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.
Saying out loud the quiet bit about work-life balance; tectonic plates of streaming move again – I’ve found myself thinking about one panel in particular – the participants in the session on advice for aspiring leaders went beyond the usual platitudes, and shared a couple of uncomfortable truths about an industry which is trying to rebrand itself as a gentler place to work. – I think that we’ll see more of this move away from a gentler place to work as companies look to cut staff. I entered the workforce in the middle of recession before I went to college, this was the time of micro serfs and mcjobs. The idea of a gentler place to work seemed to be a transient one to me – one that would come and go with economic growth. Zero hour contracts really grew during and after the 2008 financial crisis, which is as far away from a gentler place to work as you can get.
Why Is the Web So Monotonous? Google. :: Reasonably Polymorphic – The primary purpose of the web today is “engagement,” which is Silicon Valley jargon for “how many ads can we push through someone’s optical nerve?” Under the purview of engagement, it makes sense to publish webpages on every topic imaginable, regardless of whether or not you know what you’re talking about. In fact, engagement goes up if you don’t know what you’re talking about; your poor reader might mistakenly believe that they’ll find the answer they’re looking for elsewhere on your site. That’s twice the advertising revenue, baby! But the spirit of the early web isn’t gone: the bookmarks I’ve kept these long decades mostly still work, and many of them still receive new content. There’s still weird, amateur, passion-project stuff out there. It’s just hard to find. Which brings us to our main topic: search. – It is more than search, there is also motivation and consumer behaviour change in the old web versus the new one – The Founder of GeoCities on What Killed the ‘Old’ Internet | Gizmodo
Innovation
How the American semiconductor industry claimed back technological and market leadership from the Japanese
Ocado, the online supermarket – is this a legitimate content partnership with Disney? Something feels a bit off about the Ocado | Disney inspired meals. The ‘inspired by Disney’ tagline and the Lion King themed ‘green grub pasta’ feels weird.
Government concerns over China-owned CCTV company embedded in UK – Channel 4 News – There are more than a million of Hikvision’s cameras installed across the UK – monitoring every aspect of our lives. But Channel 4 News has learned that there are growing concerns within the government about the Chinese state-owned tech company.
This is a book review of You Are Here which provides a critique on the current political media landscape from a predominantly US perspective. I decided to read the book given that it was endorsed by online media researcher and author danah boyd. danah is most famous for her long time researching the online lives of young people. I first came across her when she worked briefly at Yahoo! Research.
Navigating polarised speech, conspiracy theories and media landscape
You Are Here is written by two American academics: Whitney Phillips and Ryan M Milner. In the book they try to make sense of the current media landscape and what they consider to be the likely causes.
Ecology as metaphor
You Are Here uses the metaphor of ecology to discuss a polluted landscape poisoning society. This has two effects:
It taps into the deep concerns of their readers who have a lot of anxiety around areas like climate change
It encourages system thinking in people who are otherwise not system thinkers
The downside is that it might convey the kind of desperation and hopelessness that we see around climate change also affect the media landscape creating a kind of dark ennui among the readers.
Conspiracy theories
Phillips and Milner focus on conspiracy theories going back the satanist concerns of the 1980s and 1990s. While conspiracy theories are important and memetic in nature, there is a risk that focusing on them misses a wider truth. Why do people feel the way they do? Brexit research showed us that a good deal of concern was about the rate of change and being economically left behind. The role of class and the isolation of working class voices and issues in political discourse and the media left the door open for conspiracy theories.
Strengths and weaknesses
You Are Here does a good job at summarising much of the current media theory thinking about how platforms alter our collective perceptions.
You Are Here describes itself as a field guide. A field guide is a book designed to help readers identify things or phenomena rather than offering solutions per se. The reality is that for most readers, their exposure to the content discussed in the book through the proverbial rear view mirror of coverage on MSNBC News, The New York Times or The Atlantic or conversations with friends and family members who live outside the major cities. There is an assumption that the interested reader is unaware of the current media landscape. In this respect the book is likely to raise anxiety, entrench beliefs and focus the reader on regulation as the sole solution to the current media landscape. I don’t think that this will necessarily move things forward. It will reinforce progressive readers own biases. I recognise and identify with Phillips and Milner’s world view, which is similar to my own – but I have some self awareness of my own viewpoint in a sea of opinions.
Platforms
A decade ago I worked with Amy Gershkoff. Amy had previously been involved in the media planning and analytics for the campaign to re-elect President Obama. At the time, the narrative being communicated was that media and social media platforms through the judicious use of data and optimising for algorithms offered the opportunity to help Obama to be re-elected.
The reality of these things are somewhat different. Programmatic media is often correctly targeting half the time. But when it gets it right, it can be creepy.
Amy took this story to large corporates in Hong Kong and China, which was where I was working at the time. The irony of ‘the power of modern political campaigning online’ being used as an example of omni-channel marketing for Chinese companies wasn’t lost on me. Phillips and Milner’s stance misses this wider picture.
The Obama campaign built on pioneering work that has been done by the like of Joe Trippi for Howard Dean when he ran for consideration as the future Democrat presidential candidate eight years earlier.
You Are Here tries to articulate a route for individuals to navigate the media environment, rather than building a groundswell to try and change it for the better. I can’t help but feel that there’s an opportunity having been lost and the polarisation will continue.
Decoded was originally written in 2013. I read this version. I know that there is a new edition being published in September 2022. Barden had been a marketer working at T-Mobile (now EE, BT’s mobile phone network), Diageo and Unilever.
His background and a foreword written by British marketing grandee Rory Sutherland give an indication of the book’s quality.
Once more with emotion
Barden’s background has skewed towards CRM, online marketing and consumer marketing. I disagree with Barden in one important way. Barden doesn’t think that emotion has any benefit in marketing. I agree with Barden to a point, beyond nostalgia, I won’t have an emotional connection with the brand of margarine spread that I buy. The nostalgia is largely out of control of the brand.
However, both the IPA and WARC have shown that communications that provokes an emotional reaction can build long term awareness over time. Think about the adverts that get stuck in your memory, versus rational adverts. Emotional adverts make you feel something, even if they don’t change your opinion of the product they can build memory structures with enough exposure.
The challenge as Barden points out, being able to do this consistently. The example that Barden cites is Cadbury’s inability to match the quality of its ‘Gorilla’ advert.
Getting beyond emotion
Beyond a difference of opinion on the effect of emotion in communications, I thought that the content in Decoded was very good. The book felt to me as if it was aimed at British junior inhouse brand marketers at the likes of Unilever and Diageo where Barden aimed his stripes. The book is full of British examples, this might limit its success in the US. The examples are already old enough that they might not resonate with marketers who recently left college; but they would leave US readers clueless. While British marketers are often exposed to US authors at the start of their careers like David Aaker and Philip Kotler; the same isn’t true for their American peers of British marketing thinkers.
I also see it valuable for marketing undergraduate students, with its real world examples. He also does these summary pages at the end of each chapter that reminded me of ‘Dummies Guides‘ format books.
Decoded covers behavioural science principles and is valuable for the quality of reading list that it provides the reader to delve into after they have read the book.
Barden dives into the kind of concepts that brand marketers would come across in shopper marketing and ad testing from the likes of Kantar. He provides a sound basis on which marketers can rely to understand, if not, critique their agency’s efforts.
Beside emotion, my biggest concern is that marketers might think that Decoded is the final step on their education journey, rather than the first step. It provides a useful primer that the engaged marketer can then delve into. Unfortunately for us all, there are a lot of surface player who would declare mission accomplished at this point.
If like me, you wanted a follow on read from Decoded, my recommendation would be Phil Graves Consumerology, which I reviewed here. Graves’ work nicely fits in with the discussion Barden had on shopper marketing from an expert in the field.
Qantas chaos: outsourced baggage handler says one in 10 bags not making flights | Qantas | The Guardian – this lost luggage mess is emblematic of what is happening globally. Delta Airlines put on a dedicated flight to repatriate 1,000 pieces of lost luggage that had been left behind in in London Heathrow airport. Lost luggage and other overwhelmed ground services has seen both Heathrow and Schiphol airport in Amsterdam cut flight numbers. Lost luggage will tarnish airline reputations.
A poor experience on lost luggage will give discount airlines an opening, given that they will be supporting fuel related price increases anyway. These lost luggage problems will also help rail companies. I could see Eurostar running some ‘lost luggage’ response ads as a way of putting pressure on British Airways
China’s image loses its shine in Europe | Financial Times – In the UK, Germany and France, only 14 per cent, 33 per cent and 41 per cent of people questioned in 2006 had an unfavourable view of China. Now, they stand at 69 per cent, 74 per cent and 68 per cent respectively. – its human rights, then military power, then economics and finally Chinese political interference. Central and eastern European’s governments joined hands with Beijing in launching an initiative known as the 16+1 format. It was meant to herald a new dawn of mutually beneficial co-operation. China managed to alienate all with the exception of Hungary and Serbia. The Chinese ignored the region fears of Russia and strong attachment to the US as the ultimate guarantor of each country’s independence – likely because of China’s laser focus on the US as its enemy. Serbia makes sense, Russia backed them during the break-up of Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia wasn’t ‘freed’ by the Soviet Union from Nazi occupation and Tito managed to maintain a distance from them. Hungary is the one that is more puzzling my perspective; the people were crushed in 1956 by Russian tanks when they tried to move away from communism
The UK economy is stagnant — and the reasons run deep | Financial Times – the 15 years between 2004 and 2019 — pre-Covid and pre-Brexit — were the weakest for growth in gross domestic product per head since the years between 1919 and 1934. Low growth in GDP per head caused low growth in household real disposable incomes: those for non-pensioners rose by 12 per cent between 2004-05 and 2019-20. This can be compared to an average rise of 40 per cent every 15 years since 1961. Also significant have been changes in income distribution. Between 1980 and 1995, median non-pensioner household real disposable incomes rose by 37 per cent, but by 67 per cent for the top decile and only 3 per cent for the bottom one. Between 1992 and 2007, incomes rose by 41 per cent, 47 per cent and 37 per cent, respectively: growth then was both fast and widely shared, which was surely far better. But then, between 2004 and 2019, as median incomes rose by a mere 12 per cent, the top decile’s rose 11 per cent and the bottom’s 2 per cent: that was stagnation all round
Hong Kong’s legacy — from Chris Patten’s Diaries to City on the Edge | Financial Times – Patten argues convincingly that for Britain or any other country to abandon liberal principles and yield to the Chinese Communist party’s demands at every opportunity brings neither political nor commercial benefits. The trade and investment statistics he cites from the final decades of British rule do indeed suggest there is little correlation between grovelling and real rewards for business & … “China’s decision [in 2020] to impose the national security law as a pre-emptive strike against a perceived revolutionary situation in Hong Kong amounts to the premature end of ‘One Country, Two Systems’ [the formula for autonomy] 27 years before the 2047 deadline,” Hung writes. “The cost of this move for China could be grave,” he concludes, at a time when the US is already seeking to curb Beijing’s technological and strategic ambitions and China still benefits from Hong Kong’s role as an internationally connected financial centre.
Thinking About the Unthinkable in Ukraine | Foreign Affairs – with back-and-forth tactical nuclear shots is that Russia would be at an advantage because it possesses more tactical nuclear weapons than the United States does. That asymmetry would require U.S. policymakers to resort sooner to so-called strategic forces (intercontinental missiles or bombers) to keep the upper hand. That, in turn, would risk unleashing the all-out mutual destruction of the major powers’ homelands. Thus, both the tit-for-tat and the disproportionate retaliatory options pose dauntingly high risks. A less dangerous option would be to respond to a nuclear attack by launching an air campaign with conventional munitions alone against Russian military targets and mobilizing ground forces for potential deployment into the battle in Ukraine. This would be coupled with two strong public declarations. First, to dampen views of this low-level option as weak, NATO policymakers would emphasize that modern precision technology makes tactical nuclear weapons unnecessary for effectively striking targets that used to be considered vulnerable only to undiscriminating weapons of mass destruction. That would frame Russia’s resort to nuclear strikes as further evidence not only of its barbarism but of its military backwardness. Direct entry into the war at the conventional level would not neutralize panic in the West. But it would mean that Russia would be faced with the prospect of combat against a NATO that was substantially superior in nonnuclear forces, backed by a nuclear retaliatory capability, and less likely to remain restrained if Russia turned its nuclear strikes against U.S. rather than Ukrainian forces.
Hollywood won’t budge for Chinese censors anymore. Here’s what changed – CNN – talent in the Chinese industry had become stronger. Local stories told “in Mandarin and portrayed with Chinese sensibilities … naturally appeal to local audiences, particularly as you move from urban to rural markets,” he noted. “As Chinese producers venture further into the action and sci-fi genres in particular, where Hollywood dominated for many years, there will likely be increased competition from local fare.” – the pandering of Hollywood to the Chinese government has created a sector that will likely attempt to bury the US film industry
A new study points out the biggest threat to the potential of TikTok as it lacks massive earnings for creators compared to rivals / Digital Information World and Nearly Half of Gen Z Prefers TikTok and Instagram Over Google Search – according to Google’s internal studies, “something like almost 40% of young people when they’re looking for a place for lunch, they don’t go to Google Maps or Search, they go to TikTok or Instagram.” Google confirmed this statistic to Insider, saying, “we face robust competition from an array of sources, including general and specialized search engines, as well as dedicated apps.” Google highlighted changes it plans to make to its search engine to appeal to a younger audience, including the ability for a user to pan their camera over an area and “instantly glean insights about multiple objects in a wider scene.” Insider has previously reported about the threat TikTok poses to YouTube, which is also owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet. Insider Intelligence predicts TikTok’s advertising revenue will overtake YouTube by 2024. – which makes the TikTok shopping TV service shutdown a bit more puzzling
US and UK intelligence chiefs call for vigilance on China’s industrial spies | Financial Times – In a joint appearance in London, the chiefs of the US and British intelligence agencies called on companies to be much more vigilant about China. FBI director Christopher Wray said Beijing was using “elaborate shell games” to disguise its spying and was even taking advantage of Spacs, or special purpose acquisition vehicles. “The Chinese government poses an even more serious threat to western businesses than even many sophisticated businesspeople realise,” Wray told business leaders at an event with his MI5 counterpart, Ken McCallum. “I want to encourage you to take the long view as you gauge the threat.” In a reference to the Ministry of State Security and the People’s Liberation Army, Wray added: “When you deal with a Chinese company, know you’re also dealing with the Chinese government — that is the MSS and the PLA — too, almost like silent partners – that this is news to business leaders shows how naive they all are. Based on my experience I believe that the reality is that the business community is already state captured, culpable and willing to endanger their home countries for marginal short term gain. More here: Joint address by MI5 and FBI Heads | MI5 – The Security Service and NEW: Top UK and USA spy chiefs warning on CCP
When you think about electric cars you usually think of Tesla. But the reality is that electric cars have been about for almost 200 years. I was reminded of Bob Cringely’s analogy about technology success being about ‘surfing waves‘. The first electric car turned up sometimes in the 1830s. By the beginning of the 20th century there was 30,000 electric cars. But petrol engined cars were cheaper to make and quicker to refill than charging electric cars.
That didn’t stop Irish inventors converting a Volvo 66 saloon to run as an electric car, 23 years before Tesla even existed.
Abducted Canadian billionaire Xiao Jianhua faces trial in Shanghai court | Financial Times – the question not being asked is how many Chinese government officials will the legal action ensnare? They’ve sat on him for five years as they unwound the Tomorrow Group and are only now prosecuting him in the run up to the 20th National Party Congress in November. It is at this event that Xi Jingping is likely to become president for life. The reality is that Mr Xiao’s goose was cooked as soon as he was snatched from the Four Seasons. This trial could affect demand for high-end Hong Kong property adversely
