Research on The Findings Report

When Consumers Delegate

Sun, 11 Feb 2018 16:53:00 -0800

When we lived in the same city, my best friend Hap and I made a habit of having breakfast together every Friday. The venue was usually the same, but as we both considered breakfast the most important and underrated meal of the day, we enjoyed trying new restaurants as often as we could. It is in this context that I recall a pet peeve, and also a hook to some new research on consumer behavior.

How Curiosity Closes Sales

Sun, 28 Jan 2018 16:07:00 -0800

We’ve all heard the proverb, “curiosity killed the cat.” Perhaps less well known is the proverb’s conclusion: but satisfaction brought it back. A new study in the Journal of Consumer Research addresses both angles.

The study’s odd title, “I Want to Know the Answer! Give Me Fish ’n’ Chips!” is an allusion to one of its main experiments, in which respondents were given the option of a healthy salad or a plate of beer-battered fish and chips after being taunted by a riddle. The respondents who were provided with the riddle’s answer chose equally between the two options, but those left hanging opted for fish ’n’ chips by a significantly large measure.

Cash or Service?

Sun, 03 Dec 2017 00:00:00 -0800

We are in the midst of a charity boom. Americans gave more than $390 billion to worthy causes in 2016, a 4.2% increase from 2015, according to Giving USA. That sum sets a new record, and puts American giving at about 2% of total GDP. Religions enjoyed the largest share of American charity, followed by education and human services.

What’s striking about this trend is that the growth was led primarily by individual giving. Individuals gave $281 billion, or about 72% of all charitable investment. That people opened their wallets so generously in 2016, a year that was full of political and global uncertainty, says a lot.

When Brands Betray Us

Sun, 15 Oct 2017 11:11:00 -0700

Harvey Weinstein dominated the news this week. The revelations of his abusive, predatory behavior set off a firestorm that drove a who’s who list of celebrities and politicians to speak out against him and create distance. Meanwhile, women all over the country shared harrowing stories of their own experiences with men who assume that their advances are always welcome, and that the quid pro quo of access for sex is equitable and part of doing business.

Where Has the Time Gone?

Sun, 01 Oct 2017 08:58:00 -0700

Cocooning is a word that entered popular lexicon in 1981, coined by trend guru Faith Popcorn. While a novel concept at the time, four decades later it is a fact of life. Nowhere is this fact more apparent than in the leisure habits of Americans.

Executives in the media industry often talk about digital cocooning and shifts in viewing patterns, but a lot of that talk is anecdotal and relayed through hunches and personal observations. A good source of hard data can be found in the American Time Use Survey that is published each year by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. ATUS is a comprehensive breakdown of the ways in which Americans spend their time, with adjustments for weekdays, weekends and holidays. The data is used by economists, policy makers, social scientists and many others to understand everything from how much time we spend working at home to how much time we spend sleeping. One fascinating and often overlooked dimension of the study is the ways in which we spend our leisure time.

Focused and Fit

Sun, 24 Sep 2017 07:52:00 -0700

Is the glass half full or half empty?

You’ve undoubtedly heard or used this expression many times. It is usually used to declare whether you are an optimist or a pessimist. While this metaphor has become trite, it is an important dimension of consumer behavior. Academics refer to it as regulatory focus, and understanding it can have a big impact on your sales and marketing strategies.

I’ll illustrate with an example. I have been working on a new client project that focuses on physical fitness. In a brainstorming session, a member of the team gave an impassioned argument about positioning this new brand around the buzz and excitement that people feel toward exercise. It was a pretty good case. But I had to ask the question: Does that mean you’re excluding the 50% of the market that exercises against their will? The 50% of the market that goes to the gym solely because they worry that if they don’t something bad will happen—like gaining weight, or getting heart disease, or feeling down because they didn’t do something that everyone tells them is essential?

The Thing To Fear

Sun, 13 Aug 2017 07:01:00 -0700

Throughout the 1970s and ‘80s, when I was growing up, life in the shadow of a potential nuclear war was a trope that occurred everywhere in culture. It was in music (The Clash’s “London Calling”), movies (War Games), and countless television mini-series (“The Day After,” which drew an audience of more than 100 million people when it aired on ABC in 1983). The threat of nuclear holocaust was a reality that lingered persistently in the background. We lived with it for so long that we developed coping mechanisms that allowed us to carry on. Like a case of arthritis, it always reminded us it was there, but the fear and anxiety it provoked didn’t keep us from daily life.

Do Brands Do Better by Going Green?

Sun, 11 Jun 2017 16:08:00 -0700

I am often asked by clients how much consumers really care about eco-friendly brands? Does going green create a real brand halo?

Environmental concerns are highly prevalent in media today, particularly in the context of climate change. In recent weeks, coverage of these concerns has dramatically increased as the Trump administration withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement. Many big brands responded immediately to the President’s action, stating their intent to follow-through with standards established by the Paris accord and to aggressively reduce their environmental footprint. So, one would guess that making such public stands has a brand benefit.

Give The Gift of Experience

Sat, 22 Apr 2017 17:55:00 -0700

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a piece calling for brands to create rituals. I think I have received more comments and positive feedback on that piece than any I’ve previously published. I would love to chalk it up to my uncanny sense of prose, but the truth is that marketers and consumers alike are starving for more meaningful interactions. Brands with a purely transactional mindset are crass to consumers (especially Millennials) while disloyal consumers are the bane of the modern marketer. The ritual dimension of consumption eases both pain points.

When Men Decide Together, Compromise Takes a Hike

Sat, 05 Nov 2016 20:39:00 +0000

I’d never heard of a line search. But the ranger looked very serious when he told me I was needed for one. I soon learned it was a necessary rescue technique to find two of my colleagues who were lost in the forrest.

We had been participating in a team-building exercise in Leadville, Colorado (elevation 10,152 feet). The “we” in this story was a cadre of corporate marketing executives gathered together to discuss “the future” and “synergies” and “team-based ROI.” The year was 1998 and I was still too junior to have much of an opinion on any of these topics, but I was thrilled to get an all-expense-paid trip to the Rockies for a fully-sanctioned summer boondoggle.

Brand Dependence

Thu, 23 Jan 2014 09:25:43 +0000

It’s been a very busy past few months, which is why there hasn’t been much activity here on this site. Much of my time has been focused on UTA Brand Studio’s new research platform which we developed with uSamp and call the Brand Dependence Index. It measures an oft-overlooked dimension of consumer brands known as Brand Attachment, pioneered by my friends and colleagues C.Whan Park and Deborah MacInnis at USC’s Marshall School of Business.