Five Biggest Myths of Consumer Psychology

[djbaxter]

The Five Biggest Myths of Consumer Psychology
by Daryl Weber, Medium.com
November 27, 2017

“It’s boring. There’s no way that will catch people’s attention.”

This was said by a senior marketer at a very large consumer brand, reacting to an idea from its’ advertising agency. This marketer assumed, as most do, that for an ad to work, it must pull people away from what they are doing and capture their conscious, undivided attention.

But science shows that this may not be true.

Marketers often think they understand the consumer brain just because they have a brain of their own. But our conscious experience doesn’t tell the whole story. While we may think we have a sense for how our minds work, this is really a misleading illusion, rather than reality.

• Myth #1: To get our message to break through, we need to gain conscious attention.
• Myth #2: For marketing to work, it must be remembered.
• Myth #3: We need to elicit emotions to build an emotional connection.
• Myth #4: Consumers can tell you what they want.
• Myth #5: Consumers make rational decisions.

It turns out that none of these are correct, or they are only partially correct.

Read more...

 

[Small to Feds]

The Five Biggest Myths of Consumer Psychology
by Daryl Weber, Medium.com
November 27, 2017

• Myth #1: To get our message to break through, we need to gain conscious attention.
• Myth #2: For marketing to work, it must be remembered.
• Myth #3: We need to elicit emotions to build an emotional connection.
• Myth #4: Consumers can tell you what they want.
• Myth #5: Consumers make rational decisions.

It turns out that none of these are correct, or they are only partially correct.

Read more...

Eika Hall has some excellent points on consumer psychology myths in her article on Market Research. An extract and a link to the article are below:

"HOW THE 'FAILURE' CULTURE OF STARTUPS IS KILLING INNOVATION"
By Erica Hall, Wired

"Research is not about whether people “like” or don’t like something. No business should ever use the word “like.” Like is not a design word and has nothing to do with any business goal. It’s just a reported mental attitude with no necessary connection to behavior. (Same thing with “hate”: I may hate The Newsroom, but I still watch it. Why? The better to hate it.)

In market research, this is known as the difference between “declared preference” – the fruit of focus groups – and “revealed preference” or reality.

Yet focus groups are not research; they’re research theater. They tell us very little about how real people behave in the real world. The brilliant sociologist and father of focus groups Robert K. Merton later lamented their misuse in replacing research: “Even when the subjects are well selected, focus groups are supposed to be merely the sourceof ideas that need to be researched.”

When the research focuses on what people actually do(watch cat videos) rather than what they *wish they did (produce cinema-quality home movies) *it actually expands possibilities. But a common concern and excuse for not doing research is that it will limit creative possibilities to only those articulated by the target users, leaving designers devising a faster horse (lame) rather than a flying car (rad).

Worse than being limited by potential customers’ imaginations is being limited by one’s own – especially if most business leaders admit they’re not going to be the next Steve Jobs. But why should they have to imagine how the world works, when it’s possible to find out through research? Their imagination is then better spent on designing the solution.

Still, no one should do any sort of research just to tick a box or CYA (cover your ass) – that’s worse than doing no research at all. If your heart tells you to build what’s in your head, and there’s no one else you need to convince, go forth, my friend, and build that dream.

What Research Is —————-

Clearly, our beliefs around failure and misconceptions around what research is may have stopped people from doing it. But research, especially applied research, isn’t more effective when it’s a big, complex process.

Applied research is merely a set of activities (ideally somewhat organized) that help businesses gather the additional information they need to achieve a goal. The amount, type, and duration of those activities can vary wildly, and that’s OK.

There is absolutely no right amount of – or rigid process for – research except what’s right given one’s goals and resources at a particular time. Someone can take two days, two weeks, or even two years depending on the scope of work and how much is both possible and useful to learn in advance.

Focus groups are not research; they’re research theater.

The key is to be honest about how much we really know.

We need to identify our most critical assumptions, and then decide how to validate them. For example, a common assumption is that the organization – given its structure and business model – is capable of delivering the service the entrepreneur envisions.

An even more common, fundamental assumption in any design is that the problem the entrepreneur (and by entrepreneur I mean both at startups and inside large organizations) has decided to solve is a real problem – and one where potential users will value having a new solution.

Maybe knocking out a prototype or building a company isthe fastest, cheapest way to learn. But often it’s not. Sure, a prototype can tell us if the user understands the potential solution – but if it’s solving a problem no one has, why bother building it in the first place?"

How the 'Failure' Culture of Startups Is Killing Innovation

 

[Jessica A.]

The Five Biggest Myths of Consumer Psychology
by Daryl Weber, Medium.com
November 27, 2017

• Myth #1: To get our message to break through, we need to gain conscious attention.
• Myth #2: For marketing to work, it must be remembered.
• Myth #3: We need to elicit emotions to build an emotional connection.
• Myth #4: Consumers can tell you what they want.
• Myth #5: Consumers make rational decisions.

It turns out that none of these are correct, or they are only partially correct.

Read more...

On point. I've studied Psychology myself and I can say that for advertisers to get the message across their desired market, they don't have to get their consumers' full undivided attention. They could just be airing an ad on TV while consumers are doing something else but subconsciously, they are receiving what has been broadcasted. They're just tucking it away in a corner of their brain until it surfaces. People receive messages differently. They don't have to be emotionally involved in a product in order for them to buy it. Others even buy just for the sake of buying. Advertise how you want and people will still buy it even if they don't understand the ad. People's brains have been wired to react to certain stimuli in a thousand different ways. We don't always know what we want and we'd be surprised until we consciously know about it. Lastly, people sometimes act before thinking which is why they are not always happy with that they purchased.

 

[Alla Taff]

I think, that information will be useful and interesting for different people, because our life build on customer relations.