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.

  • Knowledge podcasts + more things

    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.

    Luxury Daily Rimowa seeks to offer more than suitcases to its ‘purposeful travelers’ – marketing and design is going to rely on community and collaboration – sounds like Stüssy’s playbook for the past four decades

    European Union has a plan for Asian infrastructure but will it collide with China’s belt and road? | South China Morning Post – this could get interesting

    Google Announces That its Data Studio Tool is Now Available to All Users | Social Media Today – Interesting low end attack on Qlik and Tableau

    Poundland To Open Stores At Up To 20 Former Poundworld Locations | Poundland Press Room – Jacks about to get hammered by Poundland with new stores. The stock inflating dream that Jacks is supposed to sell to Tesco shareholders may come unstuck very fast

    Aldi and Lidl won’t be scared by Tesco’s new discount Jack’s | The Guardian – visually it might be an Aldi analogue, pricing strategy wise it seems closer to Poundstretcher with a bakery. It’s probably what all post-Brexit UK supermarkets will look like

    Yom Kippur, a children’s bike festival on Israel’s deserted roads | Reuters – interesting evolution in consumer behaviour

    Amazon Announces Echo Link, Echo Link Amp and Echo Sub • Gear Patrol – the (US only at the moment) Echo Link Amp looks lovely but you’d be better off with Schiit instead

    Scott Galloway on the state of retailing at Recode Conference

    This data viz maps Facebook connections across the country | Fast Company – well that’s another Facebook myth disproved

    How to nail the Q&A portion of your presentation – good bits of advice

    Apple-owned software company FileMaker does an ad that take aim at innovation hype

    https://youtu.be/89T51PLL__o

    EU Starts Preliminary Probe into Amazon’s Treatment of Merchants | WSJ City  – the EU has economic reasons to do this as well

    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

  • China male beauty market + more

    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).

    Baidu in Hot Water After Hospital Mix-Up – Caixin Global – not the first time for Baidu

  • Colin Kaepernick + more things

    Colin Kaepernick 

    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)

     

     
     
     
     
     
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    A post shared by Haruka (@haruka.illustrations) on

  • KAWS + more news

    KAWS’s Dark Take on Mickey Mouse | Anatomy of an Artwork | Sotheby’s – I have been a big fan of KAWS work – in particular the stuff by KAWS done under the OriginalFake name. KAWS OriginalFake was where art and streetwear met. KAWS did some great collaborations under the OriginalFake name. I wore my Porter Tokyo x OriginalFake wallet to death in the end. KAWS has abandoned the label and is now focusing on his art pieces. Great collection of stuff here going on auction in Hong Kong. More luxury related content here.

    “Become the leader in our industry” is not a strategy | Quartz – how many times have I seen this on briefs….

    New Balance is finding trendsetters with AI and giving them shoes | Fast Company – interesting seeding campaign

    The economy is booming, your salary is not: Blame the decline of unions | FastCompany – interesting that this appearing in Fast Company whereas in the past these ideas would have been considered the work of a left wing crank

    US airlines are struggling to make money from China’s travel boom-Sino-US – looks like an ideal opportunity for Trump’s trade war

    Don’t Pretend Facebook and Twitter’s CEOs Can’t Fix This Mess | WIRED – the interesting this is that this is written by Ellen Pao; who went through hell when she did this at Reddit. Good read. It could be a slippery slope however, what happens when whats fine in the US isn’t fine in Europe, or the middle east or Asia?

    Saudi Arabia banned from advertising reform agenda on British TV | World news | The Guardian – how would this affect other country ads. Could Mexican Tourism Board ads be seen to be masking the issue of narco-violence? This feels like a slippery slope in many respects

    If you have a Yahoo account your emails have probably been scanned to figure out what you buy — and they may have been read by employees of the company – so lots of viagra and other spam email products in the vast majority of seldom opened accounts

    Luxury’s Unofficial Poster Boys | The Daily | Gartner L2 – You don’t need a brand ambassador to reap the rewards of influencers. In China, TFBoys’ wholesome act has become a cultural and marketing juggernaut, though not always via official partnerships.

    The ugly truth about why I left BBDO China after just a year | Advertising | Campaign Asia – not terribly surprised, even in a tier one city like Beijing

    The convergence of AI and nanotechnology — Nano Magazine – machine learning work on image processing has improved microscopy. Machine learning is also being used in chemical modelling which is an important part of modern chemistry

    Facebook, Twitter and violence are linked | The Japan Times – correlation certainly, though less convinced about causality. Technology certainly facilitates, communication and organisation but there are other substitute real world comms platforms like BBM, email etc

    One yen camera: we bought an extremely cheap camera off Yahoo! Auctions and tested it out【Pics】 | SoraNews24 – really interesting article on his experiences, particularly how the smartphone camera metaphor threw him off on his first shots

    FACT CHECK: Did Vladimir Putin Rescue an Injured Donald Trump from the Viet Cong During the Vietnam War? – No. But its hilarious to think that this even got on to the internet

    Vietnamese website taunts Chinese drama fans with South China Sea quiz | Reuters – clever trolling, though it does remind me of the way Saudis were trying to undermine Qatari sports channels through rampant piracy

    The truth about ‘Snapchat dysmorphia’ | Dazed – is Snapchat really driving cosmetic surgery?

    Norte :: Itaú – Kidsbook Collection – great use of Canvas mobile content format

  • Loose networks & social connections

    I went to a family funeral and got to think about loose networks and social connections.

    In Ireland the tradition for a funeral is:

    • As soon as possible after death, the body goes to the funeral home. A coroner will have had to sign off on it
    • The body is put on exhibition in the coffin at the funeral home and family greet visitors from the deceased close and loose network who come and pay tribute to the deceased. The coffin is then closed and taken to the church in a procession, which slows as it passes the deceased’s home
    • The following day a funeral mass is held, followed by a procession to the cemetery and then the burial

    This all happens really fast; usually three days from time of death to grave. Those of the family that can make it home try to, but there isn’t much time. So those who are a long haul flight away generally are excused from coming back home.

    In the rural west of Ireland word goes out through a number of channels

    • Local radio – Galway Bay FM lists deaths and funeral information at regular times throughout the day
    • Local newspapers – the deaths feature on their web sites and in their print editiions (depending on publications and the timings of the death). The print edition of the Connacht Tribune comes out on a Thursday; which means that you might miss a mid-week funeral. When I was a kid it would be picked up from the local general store on a Thursday afternoon for the Connacht Tribune
    • RIP.ie – a web service that people can consult to see what funerals are going on in their vicinity
    • Word of mouth then does the rest. Whether its gossip between neighbours, across the counter at a local shop or announced from the pulpit at mass. We would be back in the local general store would on Sunday on the way home from mass for the national Sunday newspaper and a copy of The Irish Farmer’s Journal. But a secondary reason for that visit was to hear of any local deaths in case you’d have to go to pay your respects. Shop owners were perennial gossips and this was a vital role for the community

    Local media and traditions have carved out a distinctive niche that doesn’t involve Facebook or other social media platform

    The people that come along include a mix of closely connected contacts and threads of loose networks including:

    • Family
    • Relatives (second and third cousins, families who are connected via marriage)
    • Close friends
    • People who you knew but may have lost touch with like school friends
    • People you’ve done business with. In my relatives case it was agricultural  contractors and the local hardware store – which has a much wider range of stock than your average ToolStation or Home Depot to deal with the requirements of farms
    • Business relatives and friends of the bereaved

    For the bereaved, the process does as good a job as you can helping the family deal with grief. In the case of my relative who had a sudden heart attack and died it provided closure. The person was eulogised and then sent on the next part of their journey onward.

    For a rural community, made up of small towns and farms it presents an opportunity to reinforce loose networks and business connections. In our family’s case the farm as a business is passed down from generation-to-generation.

    It becomes important for for business people to attend these events to cement business relationships. In our family’s case some of the visitors were business connections of one of my Uncle’s (who is still living) rather than the deceased.

    Attending these events requires commitment. You had attendees travelling over an hour to pay their respects.

    I was a bit surprised by how robust these loose connections were with relatively little reinforcement. It seems the habit of the funeral process plays its part.