Researchers Ask Questions Consumers Can’t Answer

Ron Sellers has spent 23 years conducting brand and advertising research and
in that time he has seen clients trying to get answers to questions that consumers
simply can’t answer properly.
In a recent article on the Brandweek website,
Mr. Sellers of Grey Matter Research & Consulting wrote, "In at least
a third of the advertising-related focus groups I’ve moderated, the client
has insisted we ask a question such as: ‘What would be the best media to advertise
our product?’ The inevitable answer is television. But that’s just because
TV is what people tend to envision when they think of advertising. It’s
not because consumers actually have deep insight that a TV buy would suit the
marketplace goals of the brand in question."
Questions about the effect advertising has on consumer purchasing decisions
can also lead to wrong answers. "Consumers will tell us flat-out that advertising
has no effect on what they buy. If only they realized how much it really does," he
wrote.
"If consumers don’t even know all the reasons for their own behavior," he
asked, "why do we continue to treat them as if they do, ask them questions
they cannot hope to answer accurately and rely on the results for critical
decisions?"
Discussion Questions: Is there any point to asking consumers
to consider the reasons behind their own shopping behavior? What is the most
effective means to understand the connection between advertising and consumer
shopping behavior?
Join the Discussion!
12 Comments on "Researchers Ask Questions Consumers Can’t Answer"
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Most of these shopping surveys, I feel, are flawed from the start because they overlay logical judgment on what essentially is a past emotion. Ask a guy why he married the girl, “When I saw her I just knew.” Is that logic? No, he had emotions arise, processed and moved on. Looking back all he can give is generalities. A little girl being scolded by her mother, “Why did you do that?” gets a shrug and an “I don’t know.” Why do we feel in marketing that pressing the point yields anything but vague memories that grasp at straws rather than providing insight?
There is lots of evidence to suggest that consumers do not think much about their purchasing behavior and when we force them to do so, we get answers like Mr. Sellers finds, not the truth. This applies to retail settings too–asking shoppers whether a shelf is easy to shop or poorly organized always gets you positive answers–they are easy to shop and nicely organized (no matter how badly they are organized).
We prefer behavioral research instead of asking people questions, whether it’s virtual reality for retail issues or split cable for advertising, we want to see how shoppers react behaviorally to our marketing variations.
It’s all in how you ask the questions.
Certainly a large part of purchasing behavior is emotional…but it is useful to understand what those emotions are. And these days, logic also plays a large part in purchasing decisions. It’s useful to understand the thought process as well.
But this is the glory of social networks. You can find out a wealth of information without creating focus groups. Customers are MORE THAN happy to tell you what they’re thinking and feeling. The challenge for retailers is to aggregate and distill that sentiment into something more quantifiable. It’s doable.
I gain tremendous insight in the why behind consumer purchases simply by asking consumers about their shopping behavior. The more you engage people in dialogue, asking questions, asking for explanations, asking them to give you examples, the more can be inferred about their basic motivations and drives. Surely you can’t ask a consumer ‘why did you do this, buy that…whatever” and expect a staight answer. But by being genuinely interested people will tell you an awful lot about the why in their behavior.
I agree with Ron Sellers article. My responses falls in line with Bob Phibbs so there is no need to repeat.
I will add that today’s economic temperature has begun to have more input in consumer buying decisions. In the past emotion dictated buying decisions and logic justified them. Today, emotion still starts the thought process; but logic then steps in and says “Yes, we can buy this; but do we really need it?” It has become want vs. need.
After reading Dr. Sorensen’s book “Inside the Mind of the Shopper,” I am further convinced that there is a great divide between what a shopper says and what a shopper actually does. Focus groups serve a purpose to further refine what really needs to be studied, but the best answers come from “in vivo.” Or am I thinking “in vino veritas”?
In the context of a shopper experience, a customer behaves in a different manner than in a theoretical environment such as a lab or meeting room. Is the test subject trying to please? As the great Yogi Berra is quoted, “sometimes you can observe things by just watching.” This needs to be done in the wild and preferably without knowledge they are being studied. The answers to all of our questions are out there. It is a matter of creativity on how to capture the information.
You should use behavioral data first as the baseline and then use the overlays to add more depth.
I think anyone who has ever answered a survey where they were asked “which of these 23 brands of shampoo makes you proud to be an American?” (or whatever) can sympathize with this problem, but ultimately what is–or isn’t–learned from a survey depends on the skills of the surveyor…even a long string of “I don’t knows” tells something. My bigger concern is that as (presumably) the internet makes survey taking more common, the process begins to affect testee behavior: “Oh I think I’ll try Brand X, it’ll look good on the next survey I take…” is something I fear is happening.