Is it a consumer insight?

 

I was shamed by their good will and mortified by their cooking. There seemed to be some correlation between devotion to God and a misguided zeal for marshmallows.

- David Sedaris, c.o.g.

Thank the Muses for correlation. Planners, strategists and statisticians alike all preach ad nauseam that correlation and causation are not even mathematical distant cousins. A, however, client once put me in my place with a pithy truth on the topic: 'Correlation may not prove causation, but it's something!' My client, of course, was absolutely correct: correlation does not prove causation, but correlation damn sure is something. And not only is it something but, truth be told, correlation is mostly what we look for when we pour through pivot tables of cross-tabulated behavioral, demographic and purchasing behavior.

Put another way, not only is correlation most definitely something, but that something might very well be a sound customer insight about a targetable segment.

Davis Sedaris' claimed correlation about religious faith and marshmallow culinary ingenuity is easy to test. All one need do is create a two question survey - possibly even one question - devise a random sampling strategy and stand outside churches, temples and mosques following regularly scheduled services. The sampling strategy might be weighted towards interviewing women, who tend to be the household member responsible for food shopping and meal preparation. To be thorough, a representative sampling of zip codes might be covered so that demographic information can be layered atop the survey data to explore whether or not this alleged marshmallow moxie also extended into geographic location, educational level, and household income.

A similar study could even more easily be conducted via telephone by adding a screening survey on the topic of religious faith and a sampling strategy to yield a representative sampling of the entire United States population.

If the Sedaris correlation bore fruit the correlation between faith, marshmallows, and demographics could easily lead to a sound marketing strategy that included targeted messaging, product development (marshmallows that melt at specific temperatures for specific recipes, marshmallows mixed with different spices), and product extensions (Beyond Smores and Marshmallow Pie - The Complete Marshmallow Cookbook). 

Consumer insight? Yes!

Actionable? Most definitely!

Causation? Totally irrelevant!

Which brings us to the Harvard Business Review's Daily Stat of July 16:

• Blondes earn 7% more than brunettes
• Men blond women wed earn an average of 6% more than the husbands of women with other hair colors

Consumer insight? Almost. 

To take these data points and turn them into a proper, actionable consumer insight about a targetable audience for, say, a women's beauty product we would first have to determine how propensed non-blond women are to change the color of their hair either to increase their salaries, or to marry wealthier men.

Testing here is not as straight forward as testing the Sedaris correlation. To be thorough, several difficult-to-identify groups would have to be recruited: employers of at least two women where one of those women is blond and one is not; men married to blonds; men not married to blonds; and, of course, non-blond women.

Though testing could be limited only to the non-blond women group to save time and money, this direction would ignore the secondary market of men married to non-blond women who want to encourage their wives to dye their hair blond to give the appearance of a 6% higher salary.

Complicating the research even more is the fact that answers to questions on such topics as men's taste in women, income, and the lengths to which women are willing to go to make themselves appealing to men are prone to inaccuracy. But all of these risks can be minimized through rigor and methodology. In short, the study is very doable.

If ever there was a time for the women's beauty industry to take up arms against the perpetual accusations of deliberately distorting womens' collective self-image to create an insatiable demand for their products, that time is now! Right there, in the HBR no less, are two statistical data points that speak directly to quantifiable and positive effects that beauty products can have on the lives of consumers, and those effects are far more quantifiable and positive than those of virtually any other product gather dust on CVS and 7-11 shelves.

So let the testing begin! And let it reveal truths about our nature, self-image, shared values, and other deeper mysteries of the human animal.

[NOTE: Special thanks to Julie Salles, who served as wardrobe, stylist and model in the photo above, and who is first and foremost a fine photographer in her own right.]

Posted via email from Plastic Spoon's Posterous

Incentive Plans & Measuring Purchase Intent

CNNMoney.com reported that "Toyota's new incentive plan appears to have piqued the interest of buyers looking to snag a good deal....

Auto and advertising industry trades have been abuzz as news of massive recalls flowed, then ebbed, the flowed again in all media imaginable, everyone wondering what effect this will have on this hitherto untarnished brand.

The article referenced above quoted and Edmunds study that indicated that '"purchase intent" surged 40% to a 14-month high [this past] Tuesday.' 

All professionals whose work includes market research, ie planners, can tell you that there is no way to measure purchase intent short of interviews or surveys. In the Toyota case for example, at the very least I'd need to know what was an individual's purchase intent was before the recalls, after the recalls, and since the incentives were announced before even beginning to understand what the real effect on purchase intent the newly announced incentives have had. The sampling strategy of individuals surveyed would have to take into account the sales patters of specific models down to the zip code level. Asking about Buffalo Springs, TX about their Prius purchase intent would likely present results as useless as asking Upper East Side Manhattanites about their purchase intent for the  5.7 liter, 32 valve, king cab V8 Tundra (despite this group's apparent perverse fetish with the H2). 

Hours after this was reported, I was sitting in a meeting the topic of which was what online behavior to use to measure shifts in brand perception. I freely offered up what I thought was the obvious and honest answer: "Short of a survey, there's no way to measure shifts in perception." That was not the answer the room was looking for. Rather, I was lectured about online 'success events' and the use of proxies. This was a lecture I did not need, having used success events and proxies to assess attitudes - let us just say - more than a few times in the past. The fact remains, however, that while those may both be adequate ways of assessing the correlation between online behavior and perception, this is a far site short of concluding that there is a causal link. I took the imprompteau lecture for what it was: an invitation to stand down and be quiet.

Even the Edmunds article disclaimed this methodological weakness by stating that their the relationship between the success events monitored and intent to purchase was only correlative.

~

My bruised ego aside, what I really wanted to talk about today was what the veritable spate of product recalls mean for the Toyota tribe.

The first car I owned was a gray, 1976 Toyota Celica. I acquired it in 1986 with about 200,000 miles. I put about another 90,000 miles on it before I had to have it towed to the junk yard. Clearly I had an affinity for the car and a positive brand experience. Still, I have never considered purchasing another Toyota.

Since 1976 when the Celica was introduced, Toyota has grown into a collection of unrelated clans with few shared values. The Prius clan shares few values with the Avalon clan, which shares few values with the Tundra clan.  As a result, by the time I needed a new car I was no longer clear as to which clan within the larger Toyota tribe I belonged. (Nissan has done a better job of avoiding this conundrum. It will be interesting to see how Kia avoids this trap as they follow in the footsteps of their Asian brethren clans.)

The Toyota brand, however, has maintained one key value important to all of its clans: quality.

This value has now been called into question, and the larger Toyota tribe is at risk of splintering as a result.

Enter the incentive plans.

Incentive plans are not intended to repair damaged brand perception. Rather, they are intended to boost sales in the short-term, the implicit message being 'we know that our product is not worth list price, but it's certainly worth list price less all these discounts and deals we have for you.' It's a butts in seats play, not a branding play.

The desired effect of this butts in seats play is that Toyota will reclaim some of it's lost market share in the short-term. This is extremely important for automotive brands: the vehicles sold today will be on the road for the next decade - each vehicle an itinerant testimonial.

The more cars Toyota can get on the road now, the more time it buys itself to leverage these new buyers into loyalty and advocacy programs while, at the same time, fixing it's brand image in above the line and social media. But this tactic only works if the deals and discounts are temporary and soon forgotten by consumers. The longer that product discounts drive a butts in seats strategy, the more likely it is that Toyota will become a brand associated with deep discounts rather than with high quality.

Posted via web from Plastic Spoon's Posterous