Archive for the ‘Consumers’ Category

Cognitive Store Mapping and the Search for Olive Oil Margarine

Published on Jul 7th, 2011 by Liz

I m afraid I find my local out of town megastore a bit of a pain in the proverbial.The place is huge, the car park is always full, even if you go at 3am, it’s always packed and my biggest bug bear is that I can never find anything because they are constantly moving everything around!

For example, on my last visit I wanted some olive oil margarine.  I found the butter and marg aisle – well I’ll call it the butter and marg aisle, but in fact at the end of it they had chilled fruit juice as well, but whatever…..  So I walk past the butter, then the sunflower margarines and then oh, lo and behold I am at the end of the aisle and I have not seen any olive oil marg.  They were all together last time I shopped there.  So I go back and retrace my steps, nope, still can’t find it.  Of course by this time I am cursing under my breath and feeling extremely frustrated.  So I give up, and as I turn to go and look for something else, I notice the olive oil marg in a chiller cabinet at the aisle end – why is it at the end of the aisle?!!  Can’t they move the fruit juice so all the butter and marg is all together in one aisle?????

Anyway, you get the drift, it drives me mad.  However, I never thought I would find out why I hate it so much whilst doing some background reading on neuroscience.  The paper ‘Damasio: A Starting Point for Integrating Neuroscience Findings Into Retail Research’ by Cristina De Balzano, Nuria Serrano and Siemon Scamell-Katz started to point me in the right direction – ‘Most grocery shoppers in both developed and emerging markets use a limited range of stores on a very regular basis. This means that they are familiar enough with the store to have created a cognitive map of the space. This allows most shoppers to shop successfully’ without a list as they can rely on a combination of their cognitive map and the visibility of key brands to highlight categories of interest.’

Right, so this means that every time products get moved around, my cognitive map ceases to be valid any more, and my poor brain goes mad trying to locate the missing product in its memory banks at the same time as I am desperately trying to visually find the item on the shelves in front of me.

It all gets a bit overloaded and manifests itself with me getting physically grumpy (I made that last bit up BTW trying to justify my short temperedness).  Further reading around the subject does however give me a further indication why I find it annoying if things aren’t where I expect them to be.  FMRI scans show you what is going on in your head when you are presented with the unfamiliar.

Phil Barden at the MRS Brand Research conference last week showed some images of brain scans (one with a lot of activity and one with little activity) and asked us in the audience which scan showed the brain of some who was shown a brand they are very familiar with.  Well I knew the answer because I’d seen a similar pair of images at a webinar a few weeks ago, but if I hadn’t known the answer I would have said it was the one that showed a lot of activity because the brain recognised the product and got all excited about seeing it.  But I’d have been wrong, it was the one that shows little activity.  Our brains much prefer the easy life, they like familiarity because it means they don‘t have to work very hard.  If they don’t get familiarity then the old grey matter has to rev itself up into action and try and find an answer – and the brain ultimately finds all this activity very tiresome.

Conversely though, my above brief findings also gave me an indication why I like another supermarket so much.  My cognitive map of this local supermarket has been in my head for a long time.  I’ve always shopped at the same local store whether with my mum when I was a child or now with my own child.  And do you know, the layout is identical to what it was when I was 5. I never have any problems finding anything, ever.  And I’m sure that this probably has something to do with why I feel happy at the thought of going there rather than their out of town competitor.

But, I am wondering if one well known store has got the message that all this product moving is not good.  I read an article in the paper recently this particular chain was testing a supermarket SatNav – YES PLEASE!!!!  I really hope it moves from the test to reality stage, because I for one will be downloading the one for my local store as soon as it’s released!

 

Stereotypes – The Ultimate Brand Adversary?

Published on May 31st, 2011 by Jack

A recent trip to Scotland got me thinking; it seems unjust that a countries’ perceived identity is so often defined by a clichéd collection of stereotypes. Look at Scotland – for some the home of Irn Bru and battered chocolate bars. Of course for others it’s also the home of countless areas of outstanding natural beauty, has one of the most vivid, fascinating histories – and is a land with a truly compelling story. The same story is true of some of the most famous brands. Despite all efforts to the contrary, these brands are consistently linked to unwanted stereotypes, with potentially damaging effects.

Take Stella Artois, defined by its marketing segmentation as a “premium” lager, and yet it has seen its “reassuringly expensive” heritage tarnished by negative stereotypes. One where it’s potency is not an indicator of quality, but excess – one where UK consumers refer to the drink as ‘wife beater’. This negative imagery prompted a large scale re-positioning exercise. InBev (the producers of Stella Artois) released Stella Artois 4%, a product with a lower alcohol volume in silver packaging, aiming to quash perceptions of the brand as a super strength drink resembling sleeveless shirts called ‘wife beaters’. The repositioning was initially successful, with the product being the most successful grocery product launched in 2009. However, how much damage was done beneath the surface? How much damage to the brand’s heritage has already been done, not to mention the cost of the repositioning to InBev?

Assuming that negative stereotypes can be detrimental; does this also mean that positive stereotypes are beneficial? The answer is not always a simple yes or no. Looking at Apple, this becomes apparent. Yes, Apple is widely perceived as an extremely innovative brand – undoubtedly a position many brands envy and desire. However, this stereotype carries huge expectation where the response bar is very high and consumers are consistently speculating over the whys and wherefores of the next iPhone and iPad(s). If speculation is met by a delayed release date or under delivery, brand affinity may be compromised. The bigger picture of concern for Apple is that now the ‘innovative label’ has been placed on them, the onus exists for them to continually release new, ground breaking products. If we believe that innovation is a potentially finite resource in the world of electronic consumer goods – AND your brand is built on an innovation proposition, will this limit its longevity?

If social media is a brand’s new best friend, stereotypes may be a brand’s oldest adversary. Negative stereotypes can force unexpected, potentially expensive, brand repositioning and positive stereotypes can cause extremely high consumer expectations – immense challenges for brands to meet, especially given the crowded marketplace and increased consumer power in the 21st century.

Which Apple tastes best?

Published on Mar 29th, 2011 by Jeff

Innovation. You’re rolling your eyes right now aren’t you? In only a few short years the idea of companies (and researchers) focusing on finding the next great ‘innovation’ first became the industry buzzword and then became so overused, expanded and twisted that it seemed to lose all meaning. But, as a recent article in the Guardian started me thinking, the purpose behind the search for ‘innovation’ remains important, no matter the confusing rhetoric now surrounding the issue.

This article discussed the iPod, which will celebrate its 10th birthday this year. Admit it – it’s hard to believe it’s been less than a decade since you were lugging a case of CDs around when you travelled. The amount of music many of us now carry to the grocery store would, in CD form, likely fill Victoria Beckham’s transatlantic luggage several times over.  And if you’ve seen any of TMZ’s snaps of her arriving at LAX, you would know that’s saying something.

But my point here is not to delve into this cultural shift. What the article reminded me of was that when Apple released the iPod, the company was struggling. It had failed to successfully evolve its iMac desktop computer and its stock price was collapsing amidst the dotcom crisis. A decade on and look – Apple is no longer a niche computing company but a veritable technology and multimedia giant that is one of the most valuable companies in the world.

It is pretty much impossible to see how this would have happened without the iPod. It was not the first portable MP3 player on the market, but its combination of design, usability and storage allowed it to define the portable music player market. In the years since, Apple has subsequently redefined how we buy music and other media (iTunes), what our mobile phone looks like (iPhone) and our use of the internet itself (everywhere with the iPhone, iPad, etc.). All this from figuring out how to best produce one, simple product.

Innovation, idea, discovery – whatever you want to call it.  Get it right, just once, and it can transform your company.

It’s not what you say…..

Published on Oct 21st, 2010 by Liz

It’s not just me is it? The new Alfa Romeo Giulietta ad is completely positioned towards a female audience?  It’s great from a research point of view though since at present I would estimate that 99.9% of Alfa Owners are male and of the petrol head variety – getting some female owners will even out the sample representativeness greatly – Thanks Alfa!

I do actually quite like Alfa’s – I’m quite taken with the design of the Brera, 8C and the cute Mito.  One day I even got as far as test driving a GT – but it ended disastrously when I pulled outside the dealership at the end of the test drive and scratched the alloys quite badly on the kerb.  The dealer gave me a look which suggested he was about to kill me.  Mortified, I made some hasty apologies and legged it, never to set foot there again….. (NB All comments about women drivers will be deleted).

But if I had decided to purchase a car from Alfa or any other brand for that matter, what could I have expected as an extra incentive as part of the deal?  Results from our Automotive Rejecters Monitor (which also collects information on car purchased) suggest that while we have very few negative comments from female purchasers relating to dealers, we do see a distinction in the type of incentives offered to male and female purchasers.



So as a female I am more likely to be offered free servicing, Extended warranties and free accessories.  If I was being cynical however, could this actually be read as – female purchaser therefore doesn’t have a clue about fixing a car if it breaks down (free servicing), believes that she will be ripped off every time she takes the car to a garage (extended warranty) and is easily persuaded into purchases by the offer of freebies (free accessories – though this could actually be a semiotic link of the word ‘accessories’ to favourite female items such as handbags etc!).

In other words is the offer of these incentives is just an unspoken way of exploiting what are probably stereotypically accurate traits for many women?  Hmmmm…. I wonder…….

The trend towards home knitting

Published on May 11th, 2010 by Liz

It’s important to knit

I recall a conversation I had a few years ago with a friend where I boldly announced that the future was in knitted tea cosies – and would you believe it we now find ourselves amidst a global craft revival with knitted tea cosies cropping up everywhere.

So I tried it

Personally I tried to make a quick buck out of my prediction by buying up every vintage knitted tea cosy pattern I could find at Car Boot Sales and then flogging them on EBay, but alas, it didn’t make me a millionaire.  However, although I failed miserably at cashing in on the craft revival, many other companies, rather unexpectedly I suspect, found themselves making a nice profit out of everyone’s new obsession with everything home made.  John Lewis for example experienced a 34%  and Argos a 50% increase in sales of sewing machines and even Newsnight ran a series on Making and Mending around Britain

A bit of background

The craft revival has even had some mentions in the world of Market research – my favourite one by Rachel Lawes in her paper presented at the MRS conference 2009 entitled ‘Futurology through Semiotics’.   But there’s another reason why I liked this paper – it introduced me to Futurology, a subject I was well aware of the concept of, (and had put into practice with my knitted tea cosy theory) but up until that point, I hadn’t appreciated its relevance to research and that many people took it seriously.  Very seriously in fact – Oxford University has the James Martin 21st Century School , BT has its own department of futurology which even back in 2005 produced a paper outlining their predictions for all manner of industries.  And increasingly in our research work we are asked by clients to research the future trends of their business or industry they operate in.

So, a bit of fun then, what’s the next big thing looming on the horizon?  Let’s look at the current trend for crafting and thriftiness:

Craft Revival Next Big Thing
Female dominated Something more male related, (though please don’t let the World Cup have too much influence on this.) Maybe science, getting muddy etc
Sewing Machines, Embroidery machines, over lockers….. Men like gadgets…… something technical and impossible to use (much like a sewing machine in fact but more macho)
Involved purchasing lots of additional items i.e. knitting needles, fabric, buttons, pins, needles etc Although we may well be coming out of a recession, people are still watching the pennies – ideally ‘extras’ need to be cheap or free
Production of articles of variable quality, but ultimately pretty and generally useful…… Nothing to show but increased knowledge of a subject to wow ones friends & partners with and excel at the local pub quiz (and anyway, there’s no room for anything else to be stored in the house because of all the knitted tea cosies produced last Christmas)

So here it is, based on current trends, my prediction is…….that the next big thing will be……..a revival in Astronomy! Mark my words, everyone will soon be looking skyward through their telescopes at star clusters and nebulae, comparing red giants and super giants, and the NASA server will crash under the strain of users downloading their App onto iPhones. In the hope that my predictive ability holds out a bit longer, I’ll be buying up all the telescopes and planispheres I can lay my hands on when the ‘booting season starts but in the meantime, I may just invest a few pennies in Tasco shares!