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.
The New Working Class by Claire Ainsley is unashamedly wonkish in nature. Ainsley comes from the left of the political establishment. She is an executive director of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. She had previously worked for Unite and as a government advisor.
Ainsley posits that the Labour Party is out of touch of who the working class are and what they care about. Deindustrialisaton and immigration has changed the nature of what working class means. They might have lower middle class incomes working in the services sector. Traditional blue collar roles declined to represent about 14 percent of the British population.
Ainsley’s The New Working Class is a testimony to how out of touch policy makers and advisers with the society that they claim to represent. This also makes wonder about the usefulness, and or, the attention paid to polling and research done by political parties in the UK. The Conservatives understanding of hard-working families shows at least some understanding at a high level of who the new working class are.
What struck me about the book is that much of the ‘new’ working class isn’t actually that new at all. The struggle to make ends meet is one that Orwell would have recognised the best part of a century earlier. The challenge of unemployment is one that haunted much of the 1970s and 1980s.
Family is still important and while society is secular, working class communities have been more socially conservative. That doesn’t mean that they hate gays or immigrants, they take a common sense approach to fairness but they will be concerned about family. The rate of change in society and the desire for working opportunities has been more of a driver over immigration than outright racism back to the rise of Enoch Powell.
I had thought I would gain new consumer insights in the same way that I have had in the past, reading books by like likes of American pollster Mark Penn, but this wasn’t the case with Ms Ainsley’s book. Ms Ainsley has clearly written for a different audience. Instead of the ‘new new’ insight, her work is a 101 guide for politicos to the society that the profess to live in and represent. That scared the hell out of me. More on the book here. You can find more book reviews here.
Is Open AI the equivalent of Sir Hiram Stevens Maxim? Maxim invented the Maxim gun. A belt fed machine gun that helped colonial powers grab territory in the scramble for Africa. It was reputedly used by one British official to help clear game from land that was soon to be put to farming use in Kenya. Later on it was used by both sides in the Russo-Japanese war and World War 1, due to Maxim’s business associate Sir Basil Zaharoff.
Investors are betting that Open AI will have a similar role in the battle shaping out between tech giants over generative machine learning related processes.
https://flic.kr/p/2oD1gmQ
Sam Altman of Open AI
When a company that has issues with making profits can raise money at a valuation of $85bn, it becomes abundantly clear that investors in generative AI have taken leave of their senses
I can understand the argument that Richard Windsor is making with this argument. While others might point out how dominant funding drove Amazon’s present-day monopoly, there are other precedents like Netscape, General Magic, Uber and WeWork that others can point to.
There are bigger questions about whether the LLM approach is in itself a limited model to pursue? If so, Open AI could look more like when IBM bet the farm on Josephson Junctions. The use of synthetic data implies that LLM scaling might already be at its limit. Nvidia looks like a better bet from this angle despite its own extremely high valuation.
Brand purpose has a lot of issues, but it’s worthwhile bearing in mind the kind of marketing Unilever was pushing out prior to buying fully into the concept. These efforts came to light from social sharing about the the British ‘vulgar wave’ that contextualised Russell Brand.
Unilever Heart Brands UK
While China’s ads skewed conservative compared to the UK’s vulgar wave of 1997 – 2012, this Axe (Lynx in the UK and Ireland) ad isn’t exactly on brand purpose. The spokesperson in the advert is Edison Chen. At the time Chen was a star in Hong Kong’s entertainment circles. But getting involved in street fights and a leaked hard drive full of pornographic images of girlfriends he dated meant he withdrew from the industry. Now he is better known for owning streetwear brand CLOT.
Dove Sparks Boycott Calls Over New Partnership—’Never Buy Them Again’ | Newsweek – controversial question, but have Unilever gamed out that conservatives are more likely to use Irish Spring or similar products over Dove? I suspect that there might be something in the semiotics of cleanliness in this. African Americans by contrast might have challenges like ashen skin that would benefit from soap that cleans and moisturises, hence the popularity of shea butter based products.
Hong Kong
Architect Demi Lee on Kowloon’s Walled City. The comparison with the idea of rhizome was very interesting.
https://youtu.be/WLn_QTFVZgE?si=vykrt0SLCcCg3SyE
Ideas
Demi Lee’s video on how elements of cyberpunk are leaking into our current reality.
Dimensions of luxury as a post came together thinking about fictional influence account Gstaad Guy, Horizon Catalyst’s New Codes of Luxury report and Sense Worldwide’s Future of Luxury report.
https://flic.kr/p/31RT6g
Dimensions of luxury breaks down into three areas which Catalyst calls:
Traditional luxury
Contemporary luxury
Personal luxury
Nowadays, most luxury brands won’t fit neatly into these classifications. For instance the Swiss watch brand Blancpain would be considered to be traditional luxury, but the Swatch x Blancpain collaboration which borrows the design language of the 50 Fathoms dive watch is very much contemporary luxury. Part of this has been driven by many brands being part of large combines:
LVMH – depending when you look at the stock price, Europe’s largest company by value run by Bernard Arnault. Related to L Catterton private equity fund which has been financed deals such as Birkenstocks.
Kering – LVMH’s rival best known for Gucci. It is currently run by François-Henri Pinault
Richemont – Swiss listed group focused more on jewellery and watches than rivals. It has a range of brands including Dunhill, Montblanc and Panerai.
Swatch Group – which owns most of Switzerland’s premier watch brands
Fosun – China-based multi-sector conglomerate which owns a hodge podge of western heritage and luxury brands including Ahava, Folli Follie, Lanvin, Sergio Rossi, Silver Cross prams and St John knitwear.
Notable independents include The Rolex Trust and Hermés.
Traditional luxury
Unsurprisingly this is the kind of luxury that most people would think of. Timeless style, heirloom designs and peerless quality are likely to be the kind of language that springs to mind. When the luxury industry talks about sustainability and the circular economy, the lives of these traditional luxury products come into focus, since they are often passed down. The influencer behind Gstaad Guy in an interview with the FT talks about his favourite item of clothing being a Loro Piana vest that was his Grandad’s.
What we think of as ‘traditional’ luxury brands came out of businesses with heritage that are known for their quality
Loro Piana and Zegna were both high end fabric manufacturers before becoming ‘luxury brands’
Rolex made high quality reliable tool watches, as did Omega and Panerai.
Louis Vuitton made high quality robust trunks for travellers.
Zero Halliburton and Rimowa made cases that were ideal for air travel and protecting sensitive instruments and camera equipment. The Halliburton in Zero Halliburton actually refers to Halliburton Company who are famous for providing oilfield services.
Contemporary luxury
Contemporary luxury is where the greatest controversies of luxury tend to lie. Horizon Catalyst tend to tie up premium brands like AirBnB and Apple together with the luxury sector. It includes values like innovation and sustainability. But it doesn’t discuss what Dana Thomas calls the massification of luxury, with traditional European brands being more often being ‘Made In China’. This has driven a drive for brands to try and ‘shortcut’ their way to success. Luxury brands have adopted the techniques of streetwear brands were scarcity and limited drops fuel the ‘hype’. What Sense Worldwide called ‘Supremification’. Chanel is opening special UHNWI only boutiques. And ‘Made In China’ allowed China to develop its own ateliers.
Personal luxury
Catalyst defines personal luxury as subjective in nature, individual to each person and having a deeper connection with personal values. It could be items that might be considered treats like having their groceries delivered. Their discussion of everyday luxury would be familiar to marketers in terms of the ‘Lipstick effect’ familiar from Juliet Schor’s work during recessions. But it’s interesting that luxury is being defined by consumers and followed by brands. The classic example of this would be brands from Nike to LVMH getting on board with NFTs, following consumers and creators.
Beauty masks have been mainstreamed by the mainstreaming of Asian beauty culture norms. There isn’t the faff of having to make something up or smear something on. Instead, pop the mask on, leave it on for a specified time (usually 15 minutes) and peel off. If Switzerland is the home of fine watchmaking or chocolate; then South Korea is the home of beauty masks. Beauty masks are really relaxing to pop on whilst bingewatching a show or film series.
This footage of beauty mask manufacture in Busan South Korea intrigued me. I was surprised by how small scale production was in this factory, even though it’s a batch manufacture process, I was expecting greater scale given how ubiquitous Korean beauty masks are.
Can Echo Finally Break Through in Home Automation? – Amazon has expanded the Echo line to include models that are tailored to certain use cases and certain rooms – like small screen models for bedside, large screen models for kitchens, high quality speakers for living rooms and dens, and small, inexpensive models for everywhere. We see efforts to get Echos into multiple rooms in Amazon’s promotions, where they sold multiple device packages of the least expensive models in the early days, and aggressively discount a variety of models regularly throughout the year. Amazon clearly has room to go in pursuing this strategy. Nine years in, most Amazon Echo owners still have only one device. In the most recent twelve-month period, 69% of US Echo owners have one, and about one-quarter have two or three
You need to talk to your kid about AI. Here are 6 things you should say. | MIT Technology Review – a variant of sage advice for everyone 1. Don’t forget: AI is not your friend 2. AI models are not replacements for search engines 3. Teachers might accuse you of using an AI when you haven’t 4. Recommender systems are designed to get you hooked and might show you bad stuff 5. Remember to use AI safely and responsibly 6. Don’t miss out on what AI’s actually good at
Move over AI, quantum computing to be most powerful technology | VentureBeat – Leaders in the military and cybersecurity community believe that quantum computing could become a potentially serious threat in 4 – 6 years. Quantum computers have been proven to vastly outperform traditional computers on specific sets of problems. A vastly outperforming computer like this could pose a serious threat to cybersecurity across several critical industries like banking and logistics. While potentially impactful in the future, the technology is currently limited by a lack of ability to reduce probabilities of errors. Extreme temperatures required to operate the computers are also a barrier.
IPSOS conducts CX research on an annual basis. They surveyed 1,000 CX (customer experience) specialists around the world about the current state of CX in their businesses. The IPSOS CX research painted a complex picture of organisations. Key take outs of the CX research:
82% of respondents believed that CX investment will provide a competitive edge, but only 52% were expecting an increase investment over the next 12 months.
28% of respondents admitted that their organisation’s CX was worse than promised and only 15% of respondents consider their organisations ‘CX leaders’.
Only 52% have CX governance policies in place.
At the present time the majority of CX leaders have data integration issues and 46% now have to integrate AI as well, adding to their business challenge.
Environmentally friendly clothing brand Patagonia gets called out about the ‘greenwashing’ design of its buffalo work boots by the Rose Anvil YouTube channel who specialise in analysing boot and shoe design.
Standard Model: The Chanel J12 Eclipse Set – LUXUO – interesting, particularly given the manufacturing problems that Rolex has had with dual colour ceramic bezels. Chanel has managed to master this and master it across the whole watch. Matching bezel and case divisions.
Interesting analysis on supercar prices.
Profile of Lacoste.
Marketing
A few days of lunch time viewing from the IPA (Institute of Practitioners in Advertising) media planning and strategy summit. Interesting mix of presentations and case studies.
Really interesting case study on McDonalds and how the brand has evolved over two decades in the UK.
