Dissatisfaction with Customer Satisfaction: Why Consumers Unwittingly Deceive Researchers (and What We Can Do About It)
Posted on | January 16, 2009 | steve whigham
To do our jobs properly, marketers need to predict future consumer behavior. But how?
The problem is this… as an industry, we’ve got a lousy track record of accurately predicting consumer behavior.
Even though we have all these research tools and methodologies (focus groups, mall intercepts, attitudinal questionnaires, Likert scales, multivariate cluster analyses, perceptual maps, conjoint analyses, demographic and psychographic profiles, semantic differentials, etc.—all of which we stole from behavioral scientists many years ago) we still seem to get it all wrong. We have the capacity to know a lot, but we don’t seem to learn what really predicts behavior. Are we guilty of bad science the same way surgeons were guilty of bad medicine by blood-letting bad humours out of the human body just a handful of generations ago?
I heard one researcher state the other day that marketers are good at measuring consumer opinions and attitudes but, unfortunately, consumer opinions and attitudes do not necessarily correlate with future behavior. Consumers are great at telling us what they think and feel about something. The problem is they can’t articulate what truly drives their behavior. Many times they simply don’t know—at least not know in the conscious, cognitive sense. What we are now realizing is that we cannot use attitudinal research to predict consumer behavior. It’s like using a microphone to record the color blue.
This phenomenon probably explains why over 80% of all new product/service launches fail—even when they’ve been thoroughly researched with target groups. It also may explain why customer satisfaction has only an 8% predictive value in determining future customer purchases. Our research findings are misleading us.
To get better at predicting consumer behavior, we’re going to have to change the way we do research. There’s been a flash of interest in a new science called “neuromarketing” that’s done a great job proving how bad our current research methodologies truly are. They’ve found conclusive evidence the gap between what customers say they’ll do and what customers will actually do. Books like Neuromarketing, Buy-ology and Habit give us evidence of this. Neuromarketing research methodologies are powerful: fMRI and electroencephalography (EEG) technologies. But they are unwieldy, expensive and totally impractical for daily marketing use. But, the good news about them, they may bridge us to new ways of doing research in the future.
The best way to predict consumer behavior right now is by simple observation—what I call the “Jane Goodall” method of consumer research. Paco Underhill in his book Why We Buy demonstrates that technique. Consumer observation is good at revealing current behavior in already defined consumer experiences, but cannot offer us understanding when it comes to predicting behavior in new environments and with new products.
Consumer research is at the beginning of a new chapter of development. And it will be interesting to watch it write itself. Hopefully, there are a few brave souls out there who are interested in taking research to the next level.
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2 Responses to “Dissatisfaction with Customer Satisfaction: Why Consumers Unwittingly Deceive Researchers (and What We Can Do About It)”
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January 16th, 2009 @ 9:58 pm
You are wrong, psychographics do matter, especially when it comes to segmentation and personalization.. it will be playing even more important role now, with fragmentation of media platforms and content.. the problem is in planners and those who are using wrongly (or rather are supposed to use but are avoiding by all means) these tools; most “oldschoolers” with conservative mindset and binary thinking just insist on using good ol’ demographics! sadly, to them the world consists of people in 18-24, 25-34,etc. brackets..
February 7th, 2009 @ 11:54 am
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