back when I started work I was obliged to do night classes in advanced chemistry. It was tough going (partly because I wasn’t that focused). I had a long commute home in a company minibus and my existing Walkman WM-24 whilst good had given up the ghost.  I decided to put what money I had towards a Sony Walkman WM-R202 that would help with my commute boredom and my night classes.

    Why that model:

    • It could record reasonably well which I convinced myself would be handy for lectures. It was not up to a Pro Walkman standard as the Dolby circuit fitted was for playback only. (I couldn’t afford the professional grade WM-D6C at the time and they weren’t the kind of device that you could easily fit in a pocket either. They were big and substantial.)
    • It had a good reputation for playback. Not only did it have Dolby B noise reduction and auto reverse on cassette playback, but it held the cassette really well due to its metal construction. I learned the benefits of good tape cassette fit in a rigid mechanism the hard way. I had got hold of a WM-36 which on paper looked better than my previous Walkman with Dolby B noise reduction and a graphic equaliser, but had to keep the door closed with a number of elastic bands. It was a sheep dressed up as a wolf and I struggled on with my original dying Walkman
    • Probably the biggest reason was that it intrigued me. It wasn’t much larger than an early iPod and was crafted with a jeweller’s precision. It was powered by a single AA battery or a NiCd battery about the size of a couple of sticks of chewing gum. It looked sexy as hell in in a brushed silver metal finish.

    Whilst the buttons on the device might seem busy in comparison to software driven smartphones it was a surprisingly well designed user experience. None of them caught on clothing, the main controls fell easily to hand and I can’t remember ever having to use the manual.

    What soon became apparent is that you needed to handle it very carefully to get cassettes in and out. I used to carefully tease the cassettes in and out. Despite my care, one day it stopped working.  Given that mine lasted about two weeks, I am guessing that mine was a lemon and that the build quality must have been generally high as you can still see them on eBay and Yahoo! Auctions in Japan.

    Since mine gave out well within a warranty period, I look it back to the shop and put the money towards a Sony D-250 Discman instead.

    Here’s a video in Japanese done by someone selling a vintage WM-R202 on Yahoo! Auctions which shows you all the features in more depth.

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