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by: Stefan Kolle
As I pointed out in my previous post, in my opinion we are measuring the wrong things in marketing, and many of us are still living in a delusional world of measurability. Let me take this discussion into the realm of Word of Mouth (WoM).
by: Roger Dooley
East Asian subjects process a picture differently than their North American counterparts, according to a study published this week in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. The study used both eye tracking and conventional survey techniques to show that the Asian subjects paid attention to the background of the image while the North Americans focused on the principal character.
Continue reading "Eye Tracking Shows Cultural Differences" »
by: danah boyd
The NYTimes ran a piece today called Text Generation Gap: U R 2 Old (JK). (Note: the article is very American-centric - in the States, older folks tend to be texting illiterate.) The article begins with an anecdote of a parent shuttling around his daughter and her friend. They are talking and dad butts in and they roll their eyes. And then there is silence. When dad comments to his daughter that she's being rude for texting on her phone rather than talking to her friend, the daughter replies: "But, Dad, we're texting each other. I don't want you to hear what I'm saying."
Continue reading "how youth find privacy in interstitial spaces" »
by: Roger Dooley
Hot on the heels of learning that more expensive wine tastes better, we find that more expensive placebos are more effective at controlling pain:
Scientists who want to see how a crowd behaves in an emergency can now shout "Fire!" on a city street and watch everyone panic and run thanks to a newly developed computer simulation.
Continue reading "Serious Games Predict Crowd Behavior in Dense Urban Settings" »
Continue reading "Baby Pictures Really Do Grab Our Attention" »
by: Scott Goodson
The majority of gamers own American-made cars (24% Ford, 18% Chevrolet). However, 79% are planning to buy an import for their next car (41% Toyota, 41% Honda, 25% Nissan and others).
Continue reading "Online Gamers Leave American Cars for Imports" »
Something tells me that this visual shouldn't require additional explanation. :-)by: Roger Dooley
Is Scratch 'n Sniff Starbucks in our future?
No industry focuses as much on olfactory marketing as the coffee business. Starbucks recently dumped its breakfast eggs because their smell didn't pair well with the coffee aroma. Nestlé unit Nespresso has not only modified its home brewing equipment to release more enticing smells, they have even launched a chain of coffee shops after finding that more than half of the coffee drinking experience came from the shop environment (see Sensory Marketing to Jolt Espresso Sales). Now, those clever coffee fanatics at Nestlé have found way to analyze the components of coffee aromas that lets them predict how real human noses will respond to those smells.
by: Scott Goodson
Fred Wilson points out in his blog that Facebook is not experiencing a decline but rather it has reached a plateau in the USA. Look a few feet outside the US border and we see a very different picture.
by: Ilya Vedrashko
Gamespot's Dubious Honors Awards for despicable use of in-game advertising:
2004 (Need for Speed Underground)
2005 (SWAT 4, where the dynamic in-game ads made one of the first appearances)
2006 (Fight Night Round 3, a boxing game with the Burger King's King in it)
2007 (Need for Speed ProStreet):
by: John Caddell
The Stall Points Initiative is an effort by the Corporate Executive Board, a business research group, to pinpoint why companies suddenly stop growing, then stagnate or decline for years thereafter.
Continue reading "Companies Stall Because They Don't Listen to Customers" »
by: Roger Dooley
by: Roger Dooley
One of the most annoying series of commercials is for HeadOn, an analgesic which one rubs on one's forehead to (supposedly) cure headaches. Does HeadOn work? I have no idea, but it seems doubtful.
Continue reading "Who clicks on ads? (Revisited with data)" »
by: Dick Stroud
Whenever I attend a 50-plus focus group and the topic of banks, building societies and other variants of financial service companies are discussed I can guarantee there will be a huge intake of breath and then tidal wave of vitriolic abuse.
by: David Polinchock
While readers of this blog will know that the ideas in this article are at the core of why the Brand Experience Lab exists, but it's always good to see other people thinking the same way. Especially when the author is with the Boston Consulting Group and yo know that this is coming from a business POV. I have excerpts here, but click on the link for the full article.
by: Dick Stroud
According to the ceo of Match.com (in this article in Forbes) there are about 92 million single people in the U.S. - about 3 million of them pay a fee to an Internet-based dating service for access to a pool of possible mates. That's a lot.
Here's a counter-intuitive thought: Shoppers with less information about a product are happier than those with more information. Researchers at the Tippie College of Business came to this conclusion after conducting a study in which people were asked their opinions of chocolate and hand lotion.
Continue reading "If You Want Customers to Be Happy, Give Them Less Product Information" »
by: David Polinchock
If you want to know what's wrong with advertising and why it has so many problems, take a look at the list of reasons that mobile advertising isn't working. You'll notice that not one person mentioned there's no real value for the consumer. That's why mobile marketing isn't working right now.
Continue reading "Being Peter Kim: What's Wrong with Mobile Marketing" »
Continue reading "Comfort Shopping: Sad Customers Buy More" »
by: Roger Dooley
Years ago, I worked with a group of field representatives selling industrial equipment, and found that many had interesting adaptations to local culture in different parts of the U.S. One based in Texas always kept a Western-cut sheepskin jacket in his car. If he was visiting a plant in a remote location, he'd shed the suit coat he wore in Dallas and put on the rugged-looking jacket.
by: John Caddell
A column in today's Wall Street Journal boils it down for us: "...[C]ompanies need to 'reinvent' the way they sell, to focus on their customers rather than product features."
Stop me if you think you've heard this one before.
Continue reading "How to Fix Your Selling Process in 192 Pages (not)" »
by: Roger Dooley
Why Choose This Book? How We Make Decisions by Read Montague sounds like the perfect read for neuromarketing and neuroeconomics enthusiasts. In fact, the book does provide some interesting insights but the overall density of actionable information, at least for marketers, is fairly low. The title might lead one to believe that the book is a distillation of consumer purchasing behavior, but in fact it is a wide-ranging discussion of the neuroscience of human decision making.
by: David Polinchock
Thanks to copyranter
for the tip on this piece. Wow, 44% of people surveyed don't believe anything a company says! If ever there was a reason to understand the value of compelling, authentic and relevant brand experiences, this could be it! If this many people don't believe what you say, you better give them a good reason to believe what you do! There's not an industry on the list that cracks 40% trust and that's pretty sad. Some interesting numbers:
Continue reading "Polls: 44% Normally Disbelieve Any And All Company Statements" »
by: Roger Dooley
For Neuromarketing readers, it’s not big news that the perception of wine drinkers is altered by what they know about the wine (see Wine and the Spillover Effect, for example). Now, researchers at Stanford and Caltech have demonstrated that people’s brains experience more pleasure when they think they are drinking a $45 wine instead of a $5 bottle - even when it’s the same stuff.
Continue reading "Phone quest, or Please be less creative" »
I
had just finished giving a talk about youth culture to a room full of
professionals who worked in the retail industry when a woman raised her
hand to tell me a story. It was homecoming season and her daughter Mary
was going to go to homecoming for the first time. What fascinated this
mother was that her daughter's approach to shopping was completely
different than her own.Continue reading "Technology and the World of Consumption" »
This just in: pretty much every consumer is concerned about the environment and is thinking conscientiously about what they buy — how it's made, under what conditions, and by whom. All you have to do is make good, green stuff and they'll buy it! We've reached the tipping point!
Continue reading "News Flash: 110% of Consumers Shop Green!" »
Continue reading ""Spamturitis" and Facebook's Signal to Noise Factor" »
At my old agency we used to sometimes talk about “the immunised
consumer”. The point we were trying to make was that the practice of ad
avoidance isn’t just to do with tools that people employ to block out
ads - be it the fast-forward button on a DVR, pop-up blocker, etc. Continue reading "Consumers treat advertising like trains" »
A new report by the UK National Union of Teachers - Growing up in a material world - shows that contemporary marketing and commercialization practices have devastating consequences on youth:Continue reading "what are marketing and advertising's social responsibilities wrt youth?" »
