What's on the horizon in research? (page 1 of 2)

The centrality of the brand

In today's world, brands are what people relate to - what they buy. All that truly matters is how people relate to brands and how these relationships change. Yet many marketers persist in using outdated models and beliefs about how people's minds work in relation to brands, brand memories and buying decisions - models and beliefs that are almost sacred cows but which contain myths:
• Myth 1 - Decision-making is mostly a conscious, rational and readily-uncovered process.
Truth - Our emotions and instincts are the first influence on decisions. Most decision-making is driven by these two influences only: relatively little is later moderated by conscious cognition which often simply rationalises behaviour or decisions. Some writers put the unconscious:conscious ratio as high as 95:5. By far the majority of decisions are driven by habit, by people's long-standing, enduring memories of all their brand experiences and encounters, their brand relationships and their emotional, social and cultural context. Hence, people cannot readily explain their behaviour, let alone their thinking.
The implications - Research that relies primarily on conscious recall and reporting misses most of the action. Research must be brand-led rather than by the specifics of the marketing elements such as advertising or the pack. People are not advertising or design experts. To make them so is to distort how they process the ad or pack. All we need to establish is the simple effect of a pack or an ad on the brand relationship: does it strengthen it or weaken it? That is it. Ad recall and liking are red herrings.
• Myth 2 - We think in words; we can use words to recall memories.
Truth - We use all our senses: smell, music and pictures (touch and taste where applicable) evoke memories better than words. Memories are multi-faceted: all contribute to the overall brand persona. Many memories are created unconsciously; many involve the whole body. And memories can change.
The implications - Showing an ad to obtain ad recognition is a far better metric. Provided then people who recognise an ad correctly link it to the brand, the ad has had its impact - positively or negatively. Because instinct kicks in first, words do not tap into most decisions.
• Myth 3 - We can understand people's reactions to marketing interventions without needing to study their social, cultural and emotional state.
Truth - Most marketers stop at measuring wealth, race and language and key demographics. People's bodies, minds and souls need to be taken into account as well as their surrounding society and culture, however defined: these provide the contextual lens through which they view and interpret the world.
Implications - These all interact. We need to understand these interactions - the human condition - if we are to understand how people will react to marketing activities.

Understanding the human condition - the lens through which we interpret the world

There are three aspects: people's sense of well-being and optimism, their surrounding society and their cultural context.

A person's sense of well-being fundamentally affects how they run their lives. In general, people with higher levels of well-being make more use of "fast and frugal heuristics" - unconscious decision-making - making decisions faster and more confidently than less happy people who make greater use of cognition, weigh the facts more and take longer to make a decision.