Anna Clark » GfK Roper Pulse

Too much information?

Online researching has changed the way we shop

By Anna Clark

Be it organising my friend’s hen (bachelorette) weekend, or choosing a new mobile phone, I always seem to have something I’m researching.

These days, with so much information at our fingertips I usually spend lots of time researching to find ‘the best deal’ or ‘the best product’, but I sometimes find myself getting so involved with the minutiae that I get to the point of just wanting whichever one ‘will do’.

The issue for me nowadays is that there is almost too much information available, and it can be contradictory. When attempting to choose a new phone recently, I read official reviews, looked at websites that compare the network coverage, and asked my friends who I deemed experts…and came up with conflicting opinions. Perhaps the learning here is that what is good for one person, isn’t right for another. This presents a challenge for online review sites: wouldn’t it be better if you knew that the person writing the review was ‘like you’, or if you knew they didn’t have an ulterior motive?

Inevitably, if you look for long enough, there’s always a horror story. And somehow even if there is only one negative review among a whole host of positive ones, that has a stronger impact than the multiple good reviews. Just one negative review can cause anxieties to creep in, and can take the edge off the excitement about your new purchase, or your next dinner venue.

At risk of sounding like a luddite, in choosing a restaurant for the hen do, I ended up going out and looking at the restaurants in the area, chose the one I liked the look of, and then went out of my way to avoid reading reviews because I didn’t want to be put off!

We know from our Roper Reports Worldwide 2010 data that 55% of consumers globally spend quite a lot of time researching brands before making a major purchase, and while at times I feel all this information makes the decision process harder, it’s clear that in general, the availability of information nowadays has changed the way consumers buy.

So what about the future of reviews and researching purchases? Often reviews can seem out of date by the time you read them, so are real-time reviews the way we’re heading? And will tools become more sophisticated, pre-empting your search and sending you the latest reviews direct when you start looking at a product, or only giving you reviews from people who are similar to you?

Either way, this availability of information and reviews is set to continue growing, making it an issue companies must take into account. With tools enabling consumers to make their views heard, keeping them happy is more important than ever, and companies need to ensure they deal with any complaints swiftly, and effectively, to prevent that one bad experience being the one people hear about.

Queue Ahead – Plan Ahead

A reminder that a great purchase doesn’t outweigh a negative purchase experience.

By Anna Clark

It is an oft-spoken cliché that British people love to queue. The author George Mikes, best known for his humorous commentaries on various countries and their citizens, said, “An Englishman, even if he is alone, forms an orderly queue of one.”

The recent UK General Election saw the highest turnouts for 13 years, which resulted in long queues and, in a number of cases, people still queuing by the time the polls closed, meaning they missed out on their vote. One wonders whether people would have patiently queued (in the rain) past the deadline in other countries. That is not to say that there weren’t angry scenes when the truth became apparent, but there weren’t reports of people forcing their way in or worse still, queue-jumping.

I recently found myself musing on this topic when supporting some friends at a battle of the bands contest, where, after the last band finished their set, the crowd of thrashing metallers* formed an orderly queue on the dance floor to place their vote. It seemed an unlikely sight, but perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised.

When it comes to Personal Values, in the UK, like most other countries, concepts such as ‘power’ and ‘self interest’ rank at the very bottom of the pile, according to the Roper Reports Worldwide study, suggesting consumers just aren’t willing to put their own needs before other peoples’ (or to admit to doing so).

While it’s clear that people will queue, it’s important that companies don’t take advantage of this tendency toward civility. Queuing to vote, or to get tickets for must-see concerts is one thing, but when consumers have a choice of vendors available to them, one with a swift checkout and better customer experience will win through. When a queuing procedure is deemed to be poorly organised or people are left unsure where to queue, this can damage overall satisfaction and reduce chances of a return visit.

And of course, queuing doesn’t stop at the shop door. Numerous horror stories abound about hours spent on hold to speak to people at call centres, while good experiences can encourage loyalty and recommendation. I recently called a customer service line where I was given a choice of hold music to make my wait less frustrating. Small touches like this may not cost much but can be worth a lot. Time spent in a queue is time spent in the care of your brand, and regardless of how good the purchase might be, the overall experience matters, too.

* If you’re unsure who or what a ‘metaller’ is, check out the Urban Dictionary definition!

Changing behaviour for the better

The importance of ‘fun’ in ‘fundraising’

By Anna Clark

At the end of last year, Volkswagen launched an initiative called The Fun Theory, based around the idea that you can use fun to change people’s behaviour for the better. They made some changes to public places to make ‘better’ behaviour more fun – changes such as replacing a normal staircase with a giant piano staircase, where lo and behold, people began to use the stairs instead of taking the escalator. Having set the ball rolling, Volkswagen called for people to submit their examples of using fun to change behaviour, and shared the results on their website: http://www.thefuntheory.com/

This seemed an interesting idea to me – and is an interesting take on the carrot and stick approach. We often talk about the ‘gap’ between what consumers know they should do, and how they actually behave, which spans thing such as health activities, and green behaviours, and other ‘socially responsible’ acts. It seems that in spite of having the knowledge of what they should of, consumers feel they face legitimate barriers such as a lack of money, or time, when perhaps really it’s motivation that’s lacking.

A key criticism of The Fun theory is that the changes they’ve made are clearly a novelty, and while they show a 66% uplift in people taking the stairs that day, would this continue over a longer timeframe, or would people slip back into old habits?

Back in July 1985 Bob Geldof and Midge Ure organised a multi-venue rock concert to raise awareness, and funds for famine relief in Ethiopia: LiveAid. Broadcasts of this event were watched by an estimated 400 million viewers, across 60 countries, uniting consumers across the globe for a few hours behind a single cause. This event arguably spawned a whole new type of fundraising, to the extent that the ‘benefit concert’ is now almost a reflex action when a disaster occurs. Not that I am suggesting this is a bad thing of course, anything that raises money for charity that might not otherwise have been donated has got to be a good thing.

My question is whether the money that these events raise is extra money, or could it be raised without the massive expense and hype of putting on such a major event? Arguably, the event is for many the trigger to a donation – they go, they have a great time, they are moved by what they see, and they donate. The concert is a motivation tool to get people to ‘do the right thing’, and maybe, it spurs people to give who wouldn’t otherwise.

In our Roper Reports Worldwide survey we ask consumers how often they volunteer or help others, and around one in three say they do so monthly or more often. This is remarkably stable across all age groups – suggesting people are volunteers, or they’re not, and this doesn’t change drastically throughout the life course. I’d imagined that volunteering would relate to how much time consumers have available – the more time on their hands the more volunteering they would do.

However, we also asked consumers if they had more time, or more money how they would spend it. Interestingly, around one-third of volunteers would do more for others, while 18% of non-volunteers would do so. To me this suggests that the means we have available in terms of time and money, are only a part of what influences what we are willing to give to benefit others.

Perhaps recognising people’s fickle nature, Orange neatly turned the ‘benefit concert’ on its head, when it developed the Orange RockCorp movement – running for a couple of years now this required young people to do some voluntary work, and one they’ve completed a certain amount, they are rewarded with gig tickets. This truly makes use of a ‘good behaviour and reward’ mechanism, and as it gets people into volunteering from a young age, I wonder if such an initiative might change behaviour in the longer term.

Of course, anything that encourages consumers to be better citizens has got to be a good thing, and if brands can do so, and forge a relationship with consumers at the same time, so much the better.

Experiencing Globalisation

The contrast between rapidly developing Gurgaon and the hubbub of Old Delhi

A reminder of just how real globalisation is, from a recent trip to rapidly developing Delhi.

By Anna Clark

On a recent trip to Delhi to run a trends workshop, we took the opportunity absorb the city, do a spot of people watching, and as trend spotters on tour, check out the local advertising

One of my first impressions was the very obvious presence of all the major global brands. HSBC advertising met us in the airport, and as we travelled around the city we saw plenty of ads from tech companies such as LG and HP, and FMCG brands such as Pantene. Of course in a nation that still very much trusts advertising over word of mouth, the presence of so much advertising was to be expected.

In the supermarket alongside more traditional foods, all the same household names could be found, Cadbury, Red Bull and L’Oreal to name just a few, although with some interesting flavour variants (e.g. Mango coated Cornflakes).

In some of the shiny new malls popping up in the Gurgaon business district, we found Baskin Robbins ice cream vendors, Reebok stores, and Italian restaurants. We had a beer in an ultra modern microbrewery bar, and dinner in a Chinese restaurant, and could easily have thought we were in any city around the world, then stepped out into the dust, the bustle of rickshaw drivers, people milling around and chatting on the roadside, and mass construction going on all around the city as it prepares in earnest for the Commonwealth Games later this year.

There are, however, things that serve as a reminder that only a small proportion of Indian consumers visit these places and that many are still very much on their way up: security gates and bag searches on the way in to, and out of, all the modern malls; and billboard adverts for a recruitment company with the slogan “All I want is everything”.

There are also hints that gender roles are more traditional – one billboard read “The economy is recovering, time to buy your wife that big fridge”!

All this quite basic advertising left me wondering at what point the more subtle advertising messages that dominate the West will start appearing in India, and the potential for events based and experiential marketing to capitalise on such a vast and rapidly developing population?

A New Twist on NPD

The Lynx Bullet Twist

Using consumer trends to develop fresh ideas

By Anna Clark

Known for its popularity with teenage boys dousing themselves with it, I find myself surprised to be writing how ‘on trend’ the Lynx (Axe) deodorant brand seems to be. However, a couple of their recent innovations provide a perfect example of using consumer trends in NPD.

Last year they launched the Lynx Bullet – the tagline for which was ‘Pocket Pulling Power’ but which was essentially just a pocket sized deodorant, sold in twin packs. There’s nothing hugely new or different about a travel sized deodorant, but marketing it as something to be routinely carried was new. This innovation is just right for today’s metrosexual man, more interested in personal care, and more likely to carry a ‘man bag’. However, the tongue in cheek Pocket Pulling Power tagline might equally appeal to more laddish types, and being pocket sized it doesn’t require the man bag, for those less ‘reconstructed’.

This has been followed up with their latest launch, the Lynx Twist. This variant is a can of deodorant that contains more than one scent, and by twisting the top, consumers can change the scent delivered. The massive convergence of technology in recent years has got consumers used to carrying more things with them, but also led them to expect products to have more than one function or benefit, so the combination of various scents into one can is the logical translation of this into the deodorant world.

This also speaks to issues of personal identity, reinvention and customization, and recognises the different roles in today’s multi-faceted lives.

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Too much information?

Queue Ahead – Plan Ahead

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