Blog #10 - Group Project Reflection

Working on this Insight/Experience Audit and Prototype group project has allowed me to better understand how to gain and evaluate insights of a market segment. Before I did this project, I had never used photo journals or focus groups as methods of gaining insights. I had only done one-on-one interviews or surveys in the past to obtain and analyze general quantitative data. I had also never focused on researching how the market segment feels and behaves in one location in past projects and research papers. My group compiled the results from the photo journals into a table to find consistencies and outliers in our market segment, 14-15 year-old girls. We only gave the girls a small amount of guidance for the photo journal so this method gave the girls a chance to interpret our questions in their own way. We divided up the responses we received by question asked (favorite item, least used item, most used item, take out item, wishful item) to make it easier for us to analyze the data. This project gave me the experience of actually going through the process of comparing the answers each of our respondents in our market segment gave us. We also checked to see if their responses were consistent with the predictions we had made earlier in the project. Half of the girls took a picture of their TV as their favorite item. This was not surprising to us because we predicted that would probably happen. Surprisingly, all but two of the girls who participated said that their fireplace was their least used item in the family room. We did not expect that response. The most used item that the participants took a photo of matched our predictions of something that gives them comfort and relaxation. The majority of them chose to photograph something that you could sit on. We were able to find a trend in the take out item category even though most of their responses were very different from one another. Most of the items photographed as take out items were either very old, belonged to someone else, or do not belong in the family room. The focus group allowed us to observe the girls in a different environment where they were able to brainstorm ideas and bounce ideas off of one another. We were able to discover that these girls enjoy electronics, would like less parental control and more freedom, and they like to talk a lot.

As a result of working on this Insight/Experience Audit and Prototype group project, I have gained a better understanding of how to create a prototype that addresses the needs of our chosen market segment. In past group projects, I never had the opportunity to actually contribute to developing a product or service that meets several needs of a market segment. This experience was very beneficial for me personally. As a business student, every research paper and project are so structured that they limit my creativity. I like the fact that this group project challenged me to tap into my creative side. In order for us to fine tune our prototype, Blabber, for our market segment, we tried to make benefits of Blabber that were relevant to the insights we gained from our gaining insights and evaluating insights phases of the project. I learned how to make these important connections. For example, we found that 14-15 year-old girls like to have a sense of belonging to a group. Thus, we created the group chat feature on Blabber in order to allow our market segment to share their thoughts with all of their friends at once.

After hearing the instructions at the beginning of the semester, I was very intrigued by the uniqueness of the Insight/Experience Audit and Prototype group project. I was curious to see who I would be matched up with for my semester-long project. I met my teammates and everyone was very friendly. My teammates were great. The diversity of my group contributed to my learning and my enjoyment of the course material. I love working with people who are different than me, and my team consisted of several different cultures. Everyone in my group had a unique personality and background. This benefited my group because we all were able to contribute our different perspectives and ideas to our project. The professor gave my group a great set of guidelines to go by that had the right amount of structure. We knew what we were doing but still had enough flexibility to be creative. Also, the professor was open to answering any questions that we had along the way, and this helped clarify what we were trying to understand. This project was not only beneficial for me to grow as a future marketer but it also was a whole lot of fun. By far, this project was one of the most interesting ones I have ever had the opportunity to be a part of.

Blog #9 - Response to Seth's Blog

Seth Godin made numerous valid points in his blog titled “Poisoning the well” that he wrote on April 3rd of this year. He gave some examples of situations in which “selfish short-sighted marketers” irritate people. I am tired of receiving 20 junk e-mails each day and I believe that whoever is reading this has also had similar irritating experiences. Seth makes the argument that “marketers have spammed, lied, deceived, cluttered, and ripped us off for so long, we’re sick of it.” I completely agree with his argument. He also touches on the fact that the public has become so upset with the bombardment of advertisements surrounding each of us each day that we have become very skeptical of advertisements and marketers’ intentions. I know that I do my best to ignore the majority of advertisements that I actually see, and I am almost certain that I have become immune to many forms of advertisements.

According to Seth, “selfish short-sighted marketers ruined it for all of us. The only way out, I think, is for a few marketers to so overwhelm the market with long-term, generous marketing that we have no choice but to start paying attention again.” I concur. Marketers need to get away from making sorry attempts at quickly driving up sales. If their advertisements irritate customers, then it is very likely that the consumers will ignore future advertising attempts from the respective firm. I have learned from my Customer Insights class that it is absolutely critical for marketers to do their due diligence and gain insights about their specific target market first. If they did this, I believe that they would realize that making a positive impact on potential consumers is the key to eventually developing a long-term relationship with them.

There is a wealth of evidence from several current forms of advertisements that supports the thought that marketers must have discovered this issue when analyzing the negative results of certain sneaky advertising tactics. Many marketers have recognized the problem at hand and are taking some proactive actions to try to restore the respect of the public. These actions are by no means typically reasonable. Many times marketers of companies are have having to pay a huge amount of money in order to successfully reach their target market.

Super Bowl advertisements really exemplify this fact. The Super Bowl is one of the most watched events and is a prime opportunity for companies to reach their target market when the majority of their target market is expecting it. This is an example of a time when people are completely open to hearing out advertisements. There are many people who are watching the Super Bowl specifically to watch the advertisements for some form of entertainment. Unfortunately this year, NBC actually had to fill advertising spots with their own commercials for one of the first times in history due to the poor economy and high cost of each advertisement spot.

Another expensive, yet fairly effective form of advertising that is respectful of the public is product placement. When products are incorporated into a movie or TV show, people are not very likely to be offended. I actually prefer receiving the message this way because I get to see my favorite characters using products that I may potentially like without feeling like I am being deceived. It is very important for marketers to realize that product placement must not be overwhelming or used too often.

As we can clearly see from these two examples, marketers are definitely making attempts at being accepted again by the general public. Now the question is: how long it will take for us to “start paying attention again” ?

Seth Godin's Blog: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/04/poisoning-the-well.html

Blog #8 - Extended Outline – RFID at Wal-Mart

Concerns: Due to many other projects that were due at around the same time and celebrating Easter in San Antonio, I was unable to make this outline as detailed or as “extensive” as the example you posted.

I. Introduction

a. Thesis – Because of the controversial and novel nature of RFID implementation, Wal-Mart should strive to instill confidence in the public by educating the public about how they can greatly benefit from the new emerging technology and about the safeguards Wal-Mart has put in place to protect the privacy of its customers.

i. Wal-Mart’s Past and Current RFID Situation
ii. Wal-Mart’s Interest in RFID
iii. RFID Limitations
iv. My Recommendations

II. Body

a. Wal-Mart’s Past and Current RFID Situation

b. Wal-Mart’s Interest in RFID - Several Potential Benefits

i. Large reduction of out-of-stocks/decrease shortage

1. Enhance consumer’s shopping experience by improving on-shelf availability.
Increase consumer loyalty and satisfaction.

ii. Decrease shrinkage in the supply chain

1. Greatly reduce costs

iii. Higher labor productivity

iv. Better data quality

c. RFID Limitations

i. High Cost per tag

ii. Large Size/form

iii. Privacy

d. My Recommendations

i. Importance of Ethical & Privacy Considerations

1. Placement of Safeguards - Ensure that the customer’s privacy is secure and reduces the anxiety of its customers

ii. Communication of Benefits to its customers

1. Enhance consumer’s shopping experience by improving on-shelf availability.
Increase consumer satisfaction.

2. After RFID systems are more widely adopted by other retailers, Wal-Mart’s cost savings will be passed on to its customers in the form of even lower prices.

III. Conclusion

a. Thesis – Because of the controversial and novel nature of RFID implementation, Wal-Mart should strive to instill confidence in the public by educating the public about how they can greatly benefit from the new emerging technology and about the safeguards Wal-Mart has put in place to protect the privacy of its customers.

b. What I Have Learned From This Study

i. It’s important for Wal-Mart to do its due diligence because its image and reputation depends on it. Wal-Mart’s successful implementation of RFID systems is critical in order for the public to accept the new technology and for other large retail chains to be able to use RFID tags. The large increase in demand of RFID tags will drive down the price of each RFID tag and will lower RFID-related costs for all RFID-enabled retailers.

c. Application to customer insights – how understanding the needs of customers means being able to provide a better customer experience.

Blog 7 - Facebook

Facebook’s selling of private information from its users’ profiles to advertisers is a very controversial subject. This exaggerated even more when Facebook’s advertisers use this personal information as “consumer insights” and customize advertisements directed toward each individual Facebook user. The way in which Facebook’s advertisers collect users’ personal information has several privacy implications.
Without having to read any articles about this issue, I have been able to identify this issue as a regular Facebook user. I am not naive and neither are my friends. I assume the majority of Facebook’s users are similar to my friends and me. We all noticed the change on the website because it was so very obvious. Facebook never disclosed what it was doing with users’ profiles and personal information.
I understand that I use the Facebook website absolutely for free and I am grateful for the many benefits it provides to me. Some of these benefits include being able to chat with other users, send mail to other users, view other users profiles and their pictures (who have given me permission to view them I might add), create my own personalized website, post pictures and comments, post status updates, and view status updates. I also am able to use cool applications such as events, movies, top friends, etc.
However, I feel that Facebook should have sent out an e-mail to its many loyal users in order to explain what it was doing with our personal information. It also would have been nice if they had put in plain words why they legally were able to do this.
Facebook’s advertisers never requested access to my personal information from me or any other users that I know of. We can assume that each advertiser simply paid Facebook a very large amount of money to have exclusive access to observe and collect personal information from users’ profiles. As a loyal Facebook user, I feel betrayed by Facebook because I feel as though my personal information just went to the highest bidder.
From a profit standpoint, it is understandable why Facebook sold its users’ personal information to advertisers willing to pay a substantial amount of money. Yet, I do not feel this gives Facebook the right to do this in such a sneaker manner. As a very large networking website, Facebook should treat its loyal customer base with courtesy and respect. It all goes back to ethics. Facebook just got greedy and doesn’t seem to have any ethics plain and simple.
What really frustrated me and my friends who use Facebook regularly was when we noticed that the advertisements went from being generic to being personalized to what we each said in our profile that we liked and enjoyed doing. That is when we realized that Facebook was not only secretly selling our personal information and access to our profiles without our consent but was also allowing these advertisers to direct their advertisements to us directly on Facebook.
I don’t believe any of the advertisers are to blame for this situation even though they definitely contributed to it. Social networking websites have a wealth of information on it that are considered the “holy grail” of customer insights to marketers.
I am blaming Facebook for neglecting its users and not having business ethics. We were never given explicit knowledge of what Facebook was doing with our information, we never explicitly consented to Facebook allowing marketers and advertisers access to our personal information. I would have more positive feelings about Facebook if I had been given a notice about what was going on behind the scenes and had given the option to opt out. Unfortunately for Facebook, neither of these two things was done and now Facebook has many of its 175 million active users angry at it.

Blog 6 - The Persuaders

In the Persuaders video, the three-stage technique used by Dr. Rapaille sounds like a very unique and interesting way to leverage focus groups. He takes his subjects on a psychic expedition past intellect, through emotions, into the primal core where the doctor strongly believes all purchasing decisions are made. He politely asks his subjects to not hold anything back and tell him exactly what is coming to their minds.

The first stage is purely intellectual. Dr. Rapaille asks the study’s subjects a question in order to give them a chance to show how logical or intelligent they are. In the video, he is trying to research and understand the topic of luxury. He asks his subjects, “When people try to sell you luxury things, what kind of words do they use?” The doctor does not care how the subjects respond to this question. He then gives his subjects some time for a break.

The second stage is all about the subjects delving into their own emotions. Dr. Rapaille says, “you are going to tell me a little story like I was a five year-old from another planet.” The doctor’s goal is for his subjects to go from being logical or intelligent in their thinking to being purely emotional. He wants his subject to not understand what they are doing anymore. He wants his subjects to be slightly confused and think that he is crazy. Dr. Rapaille gives his subjects another break.

When the subjects come back to the focus group room, there are no more chairs. The doctor wants his subjects to be wondering where the chairs went. He then asks his subjects “to go back to the very first time that they experienced what we are trying to understand.” The doctor is actively searching for the subjects’ primal urges. He is looking for what he calls the “reptilian hot buttons” that compel us to action. His theory is that the reptilian always wins. He does not care what his subjects tell him intellectually. Dr. Rapaille even turns off the lights in the room so that his subjects are in the mindset a little bit like the one when they wake up each morning. According to Dr. Rapaille, “things come back to your mind that you had forgotten for twenty to thirty years.”

The doctor and his team somehow decipher the chicken scratch of his subjects in order to unlock the code of the topic he is researching. The chicken scratch is made up of half-remembered words and pictures associated with the topic he is researching. Dr. Rapaille believes that the code he discovers from his three-stage process enables him to understand the real needs of consumers. For example, “the code for SUVs is domination so Rapaille told car makers to tint the windows and beef up the size of their SUVs.” The doctor also recognized that a French company that was attempting to sell cheese to Americans was off code. He told them that cheese is dead in America and is put in the refrigerator. Dr. Rapaille suggested to the company’s marketers to market their cheese in America as something that is safe, is wrapped in plastic, and can be refrigerated.

Song’s goal of forging a real connection with women was a great idea because women are in a large group of consumers that were being ignored by other airlines. The benefits of offering low fares, organic food, and more entertainment options fit well with the target market Song was going after. Song was trying to create an emotional and optimistic experience for its consumers. Hiring the brand visionary, Andy Spade, as a consultant for Song sounded like a positive idea at the beginning. His decision to keep the initial advertising focused primarily on emotions by not including any airplanes or passengers was very risky and could later on turn out to be a big mistake. He was very focused on showing the audience what made Song different than other low-cost airlines, its unique style and spirit.

When a product is brand new and is unfamiliar to your target market, the best thing you can do is to show its points of parity or similarity to its competitive frame. That way, your audience knows what your product is. According to the video, only fifteen percent of their sample truly recognized Song. This means that a very small percentage saw the advertising and knew it was Song. Also, many consumers didn’t know what the advertising was for. Andy Spade tried to skip a crucial step in building brand equity and jump right into becoming part of culture. Song would have probably seen much better results if they would have waited until Song was well-established in the minds of consumers as a low-cost airline before bringing in Andy Spade as an advertising consultant.

Blog 5 - Customer Insights

Lesson 1) “We can learn a lot more about what people think by observing their body language or facial expressions or looking at their bookshelves and the pictures on their walls than by asking them directly.” This is not shocking to me personally because I have heard that 55 percent of communication comes from body language and facial expressions. “While people are very willing and very good at volunteering information explaining their actions, those explanations, particularly when it comes to the kinds of spontaneous opinions and decisions that arise out of the unconscious, aren’t necessarily correct.”

According to the Kenna’s Dilemma chapter in Blink, our reactions are shallow “when we are outside our areas of passion and experience. They are hard to explain and easily disrupted. They aren’t grounded in real understanding.” Most people are experts in one or two fields. There are not many people out there in the general public who are experts in all fields. That’s why this lesson is so important for marketers. If you are not an expert in a given field, then it is very difficult for you to articulate a correct response and thin-slice an experience or product reliably. Marketers need to focus on observing behaviors rather than gathering unreliable information from direct questioning of the general public.

For example, a brand manager from Dr Pepper recently came to my Brand Management class this semester. She and her colleagues performed many taste tests in order to better understand why there are so many light drinkers of Dr Pepper versus heavy drinkers. Instead of only asking the taste testers how the Dr Pepper tastes, they also observed how quickly the taste tester consumed the Dr Pepper. Through many tests, they found that the taste testers who really enjoyed the Dr Pepper drank it more slowly than the taste testers who drank it in a quicker amount of time. The marketers at Dr Pepper were able to obtain valuable and reliable market research through this process. They were also able to apply this to a marketing strategy that they have employed via TV commercials that emphasize “Drink it slow. Dr’s Orders”.

Lesson 2) The recognition of sensation transference is vital for marketers to be successful when conducting marketing research. “When people give an assessment of something they might buy in a supermarket or a department store, without realizing it, they transfer sensations or impressions that they have about the packaging of the product to the product itself. Most of us don’t make a distinction – on an unconscious level – between the package and the product. The product is the package and the product combined.” Gladwell gives a great example of this when he talks about how E&J inexpensive brandy was starting to steal market share from Christian Brothers leading inexpensive brandy. The packaging of the E&J brandy was more appealing and fancier than the plain packaging of the Christian Brothers brandy. They discovered that “the problem (was) not the product and (was) not the branding. It (was) the package.” The company should service all dimensions of the customer experience. Companies should test their products with the packaging included so that the marketers can formulate realistic and reliable conclusions from the results.

The majority of the time, I only buy national brand cereals even though they are more expensive than the private label cereals. This is very odd for me because I normally shop almost exclusively on price and don’t mind buying private label products (I think most are about the same quality). The difference is that the packaging is usually so different between the two. My perceived value of the national brand cereals is much higher than my perceived value of the private label cereals (especially the ones not packaged in cardboard boxes). Many private label cereals package the cereal in plastic bags without cardboard boxes whereas all of the national brand cereals have only appealing cardboard boxes that are visible. I believe private label cereal marketers of the cereals with no cardboard box would make a strong impact on sales if they were to recognize this and change the packaging. If they were to run some various methods for gaining insights afterwards, the marketers would most likely discover that the extra cost of designing and adding a cardboard box is worth it in the long-run. They would probably also see an increase in consumer’s perceived value of their cereals and willingness to pay for their cereals.