I was really excited about this topic because I have not been much of a social media user in the past, but recently I decided to embrace the age of online social networks (a few years late I know). Because of my new found desire to enter the world of social networking this topic is opportune as I am learning all about SNS through facebook. With this blog I get to do some research into how these powerful tools are used to disseminate opinion, facts and even propaganda to the masses.
To give you an idea of how much of a late adopter I am, up until about 3 days ago I had never updated my status on facebook and honestly was not even sure if I did it correctly when I did it. I only signed up for facebook because someone did it for me, and the only pictures on there are a few very old profile pictures and photos I have been tagged in by other people, but I don’t think these even count as my pictures. Needless to say I am not the typical twenty-something student who utilizes facebook, twitter, or any other online social networking media. Though I do not have much experience with social media since I have just never gotten it for some reason, I am finding myself discovering an entirely new world with endless possibilities if used correctly. Of course most people already know this, but being a SNS newbie it’s a revelation to me.
What I would like to discuss is the ways that companies can use social media to connect with their audience. Twitter, for example, is an extremely popular tool allowing anyone to update everyone about anything. Just today Twitter announced that it will begin incorporating focused advertising based on peoples’ tweets. Now when anyone decides to talk about something through twitter, companies have the opportunity to take advantage of the topic that is on the readers mind about it or its product and pull them in to getting more information. I think that just like any other form of online advertising, companies need to tread lightly when imposing themselves on peoples “private” space, but if they utilize this new tool appropriately it has the possibility to make a real impact on customers. Just like any other form of advertising which targets search topics or key words in e-mails, companies can get you to think more about them when someone else plants the seed of curiosity in your mind. When you are thinking about something and you get more data (ads) specific to that topic created by the company, it gives the company an opportunity to being creating, reinforcing or changing the experience associate with that company or its products. The key here is that it is so much more powerful when it is a trusted source that plants the seed rather than the company. The chapter talks a lot about how the prevalence of groundswell poses so many challenges and opportunities for companies and this is just one more tool at the disposal of the marketing machine. The more ways companies have to connect with you the better chance they have to not only get feedback about what is and is not working, but also to make a change to their message when necessary. This feedback is essential in developing and reinforcing the desired experience.
Opinions expressed in blogs, facebook pages, tweets, etc., now more than ever, are so much more powerful that an ad campaign due to the perceived neutrality and established trust associated with them. I say that, but it is important to remember that marketing campaigns are still extremely important in shaping, if nothing else, the initial perception put out there and can help shape the opinions of the people who initially comment on those topics. It is from comments that companies can learn so much. A great example of this is Tiger Woods’ recent comeback. Nike, put out an extremely controversial ad that, I believe, played only for a day and on very specific channels. Though this ad was not “widely” distributed in a traditional sense, it was all over SNS sites and the topic of many conversations, good and bad. People had opinions about the commercial which led to opinions about Nike and obviously Tiger. This in my opinion was masterful “jujitsu” on the part of Nike. The company knew that anything and everything associated with Tiger’s return to golf would be talked about everywhere, so they made sure to give the critics and fans something to talk about, and keep talking about.
Nike knew exactly what it was doing when releasing this controversial ad because they wanted to get people talking about it, keeping Nike on everyone’s mind. More importantly for the topic of our conversation Nike could access people’s true reactions, not by conducting large research topics, but simply by looking at what is being posted for everyone to see. This is another important benefit from the availability of information; people’s opinions are not swayed by the act of collecting data as they can be during a focus group or a questioner. SNS give you a huge sample population proving actual feeling about topics which makes it easier for companies to judge how to respond. Though, actually collecting this data and quantifying it can be challenging due to the freedom of responses. The ad was about his “mistakes” which led to the situation he is in now. It made him look vulnerable and more importantly sad and sorry. The ad campaign, I think, was designed to make Tiger look like a normal person who is fallible. This allows this superhuman figure to be just like the rest of us and makes his life relatable to the everyday guy, the guy that buys Nike products and is a Tiger fan. Nike is reaching out to customers showing them that Tiger is just like you and me, telling us to “come on back and buy our products, we stood by him and so should you”. I think this example relates more so to managing peoples’ perceptions and creating that experience, from a traditional media perspective than gaining insight. The other side of the campaign though, what I’ll call the “residual data” generated by peoples responses is invaluable to understanding what people really think about Nike and Tiger. I don’t think Nike intentionally created the ad in order to extract people’s responses, but it was absolutely a benefit. This data is just another avenue for Nike to gain true insight into their customers and critics thoughts.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Big Bad Wal-Mart and its Data
Given the enormous amount of data that Wal-Mart captures, do you think they have been successful at converting into an experience that serves as a competitive advantage for them?
Wal-Mart is the focus of many case studies and the model for many other businesses simply due to its high efficiency model. This fact, I think, is directly related to the question posed above. Wal-Mart does all the work it does in order to have the products its customers want at the lowest possible price whenever they want them. Wal-Mart’s focus on a good customer experience is having products that you want at affordable prices. I think many times we mistake customer experiences for the look, feel and emotion resulting from an interaction with a business or its store, but an experience can be much more narrowly defined that that and it is much more complicated than just a physical experience with a store. Each business has a specific customer experience it is trying to fulfill. Wal-Mart shoppers are looking for completely different things out of their shopping experience than are shoppers at Whole Foods, Trader Joes or Target even though all of them may be looking for corn flakes. This is also true when the shopper at each of the stores is the same person. In each store the experience which needs to be fulfilled can be different. The important aspect that defines an experience for a customer is whether a need was satisfied, the Wal-Mart shopper’s need is products at low prices. The hurricane story in the article was the perfect example of this. Wal-Mart used what it knew about a similar situation (utilizing its data) to make sure its stores were ready to give the customers exactly what they wanted. All those customers who went to Target or the local grocery store rather than Wal-Mart would have found Pop-Tarts and beer sold out, but the customers who went the Wal-Mart would have found the products they wanted in stock. This as far as any customer would be concerned was a great experience at Wal-Mart, they likely did not care about the massive amounts of people, the lack of help, or even the depressing atmosphere there, what those people noticed and remembered was that “I went to Wal-Mart and it had exactly what I wanted, when other stores did not”. This leaves an impression and next time people need something especially in an emergency situation they will remember that Wal-Mart had it last time so they will go their first rather than any other store. This is absolutely an advantage; Wal-Mart essentially knows what you want before you even do. It has the ability to be ready for anything (figuratively). In short Wal-Mart has done a good job in using its data to give the customer what it wants when others can’t.
What do you think about the privacy issues associated with all of that data and the amount of personally identifiable data they are able to capture. Does it bother you? Do you trust them with it?
Anytime someone is collecting information about you specifically it is a little unnerving, but we need to remember to keep the data collection in perspective. It is very easy to attack Wal-Mart about anything they do just because it’s a huge corporation and people generally don’t trust big companies, least of all Wal-Mart. But, personal information about any one particular shopper, as the article mentions, does not really do anything for Wal-Mart. The company is interested in shopper trends and habits. Wal-Mart knowing your social or address really does not help the company plan its stores better or stock the shelves with the appropriate products. What you paid for your house make no difference to Wal-Mart, but what socioeconomic group you and the 5000 other people shopping at the store fit into and whether you all buy Pringles or Lays is extremely valuable to the company and that is the information it is after. Due to the sheer accessibility of data in our society today, anyone can make up conspiracy theories about companies collecting data on everyone, but realistically what will they do with it. If you are worried about your personal information I would focus more on protecting your ATM/Debit card pin when using it rather than if Wal-Mart is going to do something with your credit card information other than charge you for what you purchased. The only real issue I have with Wal-Mart collecting personally identifiable information like social security numbers and driver’s license numbers is protecting it from hackers and people who may be able to get their hands on it illegally and use it unscrupulously. As far as I can tell from my experience as a shopper and what the article says, Wal-Mart only collects this information for the purposes of completing a transaction just like any other retailer would if you cashed or wrote a check. It makes perfect sense that they would need this information to complete a transaction and protect itself in case you write a back check. Again I have no problem with the information being collected, but I do think that it should be completely eliminated once the transaction has cleared to make sure that no one else is able to access the info. I do, for the most part, trust Wal-Mart with my data, what I don’t trust is their security of that data.
What impact do you think they are having on their suppliers - making them better and more efficient or driving them too hard and reducing their profitability. Again, try to keep this in the context of technology.
I don’t think that Wal-Mart is necessarily making their suppliers any more efficient, I think all the initiatives Wal-Mart is pushing down the throats of its suppliers is helping Wal-Mart be more efficient and the suppliers just have to take it. I used to work for a large, multinational consumer products company and like many other companies Wal-Mart was its largest customer. The company I worked for had to do many things to make sure Wal-Mart was happy because without Wal-Mart as a customer you were essentially sunk. The push Wal-Mart is making is definitely good for the overall technology inclusion into the business and in the end will likely benefit the customer, but not every supplier can work at Wal-Mart’s pace and this will cause problems. It’s a situation where Wal-Mart is going to profit off the suppliers which will have to accept lower profits to appease Wal-Mart and stay on its shelves. On some level we do have to recognize that Wal-Mart with its massive reach and influence has some obligation to society to move it forward when technology inclusion is concerned. If Wal-Mart did not do it none of its suppliers would have any real incentive to do it make the technological innovation in logistics and inventory management slower to take hold. Of course there are ways in which Wal-Mart is, depending on your perspective, abusing or will abuse its size and power with the help of this technology. For example having all inventory stay on the supplier books until a sale is made, this practice (consignment sales) is something done quite often in manufacturing situations, but to my knowledge has never been done on this scale in a retail environment.
Wal-Mart is the focus of many case studies and the model for many other businesses simply due to its high efficiency model. This fact, I think, is directly related to the question posed above. Wal-Mart does all the work it does in order to have the products its customers want at the lowest possible price whenever they want them. Wal-Mart’s focus on a good customer experience is having products that you want at affordable prices. I think many times we mistake customer experiences for the look, feel and emotion resulting from an interaction with a business or its store, but an experience can be much more narrowly defined that that and it is much more complicated than just a physical experience with a store. Each business has a specific customer experience it is trying to fulfill. Wal-Mart shoppers are looking for completely different things out of their shopping experience than are shoppers at Whole Foods, Trader Joes or Target even though all of them may be looking for corn flakes. This is also true when the shopper at each of the stores is the same person. In each store the experience which needs to be fulfilled can be different. The important aspect that defines an experience for a customer is whether a need was satisfied, the Wal-Mart shopper’s need is products at low prices. The hurricane story in the article was the perfect example of this. Wal-Mart used what it knew about a similar situation (utilizing its data) to make sure its stores were ready to give the customers exactly what they wanted. All those customers who went to Target or the local grocery store rather than Wal-Mart would have found Pop-Tarts and beer sold out, but the customers who went the Wal-Mart would have found the products they wanted in stock. This as far as any customer would be concerned was a great experience at Wal-Mart, they likely did not care about the massive amounts of people, the lack of help, or even the depressing atmosphere there, what those people noticed and remembered was that “I went to Wal-Mart and it had exactly what I wanted, when other stores did not”. This leaves an impression and next time people need something especially in an emergency situation they will remember that Wal-Mart had it last time so they will go their first rather than any other store. This is absolutely an advantage; Wal-Mart essentially knows what you want before you even do. It has the ability to be ready for anything (figuratively). In short Wal-Mart has done a good job in using its data to give the customer what it wants when others can’t.
What do you think about the privacy issues associated with all of that data and the amount of personally identifiable data they are able to capture. Does it bother you? Do you trust them with it?
Anytime someone is collecting information about you specifically it is a little unnerving, but we need to remember to keep the data collection in perspective. It is very easy to attack Wal-Mart about anything they do just because it’s a huge corporation and people generally don’t trust big companies, least of all Wal-Mart. But, personal information about any one particular shopper, as the article mentions, does not really do anything for Wal-Mart. The company is interested in shopper trends and habits. Wal-Mart knowing your social or address really does not help the company plan its stores better or stock the shelves with the appropriate products. What you paid for your house make no difference to Wal-Mart, but what socioeconomic group you and the 5000 other people shopping at the store fit into and whether you all buy Pringles or Lays is extremely valuable to the company and that is the information it is after. Due to the sheer accessibility of data in our society today, anyone can make up conspiracy theories about companies collecting data on everyone, but realistically what will they do with it. If you are worried about your personal information I would focus more on protecting your ATM/Debit card pin when using it rather than if Wal-Mart is going to do something with your credit card information other than charge you for what you purchased. The only real issue I have with Wal-Mart collecting personally identifiable information like social security numbers and driver’s license numbers is protecting it from hackers and people who may be able to get their hands on it illegally and use it unscrupulously. As far as I can tell from my experience as a shopper and what the article says, Wal-Mart only collects this information for the purposes of completing a transaction just like any other retailer would if you cashed or wrote a check. It makes perfect sense that they would need this information to complete a transaction and protect itself in case you write a back check. Again I have no problem with the information being collected, but I do think that it should be completely eliminated once the transaction has cleared to make sure that no one else is able to access the info. I do, for the most part, trust Wal-Mart with my data, what I don’t trust is their security of that data.
What impact do you think they are having on their suppliers - making them better and more efficient or driving them too hard and reducing their profitability. Again, try to keep this in the context of technology.
I don’t think that Wal-Mart is necessarily making their suppliers any more efficient, I think all the initiatives Wal-Mart is pushing down the throats of its suppliers is helping Wal-Mart be more efficient and the suppliers just have to take it. I used to work for a large, multinational consumer products company and like many other companies Wal-Mart was its largest customer. The company I worked for had to do many things to make sure Wal-Mart was happy because without Wal-Mart as a customer you were essentially sunk. The push Wal-Mart is making is definitely good for the overall technology inclusion into the business and in the end will likely benefit the customer, but not every supplier can work at Wal-Mart’s pace and this will cause problems. It’s a situation where Wal-Mart is going to profit off the suppliers which will have to accept lower profits to appease Wal-Mart and stay on its shelves. On some level we do have to recognize that Wal-Mart with its massive reach and influence has some obligation to society to move it forward when technology inclusion is concerned. If Wal-Mart did not do it none of its suppliers would have any real incentive to do it make the technological innovation in logistics and inventory management slower to take hold. Of course there are ways in which Wal-Mart is, depending on your perspective, abusing or will abuse its size and power with the help of this technology. For example having all inventory stay on the supplier books until a sale is made, this practice (consignment sales) is something done quite often in manufacturing situations, but to my knowledge has never been done on this scale in a retail environment.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Research Topic Contract
All the recent upheaval in the financial markets got me thinking about how the customer has been impacted due to the failure of proper control system and extremely bad decisions made by banking executives. Initially I thought that I would look at retail banks and how they treat customers now that it seems like they need us more than ever. Before really putting any thought into it I first assumed that customer service should be significantly improved in the recent past, but then thinking about it a little more it dawned on me that this is exactly the opposite of what is happening. In fact after the meltdown, customer service has been getting worse and worse. I think this is partially because some banks have no idea if they will be around tomorrow so making investments in customer service which is more of a long term investment do not make economic sense when you are just trying to survive. Another reason is that banks don’t know which customers they can trust and it is easier for them not to trust anyone. When I say trust I mean more which customers they can count on to be good paying customers and not just customers that will increase their liabilities without offering a return on their investment. Then as I thought more and more about how recent events would have likely decreased the customer service offered, I realized that the retail banking experience has been changing for a very long time. It is not just what has currently happened that has made the customer experience progressively worse, but the experience has been continually worsening for as long as I can remember. Though the financial meltdown gave me the idea for the topic, banks have been moving further and further away from a customer-centric model for years. I think this is an extremely important part of the business and something that has been ignored by many banks.
In this report I hope to focus principally on how a bank looks at its retail customers and how customers feel they are treated by banks. To be clear, a retail customer will be defined as a depositor and/or credit card holder. Because there are so many services major banks offer I wanted to focus on a large business of theirs which generally required a relatively large level of customer interaction, while not getting too broad and making the paper extremely vague.
Some of the main questions I want answered are:
1) How is a customer really viewed by banks?
- Do they have any interest in what the customer needs from the bank or just how much they will deposit?
2) Is there a different level of customer service given to walk in clients vs. online clients?
- Everything is moving to a more online experience, and many banks offer better rates and service for online clients, but what do you give up for these “better services”?
3) How does a bank determine the value of each individual client, or do they even determine who is valuable and how is not?
- Cell phone companies and many other highly customer-centric services have complicated software packages that value clients and their lifetime value to the company, do banks do this?
4) With so many new regulations coming their way, do banks look at their customers strictly by numbers or do they understand specifics about each customer?
- Each customer is an individual, obviously, but do the banks or the representatives you work with actually take the time to understand your needs or just sell you what they get the best commission on?
This topic is extremely interesting to me because banks are an industry that almost everyone has some sort of interaction with. Many people have very superficial relationships with banks, and many have very strong relationships. It has always seemed to me that the level of your relationship is directly inversely related to the amount of services offered and size of the banks. What I mean by this is the smaller banks and credit unions don’t have the ability to do the same kinds of things that large multinational banks can, but you get a very personal experience with many times a single banker who is always the one for you. Conversely the large banks offer a multitude of service, you are essentially a number.
I think its these small banks that see the value of gaining insights into who their customers are, and it’s the large banks which just try to be big an necessary to attract clients. Customer service if studied and offered appropriately could really change the way these guys do business.
Somewhat recently there has been a bank which has been extensively advertising how its different from all the other banks by essentially offering better customer service. The bank I am referring to is Ally, I personally have no experience with it, but it looks to me like they have done some research into what their target customers want and targeted those wants, customer service being one of those. I recently read an article on bankrate.com which talked about how it seems that everything in a bank is driven by a culture of sales. They don’t really offer you anything you need, all they want to do is sell you something to make a commission. This article is available at: http://www.bankrate.com/brm/news/bank/20051024a1.asp
What I found really interesting about this article is that it was written in 2005, many years before the meltdown, which supports my assertion that customer service has little importance to most banks. This is the exact problem I would like to learn more about.
In this report I hope to focus principally on how a bank looks at its retail customers and how customers feel they are treated by banks. To be clear, a retail customer will be defined as a depositor and/or credit card holder. Because there are so many services major banks offer I wanted to focus on a large business of theirs which generally required a relatively large level of customer interaction, while not getting too broad and making the paper extremely vague.
Some of the main questions I want answered are:
1) How is a customer really viewed by banks?
- Do they have any interest in what the customer needs from the bank or just how much they will deposit?
2) Is there a different level of customer service given to walk in clients vs. online clients?
- Everything is moving to a more online experience, and many banks offer better rates and service for online clients, but what do you give up for these “better services”?
3) How does a bank determine the value of each individual client, or do they even determine who is valuable and how is not?
- Cell phone companies and many other highly customer-centric services have complicated software packages that value clients and their lifetime value to the company, do banks do this?
4) With so many new regulations coming their way, do banks look at their customers strictly by numbers or do they understand specifics about each customer?
- Each customer is an individual, obviously, but do the banks or the representatives you work with actually take the time to understand your needs or just sell you what they get the best commission on?
This topic is extremely interesting to me because banks are an industry that almost everyone has some sort of interaction with. Many people have very superficial relationships with banks, and many have very strong relationships. It has always seemed to me that the level of your relationship is directly inversely related to the amount of services offered and size of the banks. What I mean by this is the smaller banks and credit unions don’t have the ability to do the same kinds of things that large multinational banks can, but you get a very personal experience with many times a single banker who is always the one for you. Conversely the large banks offer a multitude of service, you are essentially a number.
I think its these small banks that see the value of gaining insights into who their customers are, and it’s the large banks which just try to be big an necessary to attract clients. Customer service if studied and offered appropriately could really change the way these guys do business.
Somewhat recently there has been a bank which has been extensively advertising how its different from all the other banks by essentially offering better customer service. The bank I am referring to is Ally, I personally have no experience with it, but it looks to me like they have done some research into what their target customers want and targeted those wants, customer service being one of those. I recently read an article on bankrate.com which talked about how it seems that everything in a bank is driven by a culture of sales. They don’t really offer you anything you need, all they want to do is sell you something to make a commission. This article is available at: http://www.bankrate.com/brm/news/bank/20051024a1.asp
What I found really interesting about this article is that it was written in 2005, many years before the meltdown, which supports my assertion that customer service has little importance to most banks. This is the exact problem I would like to learn more about.
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Research methodologies
Blink:
In reading the first article, I found myself agreeing with most of what it had to say. In fact, not being a marketing person I was actually really surprised that some of the things they were talking about were “surprising” to the marketing / research experts. It seems to me that giving people a sample of anything, whether it’s a song, drink, or chair is never enough to tell if it is a good product. I do think that consumer research is important and that you can get some good information from it, but it is very important to make sure you put that information in the appropriate context, which is something else the article talks about. It goes back to the saying garbage in garbage out.
What I found really interesting is that in the music industry which to me, an outsider, seems to be driven highly on the preferences of the public, they would put so much stock in people’s opinions of a song from an artist they likely have not heard of, and completely ignore the real world data of his fan base. When you know that this artist does not really fit into any particular category, but base your research on people who are picked to listen to an artist for a particular category, you automatically bias them against him. If I am an avid Top 40 fan and that is what kind of music I am asked to listen to and rate, if I hear Keena the first thing I think is that this does not sound like what I am used to so I already have a negative feeling about it.
Another extremely important point is that no one particular research methodology can give you a complete picture, the CLT example with Coke vs. Pepsi demonstrates this spectacularly. Just because I like a taste of something does not mean that I will like more of it. It might be interesting now, but that could be it, just interesting. A purchase is not just a purchase, there are many reasons why people chose any one product, whether it’s a drink, food, music, or anything else. And as you are trying to understand if something is going to be well received it is important that you understand what need the product fills for the consumer. Is it that “I want the best for my family” so it must be the best quality, is it “I need to save some money” so I am looking for a good deal, or “I am trying something new” so should it catch my attention. Once you understand what is driving the customer you can understand better what need that product fills and how to better design a testing strategy.
Finally, it is also important not to rely on experts for testing. I feel that experts generally have a refined or even pretentious taste about things. This is not to say that experts are not important, because they definitely help improve the products we use, but when it comes to preference there is a difference in theirs and an average consumer. The lunch story is a great example of this, food experts taste everything about the food they eat, even crackers. This is important because they can tell you a lot more about what the average consumer may like since they can taste each individual aspect of a product, but it is harmful in that their preferences are likely more refined than the average consumer. An average person can tell you if they like or dislike something, they may not be able to tell you why, but if you know they don’t like it, I think that is more important than knowing they don’t like it because of reprocessing or too much of a woody taste, which is something a expert might see as a problem but an average person may not. Of course this information is important to go back and make adjustments, which is where experts come in, but the initial reaction of an average consumer in my opinion is far more valuable.
Ulwick:
Again I agree with most of what this article is talking about, it also suggests that customers don’t really know what they want, or to put it in the Keena articles words, they don’t really know what they like. The interesting thing about Ulwick is that he is proposing a solution which he developed. On the surface his methodology seems sounds and I am sure that it can be effective in some situations. But I also think that this is a too focused approach, this is just one methodology which can never provide all the answers. What’s missed here again is that there is no one solution, there are only tools which work in some situation and not in others. Rarely is there a situation where a single tool will fix the problem, or in this case provide the answers. What needs to be done is use this methodology in combination with other research techniques to develop solutions for your audience.
An aspect of research that the article does a good job talking about, though not directly, is to know your customer. I feel that no matter what way you chose to “research” your customers that data will be useless if you don’t know exactly who your customers are. Again it goes back to what is the purpose of your product development, are you looking to improve on an existing product, gain market share, be the innovative product, or develop an entirely new segment. Depending on what you desire to do, your customer will be different in each of these situations.
Finally the article seemed a bit like an advertisement for the methodology. It focuses a lot on the failure of Kawasaki and on the success of Cordis. There is no mention of the countless success from traditional customer questioning, or a situation where this methodology was not so successful. Additionally it makes it seem like it was this methodology that made the innovation possible, I have no doubt that the methodology helped, but there are many other factors that likely also helped. Good product innovation is also a result of a good R&D department, sales force which understand the customer, and a strong understanding of the market you are playing in. It provides some interesting insights, but really does not seem to say anything new. I am sure there is more to the methodology than the article goes into, but based on what I read it seems like a lot of it again is something a good marketing person would think of. It’s the marketers job to understand what the customer is asking for, even if the customer does not know that himself.
Zaltman:
This was an extremely interesting article and the way they took a very scientific approach to solving a very non-tactile, emotional issue was particularly exciting. This process seems to be deeply rooted in the emotional aspect of how we feel about products, which I think, is something that many research approaches do not focus enough on, or do not focus correctly on. By using the pictures to express people’s emotions about a specific topic you get more insight about how they really feel about something, rather than just asking defined questions. The issue that I think comes up here is that, though you get deeper into everyone’s thoughts about a topic, you rely on another group of people, presumably experts, to interpret thoughts.
While this seems to be a very methodical process, it feels a lot like some sort of psychological experiment rather than a methodology used to gain customer insights. As valuable as it would be to get this information I get the feeling that some participants may be uncomfortable with the depth of emotional questioning that goes on and will refrain from giving their true responses or explaining the degree to which they feel a particular way about a particular topic.
Finally it seems that the writer wanted to focus on the technological aspect of this methodology as a substantial improvement over other what I would call more traditional research methodologies. I personally don’t understand the focus on how findings are presented and the digital presentation and point and click aspect to the methodology. While it is interesting, in today’s digital driven business world nothing they are doing is particularly groundbreaking, and I really think the focus should be on the results and quality of results, not on the presentation medium. While the writer does suggest that the way different groups see results is different, I still don’t see this as any advantage or a key improvement this methodology has to offer. Overall this is an extremely interesting research technique and I like the incorporation of the subjects’ feelings towards a topic by way of their subconscious rather than just questions.
The customer experience is extremely emotional whether we realize it or not, and what we don’t always see is the role our individual thoughts and feeling about everything from packaging to reputation play in the final purchase decision. Each article touched on what the writer felt was important, and each methodology is reasonable in a particular context. I think the true art of marketing research does not lie in developing or using the one best methodology but understanding who the customer is, what the product is, what need you want that product to address, and what particular set of research techniques will give you the most robust answers. People are emotionally driven, and before you can design what they want you have to understand what drives them and how you can satisfy that emotional need we all have.
In reading the first article, I found myself agreeing with most of what it had to say. In fact, not being a marketing person I was actually really surprised that some of the things they were talking about were “surprising” to the marketing / research experts. It seems to me that giving people a sample of anything, whether it’s a song, drink, or chair is never enough to tell if it is a good product. I do think that consumer research is important and that you can get some good information from it, but it is very important to make sure you put that information in the appropriate context, which is something else the article talks about. It goes back to the saying garbage in garbage out.
What I found really interesting is that in the music industry which to me, an outsider, seems to be driven highly on the preferences of the public, they would put so much stock in people’s opinions of a song from an artist they likely have not heard of, and completely ignore the real world data of his fan base. When you know that this artist does not really fit into any particular category, but base your research on people who are picked to listen to an artist for a particular category, you automatically bias them against him. If I am an avid Top 40 fan and that is what kind of music I am asked to listen to and rate, if I hear Keena the first thing I think is that this does not sound like what I am used to so I already have a negative feeling about it.
Another extremely important point is that no one particular research methodology can give you a complete picture, the CLT example with Coke vs. Pepsi demonstrates this spectacularly. Just because I like a taste of something does not mean that I will like more of it. It might be interesting now, but that could be it, just interesting. A purchase is not just a purchase, there are many reasons why people chose any one product, whether it’s a drink, food, music, or anything else. And as you are trying to understand if something is going to be well received it is important that you understand what need the product fills for the consumer. Is it that “I want the best for my family” so it must be the best quality, is it “I need to save some money” so I am looking for a good deal, or “I am trying something new” so should it catch my attention. Once you understand what is driving the customer you can understand better what need that product fills and how to better design a testing strategy.
Finally, it is also important not to rely on experts for testing. I feel that experts generally have a refined or even pretentious taste about things. This is not to say that experts are not important, because they definitely help improve the products we use, but when it comes to preference there is a difference in theirs and an average consumer. The lunch story is a great example of this, food experts taste everything about the food they eat, even crackers. This is important because they can tell you a lot more about what the average consumer may like since they can taste each individual aspect of a product, but it is harmful in that their preferences are likely more refined than the average consumer. An average person can tell you if they like or dislike something, they may not be able to tell you why, but if you know they don’t like it, I think that is more important than knowing they don’t like it because of reprocessing or too much of a woody taste, which is something a expert might see as a problem but an average person may not. Of course this information is important to go back and make adjustments, which is where experts come in, but the initial reaction of an average consumer in my opinion is far more valuable.
Ulwick:
Again I agree with most of what this article is talking about, it also suggests that customers don’t really know what they want, or to put it in the Keena articles words, they don’t really know what they like. The interesting thing about Ulwick is that he is proposing a solution which he developed. On the surface his methodology seems sounds and I am sure that it can be effective in some situations. But I also think that this is a too focused approach, this is just one methodology which can never provide all the answers. What’s missed here again is that there is no one solution, there are only tools which work in some situation and not in others. Rarely is there a situation where a single tool will fix the problem, or in this case provide the answers. What needs to be done is use this methodology in combination with other research techniques to develop solutions for your audience.
An aspect of research that the article does a good job talking about, though not directly, is to know your customer. I feel that no matter what way you chose to “research” your customers that data will be useless if you don’t know exactly who your customers are. Again it goes back to what is the purpose of your product development, are you looking to improve on an existing product, gain market share, be the innovative product, or develop an entirely new segment. Depending on what you desire to do, your customer will be different in each of these situations.
Finally the article seemed a bit like an advertisement for the methodology. It focuses a lot on the failure of Kawasaki and on the success of Cordis. There is no mention of the countless success from traditional customer questioning, or a situation where this methodology was not so successful. Additionally it makes it seem like it was this methodology that made the innovation possible, I have no doubt that the methodology helped, but there are many other factors that likely also helped. Good product innovation is also a result of a good R&D department, sales force which understand the customer, and a strong understanding of the market you are playing in. It provides some interesting insights, but really does not seem to say anything new. I am sure there is more to the methodology than the article goes into, but based on what I read it seems like a lot of it again is something a good marketing person would think of. It’s the marketers job to understand what the customer is asking for, even if the customer does not know that himself.
Zaltman:
This was an extremely interesting article and the way they took a very scientific approach to solving a very non-tactile, emotional issue was particularly exciting. This process seems to be deeply rooted in the emotional aspect of how we feel about products, which I think, is something that many research approaches do not focus enough on, or do not focus correctly on. By using the pictures to express people’s emotions about a specific topic you get more insight about how they really feel about something, rather than just asking defined questions. The issue that I think comes up here is that, though you get deeper into everyone’s thoughts about a topic, you rely on another group of people, presumably experts, to interpret thoughts.
While this seems to be a very methodical process, it feels a lot like some sort of psychological experiment rather than a methodology used to gain customer insights. As valuable as it would be to get this information I get the feeling that some participants may be uncomfortable with the depth of emotional questioning that goes on and will refrain from giving their true responses or explaining the degree to which they feel a particular way about a particular topic.
Finally it seems that the writer wanted to focus on the technological aspect of this methodology as a substantial improvement over other what I would call more traditional research methodologies. I personally don’t understand the focus on how findings are presented and the digital presentation and point and click aspect to the methodology. While it is interesting, in today’s digital driven business world nothing they are doing is particularly groundbreaking, and I really think the focus should be on the results and quality of results, not on the presentation medium. While the writer does suggest that the way different groups see results is different, I still don’t see this as any advantage or a key improvement this methodology has to offer. Overall this is an extremely interesting research technique and I like the incorporation of the subjects’ feelings towards a topic by way of their subconscious rather than just questions.
The customer experience is extremely emotional whether we realize it or not, and what we don’t always see is the role our individual thoughts and feeling about everything from packaging to reputation play in the final purchase decision. Each article touched on what the writer felt was important, and each methodology is reasonable in a particular context. I think the true art of marketing research does not lie in developing or using the one best methodology but understanding who the customer is, what the product is, what need you want that product to address, and what particular set of research techniques will give you the most robust answers. People are emotionally driven, and before you can design what they want you have to understand what drives them and how you can satisfy that emotional need we all have.
Friday, January 29, 2010
Marketing Persona
When I entered this class I had no concept of a persona as a marketing tool, let alone how useful it could be. After reading the chapter on persona lifestyles, it became very clear what benefits a company can gain by spending time to appropriately develop personas. In the same way Steve Jobs intuitively used a persona for the apple customer when developing the first iPod, everyone can benefit by clearly defining the target customer and what needs/pain points the product will address. In this way we can assure that the product, whatever it may be, under development is not over developed and try to be everything to everyone, but rather very focused on its purpose and abilities. Much in the same way that flip video cameras are.
With that new knowledge I can now undertake the role of a marketing professional in the process of developing a persona. My primary goal is to define the questions which will provide me with insight about the persona. Clearly defining questions is a key part of this project, if we get into too many specific of any particular individual our persona will not be representative of a market segment but rather be too much of an individual. Getting too detailed will give us a lot of information about a particular person, but does that really help us develop something which needs to appeal to the “masses”. On the other hand we do not want to be overly general as this would provide us no real data to work with.
Firstly I am concerned with what is the age and sex of my persona, for our purposes the persona is a 28 year old male. Once we know the age we can consider what other questions are important about this persona. Key here is what this 28 year old man does for a living. Is he some sort of professional, is he in school, does he have a job, or is he unemployed. Building on our persona we find out that this man is a student.
An interesting part of building a persona is that there is no standard methodology, rather each question builds on the previous during the development of the persona. Now that we know the man is a student, our next question is what kind of student? Is this man in medical school, law school, business school, has he gone back to finish an undergraduate degree, or some other form of education? The answer to this question is that our man is a 2nd year MBA student at the University of Texas. The information up to this point has actually provided us far more insight to who he is than is apparent on the surface.
I think this would be a good time to take what we know and make some inferences about the general type of persona we are dealing with here. Firstly we know this persona will likely be working somewhere in the business world, and having a masters degree will likely put him in the higher levels of our income segmentation. This is important because we can assume this persona will have disposable income to spend on our product, if he likes it, and likely can recommend it to his friends and coworkers. Additionally we may be able to infer that he will likely be someone who does not have a lot of time both a as student and working professional and needs things to be convenient.
From here it would help to ask some more questions about our persona, is he married and if so does he have any children. This question may change some of our previous assumptions about his spending habits, but it is important to make those assumptions first then change them if necessary. It turns out that he is single and has no children. Now, knowing that he is single with no children we can infer that the personal time he does have, he has complete control over. So next it is important to know what he likes doing in that personal time. Does he spend it studying for classes, reading up on industry news, does he like to invest, and does he like sports or just being lazy and doing nothing? The way he spends his personal time is very telling about who this man is and how we can cater our product to him. Our persona is a moderate reader, outside of required reading he enjoys keeping up on the latest sports and political issues so he knows what going on in the world. Additionally when he has time he enjoys being active by playing sports or working out. He often runs because it is good for him, but does not enjoy it and looks at it more as a chore rather than a fun way to get exercise, so depending on our product we may be able to help him with his perception of this. Finally we can assume that this persona is fairly in touch with the latest in mainstream technology, we has a face book account and uses twitter both at home and on the go from his iPhone.
During the process of developing this persona we have asked some general but very informative questions which brought us to the final persona product. Our persona is a 28 year old Male MBA student. He is graduating soon and single, giving him a lot of personal time with full discretion of his disposable income. Since he is not married and has no kids he also does not own a house, he prefers to rent as it cuts down on the responsibility of maintaining a home.
With that new knowledge I can now undertake the role of a marketing professional in the process of developing a persona. My primary goal is to define the questions which will provide me with insight about the persona. Clearly defining questions is a key part of this project, if we get into too many specific of any particular individual our persona will not be representative of a market segment but rather be too much of an individual. Getting too detailed will give us a lot of information about a particular person, but does that really help us develop something which needs to appeal to the “masses”. On the other hand we do not want to be overly general as this would provide us no real data to work with.
Firstly I am concerned with what is the age and sex of my persona, for our purposes the persona is a 28 year old male. Once we know the age we can consider what other questions are important about this persona. Key here is what this 28 year old man does for a living. Is he some sort of professional, is he in school, does he have a job, or is he unemployed. Building on our persona we find out that this man is a student.
An interesting part of building a persona is that there is no standard methodology, rather each question builds on the previous during the development of the persona. Now that we know the man is a student, our next question is what kind of student? Is this man in medical school, law school, business school, has he gone back to finish an undergraduate degree, or some other form of education? The answer to this question is that our man is a 2nd year MBA student at the University of Texas. The information up to this point has actually provided us far more insight to who he is than is apparent on the surface.
I think this would be a good time to take what we know and make some inferences about the general type of persona we are dealing with here. Firstly we know this persona will likely be working somewhere in the business world, and having a masters degree will likely put him in the higher levels of our income segmentation. This is important because we can assume this persona will have disposable income to spend on our product, if he likes it, and likely can recommend it to his friends and coworkers. Additionally we may be able to infer that he will likely be someone who does not have a lot of time both a as student and working professional and needs things to be convenient.
From here it would help to ask some more questions about our persona, is he married and if so does he have any children. This question may change some of our previous assumptions about his spending habits, but it is important to make those assumptions first then change them if necessary. It turns out that he is single and has no children. Now, knowing that he is single with no children we can infer that the personal time he does have, he has complete control over. So next it is important to know what he likes doing in that personal time. Does he spend it studying for classes, reading up on industry news, does he like to invest, and does he like sports or just being lazy and doing nothing? The way he spends his personal time is very telling about who this man is and how we can cater our product to him. Our persona is a moderate reader, outside of required reading he enjoys keeping up on the latest sports and political issues so he knows what going on in the world. Additionally when he has time he enjoys being active by playing sports or working out. He often runs because it is good for him, but does not enjoy it and looks at it more as a chore rather than a fun way to get exercise, so depending on our product we may be able to help him with his perception of this. Finally we can assume that this persona is fairly in touch with the latest in mainstream technology, we has a face book account and uses twitter both at home and on the go from his iPhone.
During the process of developing this persona we have asked some general but very informative questions which brought us to the final persona product. Our persona is a 28 year old Male MBA student. He is graduating soon and single, giving him a lot of personal time with full discretion of his disposable income. Since he is not married and has no kids he also does not own a house, he prefers to rent as it cuts down on the responsibility of maintaining a home.
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