ESSENTIAL INSIGHTS INTO THE MIND OF THE MARKET

A NEW APPROACH TO UNDERSTANDING HOW—AND WHY—CUSTOMERS BUY

espite the resources spent on market D research, nearly 80 percent of new offerings fail. The pattern is predictable: Customers say they want something, companies create it, and once it’s available, customers don't buy it. Why? Is it because customers just don't know what they want? Gerald Zaltman sorts ‘ through this puzzle and concludes that, f at some level, customers do know, but marketing's most overused tools—surveys, f questionnaires, and focus groups—and conventional thinking don’t dig deeply Pd enough to help them discover and express it. |

In this mind-opening book, Zaltman argues that 95 percent of thinking happens in our unconscious. Therefore, unearthing your customers' desires requires you to understand the "mind of the market," that dynamic interplay between the consumers’ and the marketers’ thoughts that determines the outcome of every buying decision.

Building on research from disciplines as diverse as neurology, sociology, literary analysis, and cognitive science, Zaltman offers rich insights into what happens within the complex system | of mind, brain, body, and society as consumers contemplate.their needs and evaluate products.

Continued on back flap

Contents

Preface

Part | Preparing for an Expedition

One

Two

A Voyage from the Familiar

A Voyage to New Frontiers

Part Il’ Understanding the Mind of the Market

Three

Four

Five

Six.

Seven

Eight

Illuminating the Mind

Consumers’ Cognitive Unconscious

Interviewing the Mind/Brain Metaphor Elicitation Appendix: The Metaphor-Elicitation Process

Interviewing the Mind/Brain Response Latency and Neuroimaging

Come to Think of It

Reading the Mind of the Market

Using Consensus Maps

Memory's Fragile Power

27

ei

73

101

111

129

7 149

165

vi | Contents Nine Memory, Metaphor, and Stories —

Ten Stories and Brands

Part Ill Thinking Differently and Deeply | Eleven Crowbars for Creative Thinking Twelve Quality Questions Beget Quality Answers

Thirteen Launching a New Mind-Set

Notes Index

Acknowledgments About the Author

189

211

2257

263

285

291 311 319

823

Preface

Neither art nor science stands still in representing our visible and invisible worlds. Marheting, as both art

and science, can't stand still either.

H ETER DRUCKER, arguably the leading observer of manage- ment today, suggests that businesspeople stand on the threshold of the “knowledge society." In this society, a company’s com- petitive advantage will come from an historically underdeveloped asset: the ability to capture and apply insights from diverse fields, not just from business. Drucker notes that many CEOs of large U.S. firms who were “appointed in the past ten years were fired as failures within a year or two,” partly for not cultivating this asset.' Their failures ultimately resulted from woefully flawed paradigms for navigating an increasingly precarious environment—a situation not unlike that of the crew on the Titanic. Indeed, most marketing managers operate from a paradigm—a set of assumptions about how the world works—that prevents them from understanding and serving customers effectively.

Elliot Ettenberg, chief executive officer of Customer Strategies Worldwide LLC in New York City, summarized the current state of affairs in a recent article published in The Economist. In Ettenbergs words, "Everything else has been reinvented—distribution, new prod- uct development, the supply chain. But marketing is stuck in the past." The article argues that a far deeper and better understanding of con- sumers is “a much harder task than describing the virtues of a product. While consumers have.changed beyond recognition, marketing has

x | Preface

not? These changes in consumer behavior include increased skepti- cism about business (especially marketing), more assertiveness, greater sophistication, less loyalty to companies and individual brands, and major concerns about privacy and security. l

The world has changed, but our methods for understanding con- sumers have not. We keep relying on familiar but ineffective research techniques and consequently misread consumers’ actions and thoughts. The products and communications that we create based on those tech- niques simply aren't connecting with consumers.

In this "knowledge-explosion epoch,” then, the limitations of our current marketing paradigm loom ever larger. Despite the fact that many of the assumptions underlying this paradigm characterize West- ern thinking in particular, they undermine the quality of thinking that informs marketing everywhere in the world. How so? Because businesses based in non-Western cultures have adopted Western ways,

and Western firms have exported their biases to their non-Western operations.

The Challenge of Change

So why don't we just change our paradigm? Because it takes courage and patience to alter deeply entrenched existing paradigms. As history has shown, people who can’t envision a different worldview often fight. to maintain the current one. The Catholic Church, for example, couldn't accommodate a heliocentric view of the universe, prompting Galileo to renounce the earth’s revolving around the sun. When someone chal- lenges our current thinking, we human beings tend to resist.* Our resist- ance increases when the challenge forces us to reconsider not just what we think (that is, the content of an idea) but also how we think (the process). For example, learning that customers do not think in words forces us not only to embrace an unfamiliar idea about the thought process but also to think differently about communicating with cus- tomers. Vincent P. Barabba of General Motors notes, “Managers: will throw a lot of money at a problem before they'll ever consider having to ud the way they think about it." Overturning a paradigm requires changing many formal and informal assumptions, expectations, and

Preface | xi

decision-making rules that govern our thoughts and actions.” Unfortu- nately, the phrase paradigm shift has become so clichéd that when people utter it, they generally mean a new fad rather than a fundamental shift in thinking patterns.

Another problem is premature dismissal. Too often, managers dis- card sound ideas without giving them a fair hearing. This intolerance often has roots in an unhealthy if hidden disdain for learning. In an address to an international group of agribusiness leaders at the Harvard Business School, Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, vice chairman and CEO of Nestlé—a company that actively seeks to understand brain functioning and emphasizes. organizational learning—observed that marketers “treat personal common sense as superior to science-based knowledge and to what the humanities have to tell us." Another CEO of a leading global consumer products firm goes even further: “If [marketers] read popular business magazines, they feel on top of things. They disdain anything else. People with these attitudes would not last in any other profession." This appraisal may seem harsh, but all of us can name dis- dainful colleagues.

That said, resisting new ideas is actually healthy as long as we dont do so simply because they fall outside our cognitive or emotional com- fort zone. We must suspend our judgment about an unfamiliar idea when we first encounter it and ask ourselves, “Would we value this idea if it were true?” If we answer yes, then we should critically examine the merits of the idea. The endnotes throughout this book should help readers do just that. They provide both supportive and contrary sources about par- ticular ideas and findings, identify the diverse domains that are relevant, and forever change how we ask questions about customers, interpret the answers, and use that information. The endnotes are pathways into frontiers where different fields intersect.

The most troubling consequence of the existing paradigm has been the artificial disconnection of mind, body, brain, and society. Though systems theory is not new to managers, it hasn't dented their conceptu- alization of consumer or manager behavior and how they affect one another. Only by reconnecting the splintered pieces of their thinking . about consumers can companies truly grasp and meet consumers' needs more effectively—and thus survive in todays competitive and rapidly shifting business environment.

xi | Preface

Connections among Communities

As disciplines grow, they specialize and fragment, presenting two chal- lenges to marketers: The first challenge is to acknowledge that the dis- tinctions made between disciplines do not reflect how people actually live their lives. Thankfully, we human beings don't experience life the way companies or universities delineate it. The second challenge is that we must explore many disciplines, since the most promising knowledge frontiers typically exist at the boundaries between fields rather than at the fields’ respective centers.

In many ways, this book is about connections, including those among or between:

* disciplines ranging from neuroscience and linguistics to anthro- pology and evolutionary psychology

* new ideas and the new ways of thinking that they may require

* the unconscious and conscious mind

* managers’ and customers’ minds

* neurons and neural clusters in the brain

* mind, brain, body, and society

* the power of metaphor and its central role in thought

* the malleability of memory

* emotion and reason

* verbal and nonverbal expression

universally shared human perceptions and values

These connections reveal a consumer very different from the one many

managers imagine. To underscore the difference, the book develops sev- eral central themes:

* Most of the thoughts and feelings that influence consumers' and managers’ behavior occur in the unconscious mind.

Insightful analysis of consumer thought and behavior requires an understanding of how mental activity occurs.

Consumers do not live their lives in the silo-like ways by which universities and businesses organize themselves. zu

Preface | |. xiii

« The mind as we think of it doesn't exist in the absence of the brain, body, and society.

« The mind of the manager (including both its unconscious and conscious elements) and the mind of the consumer (and its unconscious and conscious elements) interact, forming the "mind of the market."

Our existing thought systems can accommodate change up to a point. But when enough new insights and changes in our thinking accu- mulate, the resulting strain demands a paradigm shift. Radically new assumptions, expectations, and decision rules emerge, like a butterfly morphing from a caterpillar. As in the gradual twisting of a kaleido- scope, a multitude of small modifications eventually yields a substan- tially different picture.

lu i

A Quick Tour through the Book

How Customers Think is organized into three parts. Part I, Preparing for an Expedition, begins with a frank look at the state of marketing today. Chapter 1, A Voyage from the Familiar, examines the difficulties many companies face in becoming customer-centric. We explore the fallacies about customer thinking that underlie these difficulties and that mar- keters must leave behind. Then we ready ourselves to imagine a whole new way of “thinking about thinking’—a new marketing paradigm.

In chapter 2, A Voyage to New Frontiers, we look more closely at the new marketing paradigm. We consider the advantages of the interdisciplinary approach and explore the new paradigms implica- tions. We encounter some startling realizations: For example, as much as 95 percent of consumers’ thinking occurs in their unconscious minds; much thinking surfaces through metaphors; consumers mem- ories are much more malleable than we thought; and marketers’ unconscious minds influence consumers’ thinking as much as their con- scious minds do.

The chapters in part Il, Understanding the Mind of the Market, detail the features of the new paradigm through examples of how com- panies today apply the paradigms principles, with remarkable results.

Xi | Preface

Connections among Communities

As disciplines grow, they specialize and fragment, presenting two chal- lenges to marketers. The first challenge is to acknowledge that the dis- tinctions made between disciplines do not reflect how people actually live their lives. Thankfully, we human beings don't experience life the way companies or universities delineate it. The second challenge is that we must explore many disciplines, since the most promising knowledge frontiers typically exist at the boundaries between fields rather than at the fields’ respective centers.

In many ways, this book is about connections, including those among or between: |

* disciplines ranging from neuroscience and linguistics to anthro- pology and evolutionary psychology

e new ideas and the new ways of thinking that they may require

* the unconscious and conscious mind

e managers’ and customers’ minds i

* neurons and neural clusters in the brain

e mind, brain, body, and society

e the power of metaphor and its central role in thought

* the malleability of memory

* emotion and reason

e verbal and nonverbal expression

e universally shared human perceptions and values

These connections reveal a consumer very different from the one many managers imagine. To underscore the difference, the book develops sev- eral central themes:

e Most of the thoughts and feelings that influence consumers and managers' behavior occur in the unconscious mind.

¢ Insightful analysis of consumer thought and behavior requires an understanding of how mental activity occurs.

© Consumers do not live their lives in the silo-like ways by which universities and businesses organize themselves.

Preface | xiii

* The mind as we think of it doesn't exist in the absence of the brain, body, and society.

* The mind of the manager (including both its unconscious and conscious elements) and the mind of the consumer (and its unconscious and conscious elements) interact, forming the “mind of the market.”

Our existing thought systems can accommodate change up to a point. But when enough new insights and changes in our thinking accu- mulate, the resulting strain demands a paradigm shift. Radically new assumptions, expectations, and decision rules emerge, like a butterfly morphing from a caterpillar. As in the gradual twisting of a kaleido- scope, a multitude of small modifications eventually yields a substan- tially different picture.

A Quick Tour through the Book

How Customers Think is organized into three parts. Part 1, Preparing for an Expedition, begins with a frank look at the state of marketing today. Chapter 1, A Voyage from the Familiar, examines the difficulties many companies face in becoming customer-centric. We explore the fallacies about customer thinking that underlie these difficulties and that mar- keters must leave behind. Then we ready ourselves to imagine a whole new way of “thinking about thinking"—a new marketing paradigm.

In chapter 2, A Voyage to New Frontiers, we look more closely at the new marketing paradigm. We consider the advantages of the interdisciplinary approach and explore the new paradigms implica- tions. We encounter some startling realizations: For example, as much as 95 percent of consumers' thinking occurs in their unconscious minds; much thinking surfaces through metaphors, consumers’ mem- ories are much more malleable than we thought; and marketers' unconscious minds influence consumers' thinking as much as their con- Scious minds do.

The chapters in part II, Understanding the Mind of the Market, detail the features of the new paradigm through examples of how com- panies today apply the paradigms principles, with remarkable results.

xv | Preface

Chapter 3, Illuminating the Mind: Consumers! Cognitive Unconscious, explains the unconscious mind and why marketers should study it. The unconscious mind (which the conscious mind allows us to consider) is one of the most important forces behind our decisions. It accounts for 95 percent or more of all cognition. |

Chapter 4, Interviewing the Mind/Brain: Metaphor Elicitation, dis- cusses how to match research questions with the appropriate research methods. The chapter spotlights metaphor. We discover how often metaphors crop up in human communication and how vital they are for understanding consumers deepest thoughts and feelings. Market researchers can use innovative interviewing techniques to help con- sumers express their thinking through metaphors. The insights gained through these processes often remain far beyond the reach of tradi- tional research methods. An appendix to this chapter provides more detailed guidance about eliciting deeply held consumer thoughts and feelings. |

Because we must answer many important questions by exploring the unconscious mind, chapter 5, Interviewing the Mind/Brain: Re- sponse Latency and Neuroimaging, describes two new techniques for tapping into the unconscious mind and interpreting our findings. Still in their infancy, response latency and neuroimaging techniques comple- ment metaphor elicitation techniques. The chapter also discusses sev- eral limitations of focus groups, which many managers still consider effective for interviewing the mind.

Chapter 6, Come to Think of It, explores the nature of thought and how conscious and unconscious cognitive processes work together. It . addresses the importance of identifying thoughts about a topic that oth- erwise different consumers share. We examine how thoughts bundle together—and why those associations matter to marketers. We also dis- cuss how consensus maps can capture the connections among con- sumers’ thoughts and help us identify opportunities for enhancing the effectiveness of our marketing efforts.

In chapter 7, Reading the Mind of the Market: Using Consensus Maps, we look at the malleability of the mental models that a market segment shares and how various marketing efforts can reshape them. Marketers can remap these models by introducing new concepts or by

Preface | X

reinforcing or even underplaying existing ones, while also introducing new associations among constructs or changing the strength of associa- tions among them. We also look at how different consensus maps or shared mental models interact with one another.

Chapter 8, Memorys Fragile Power, discusses how memory works and emphasizes the reconstructive nature of memory. That is, con- sumers' memories are always changing—often without their awareness. Each time they revisit a memory, they change it, sometimes a little bit and sometimes a lot. Marketers can affect this reconstructive process by influencing the kinds of consumption-experience memories that con- sumers create.

Chapter 9, Memory, Metaphor, and Stories, weaves together themes from preceding chapters. The chapter shows how memory, metaphor, and story connect. Memories are story-based; consumers reconstruct them each time and use them to re-present past experiences. But memo- ries are also metaphors; they "stand in" for other thoughts and expe- riences. The overlap of memory, metaphor, and storytelling strongly influences consumers' consumption experiences and behaviors. By pro- viding particular metaphors, marketers can guide customers in weaving their stories of past, current, and future experiences in the marketplace. Consümers, in turn, use their own metaphors to express thoughts and feelings about those experiences.

Chapter 10, Stories and Brands, shows how memory, metaphor, and storytelling contribute to brand building. It demonstrates how brands are represented by bundled constructs, or consensus maps that filter how consumers perceive, process, and respond to market- ing stimuli. A brand is itself a metaphor for this meaning. The chap- ter argues that consumers and marketers cocreate these meanings, these outcroppings of the mind of the market.

In part III, Thinking Differently and Deeply, we expand the pic- ture beyond customers’ and consumers’ thinking. Chapter 11, Crow- bars for Creative Thinking, shows managers ten ways to “break out of the box” when thinking about consumers and marketing—and how they can help their colleagues to do the same. This chapter doesn't rec- ommend wholesale changes in thinking, but rather using temporary alternatives when customary habits of mind fall short. Drawn from

xvi | Preface

various disciplines, the principles here can help marketers to manage consumer relationships more effectively. ~~

Chapter 12, Quality Questions Beget Quality Answers, defe a theme common to several of the “crowbars” in chapter 11. The theme suggests that new ways of thinking start with better ways of asking questions. The chapter provides eight guidelines for developing the core research question to address, independently of the method used to in- vestigate it. Every answer to an effective question contains the seed of _another important question. The questions that marketers pose to con- sumers and the way they present them greatly affect the quality of infor- mation gathered.

Chapter 13, Launching a New Mind- set, is a caution against slipping into “business as usual” attitudes and practices. The sinking of the Titanic resulted from a failure to question two and a half decades of practice. These practices, in turn, encouraged the crew to disregard available information indicating that they should change course. The iceberg and certain design flaws in the Titanic simply enabled flawed thinking to wreak its toll. Similar patterns of thinking prevail today among managers, and a similar fate awaits them if they fail to rethink what they know about marketing. The ideas in How Cus- tomers Thinh are a starting point for better representing the mind of the market. Marketing managers, like any artists or scientists, should | not hesitate to challenge those who insist on being frozen in an old paradigm.

Sources of Insight

The ideas in this book derive from current research by leaders from. multiple disciplines. Despite its seemingly unrelated origins, this . knowledge is vital for understanding and managing consumer relation- ships. While the book draws heavily on insights from many fields beyond marketing, I selected these insights based on their relevance to marketing practice. Four sources have especially influenced the selec- tion of knowledge for inclusion in this book.

One source is the Mind of the Market Laboratory at the Harvard Business School, including members of its corporate Advisory Council.

Preface | wil

The Mind of the Market Lab, which I codirect with Stephen M. Kosslyn, a world leader in cognitive neuroscience, provided a testing ground for many of these ideas. The Mind of the Market Lab is itself an unofficial offspring of Harvard University’s Mind/Brain/Behavior Initiative (MBB). MBB is an interdisciplinary group of internationally known scholars that meets regularly to explore problems such as addiction, the meaning of (irrationality, placebo effects, memory distortion, learning and brain plasticity, and the impact of society on brain development. In the course of several years of involvement in MBB and the Mind of the Market Lab, I have benefited from interactions with some of the world's most gifted scholars and executives.

In the same spirit, I have benefited greatly from my interaction with graduate students in the Customer Behavior Laboratory, a course I teach at the Harvard Business School, most recently with Professor Luc Wathieu. In addition to sharing their early work experience and re- sponses to new ideas, many of these students remain in touch, relating their experiences as they apply ideas in this book in their work. They have provided many examples of successful implementation of these insights. They have also shared examples of the problems that can arise when managers ignore these ideas.

A third source involves the many practitioner and academic review- ers of various drafts of this manuscript (acknowledged individually else- where). Their collective expertise spans all of the ideas presented here. These individuals offered invaluable insight into which ideas to include and which examples would best illustrate them.

A fourth source of ideas and examples comes from Olson Zaltman Associates, led by Dr. Jerry C. Olson, a world leader in consumer psy- chology. He and my immediate OZA colleagues and their clients have provided me with the opportunity to apply and further develop impor- tant ideas in a wide variety of marketing settings. The partnerships OZA has created with forward-thinking practitioners inform many of the insights shared in this book.

Finally, in these chapters you'll encounter certain terms borrowed from a wide range of disciplines, and so some of their meanings may dif- fer from common usage. The following glossary groups these terms in a way that tells a story about consumer thinking and previews the ideas in this book."

xviii | Preface

Glossary of Key Terms

Thinking: The use of mental processes, activities of the brain involved in storing, recalling, or using information, or in gener- . ating specific feelings and emotions. Also called cognition and mental processes. For example, when a woman who was par- ticipating in a General Mills study about nutrition noticed a new breakfast food on her friend’s countertop, she recalled and compared her children’s reactions to other breakfast foods against her assessment of the new food and its manufacturer (“They usually lead the pack”).

Thought: The outcome of thinking, conventionally called beliefs,

. attitudes, and evaluations. For example, the above thinking pro- duced the thought in the woman's mind, “TIl try that product," which she expressed by saying aloud, “I'll give that a shot." Sometimes we confuse “thinking out loud” with the actual process of thinking and with the thoughts that we express "out loud.” Although we may be aware of a memory or a new idea having popped into mind, we are likely oblivious to the inter- nal processes that yielded it. Thus, any “thinking out loud” occurs after the fact and is almost certainly incomplete.

Conscious thought: Thoughts that we can articulate because we are fully aware of our own existence, sensations, and cognition. Also called the cognitive conscious mind. For example, the womans decision to try the product was a conscious thought that she shared with her friend. It emerged from many thoughts, some of them conscious but most of them unconscious, such as her favorable view of the company, her need to find more appealing food for her children, and her willingness to take a risk.

Unconscious thought: Thinking outcomes of which we are unaware or vaguely aware and struggle to articulate; mental activity out- side cotiscious awareness. Also called the cognitive uncon- scious mind. Obviously, using our conscious mind for actions like tying our shoelaces or chewing food would simply take too

Preface |

long; thus our unconscious mind has helped us survive and evolve as a species.

xix

Concept: An unambiguous, sometimes abstract, internal represen- tation that defines a meaningful grouping or categorization of

living and nonliving objects, events such as experiences, and

thoughts. We have concepts for “new product,” “family,” “chil-

dren’s food preferences,” “manufacturer of nutritious food,” “nutrition,” “tree,” “dog,” and so on. Concepts help us inter-

pret new information and experiences and decide how to act

on them.

Construct: The label or name tag a manager or researcher gives to a conscious or unconscious consumer thought that the manager

or researcher has identified. Marketers can use constructs to

understand consumers’ thinking and to communicate among themselves and with consumers about products. For example,

the General Mills research and management team found that

many consumers express different versions of the thought, “They are junk-food magnets,” when describing their chil- dren's nutritional behaviors. This thought bundles together three concepts: children, junk food, and attraction. The Gen-

eral Mills managers and researchers gave this thought bundle a name—‘“negative nutrition"—a construct that they defined in a specific way and illustrated with several quotations and sen-

sory metaphors from consumers. The team later discovered that this construct called many other constructs to mind for consumers. |

Neurons: Brain cells active during thinking. (Neurons do other

things as well.) Neurons receive signals from other neurons or from sensory organs, process these signals, and often pass them

along to other neurons, muscles, or bodily organs. Thoughts

and emotions arise from the activation and interconnection of

these brain cells.

Neural cluster: A group of neurons that are activated and stimulate each other when we think. They hold hands, so to speak. Also

called a neuronal cluster. These neural clusters produce thoughts, labeled by constructs.

X | Preface

Neural pathway: The route followed when one neuron or group of: neurons affects others; the connections among clusters. Every thought has an associated neural cluster, just as every residence has an address or every community has specific geographical coordinates. For example, the womans thought about her kids, “They are junk-food magnets," stems from the activation of a particular cluster of neurons. Since different neural clusters stimulate one another using neural pathways, the woman's different thoughts may involve many different clusters.

Brain: The organ that houses neurons used in thinking. (Brains also house many other functions.)

Cerebral cortex: The brain's convoluted or wrinkled surface, where many of our mental processes occur.

Mind: The product of conscious and unconscious thinking in the brain, produced by interactions among groups of neurons and involving thoughts and feelings.

Mental model: A set of associated thoughts formed when neural clusters influence each other; used to process information from and respond to an abstract event. A mental model is like a road map that identifies different communities and their connecting routes. Consumers use this map whenever they encounter something new or contemplate a decision. For example, a study of mothers in Italy on the topic of childrens nutrition detected connections in their thinking among the following thoughts: being a teacher, how other mothers view them, rewarding children, pride, their own childhood memories about eating, and self-esteem. These associations sometimes took on positive qualities and other times, negative ones.

Consensus map: A mental model that different people use in similar ways or that a group of people share. A consensus map repre- sents the convergence of consumer thinking on a common mental model. For example, in the above study of Italian moth- ers, individual study participants expressed more than twenty of the same thoughts, resulting in more than twenty constructs. Moreover, for most of the participants, each construct con- nected to at least one of the other constructs in exactly the same way. Since individual consumers have such remarkably

Preface | xi

similar mental models, businesses can segment markets according to consensus maps.

Human universals: The categories of thought and action found in every culture, regardless of how diverse, such as justice and punishment, protecting the young, and caring for the ill. Uni- versals include several core metaphors such as journey, bal- ance, and transformation as well as fundamental archetypes. Consensus maps reflect these universals for a given group or segment, no matter how broad or narrow the groups defini- tion. In fact, the more deeply we understand consumers who share a common problem, the more we notice similarities among those consumers. Furthermore, these shared common denominators remain stable over time, making them a much sounder basis for marketing strategy than surface-level differ- ences.

Metaphor: The representation of one thought in terms of another. This book uses the term broadly to include analogy, simile, and many other nonliteral devices to convey information. For example, the womans children arent literally “junk-food mag- nets.” The woman was simply using the idea of a magnet to convey certain qualities about her children’s attraction to junk food. Metaphors are vehicles for transporting unconscious thoughts to conscious awareness when marketers probe for the thinking behind them. When the interviewer in this study asked the woman to say more about the expression “a cat with nine lives” (stimulated by a picture of the family cat that the woman brought to the interview), she responded with com- ments that suggested qualities of resilience, focus, determina- tion, patience, parental obligation, the teacher role, and nurtur- ing. All of these constructs linked to the construct “family nutrition.” Other consumers used different metaphors to express these same ideas.

Figurative language: The use of metaphor to convey thoughts and help interpret customers’ deepest shared thoughts and feelings.

Literal language: The use of the exact meaning of words or other images to convey thoughts. Such language can take various forms; for example, an oral statement that the consumer first

xui | Preface |

experienced the new product at a friends home, or a written | statement in a survey about the probability of the consumers children liking the product.. Managers not only identify but — also interpret consumers' deepest, shared thoughts and feelings by eliciting such spoken or written comments from consumers and then taking those comments at face value.

HOW CUSTOMERS THINK

Part |

Preparing for an Expedition

Chapter One

A Voyage from the Familiar

Management is our universe, the consumer its center,

and imagination its boundary.

A FTER YEARS OF RESEARCH and development, a consumer-

A goods company launches a new soft drink—only to see it dry up in the marketplace. Focus group participants salivate over a new personal digital assistant (PDA) and express their intention to buy—but don't when the PDA goes on sale two months later. We ask customers what they want, we give it to them, and then we watch them snap up our competitors goodies instead. Why? Why do approximately 80 per- cent of all new products or services fail within six months or fall signifi- cantly short of forecasted profits?! As the half-lives of existing goods and services shrink, firms need new products to grow revenues.’ The cost of mistakes is high—lost revenues, low customer satisfaction, low employee morale.

Believe it or not, the reasons for failure boil down to a common, deceptively simple truth: Too many marketers don't understand how their own and their consumers’ minds interact. Consider figure 1-1. What do you see?

4 | Preparing for an Expedition

FIGURE 1 - 1

What Do You See?

From Mind Sights by Roger N. Shepard, © 1990 by W. H. Freeman. Reprinted by permission of Henry Holt and Company, LLC.

At first, you'll likely see one of two creatures, a rabbit or a duck. Now show this picture to a few friends or colleagues. Which did they see first? This exercise demonstrates a very important point: Two peo- ple can look at the very same data and have two totally different inter- pretations.> It happens all too often in market research, frustrating managers and consumers alike. Managers say, "We showed you a rab- bit, you swore that you'd buy it if we made its feet bigger, and so we did—but now you're not buying it, and so we're not listening to you anymore." Consumers retort, "No, you showed us a duck and we told you that we wanted bigger feet on it. Now you're offering us a rabbit with four huge paws. You don’t listen, and so we're not talking to you anymore." Both parties cite the same data to prove their respective points. This often causes managers to ignore customers because they believe that customers don't know what they want, let alone what is technically possible. However, from a cognitive standpoint, no one can even respond to a radically new or unheard of product or service idea | without some frame of reference, as ill-suited or ill-developed as it

A Voyage from the Familiar | 5

might be. Understanding existing frames of reference is essential if they are to be brought into alignment with the possibilities created by new technologies.

The Need for an Interdisciplinary Approach

George S. Day, the Geoffrey T. Boisi Professor of Marketing and director of the Mack Center for the Management of Technological Innovation at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, notes that over the next few years, every industry will change dramatically because of technology. To exploit new opportunities, managers must know signifi- cantly more than they currently do about how customers think and act.* That is, the conscious and, especially, unconscious dynamics of cus- tomer thinking must be understood, since these dynamics determine the ultimate commercial success of the technology more than product design or delivery systems.

Theres much to learn. Leading neuroscience scholar Antonio Damasio, the M. W. Van Allen Distinguished Professor of Neurology at the University of Iowa College of Medicine, notes, “More may have been learned about the brain and the mind in the 1990s—the so-called decade of the brain—than during the entire previous history of psychol- ogy and neuroscience.”

Open-minded managers are extending their comfort zones to explore unfamiliar disciplines, or communities of thinkers who share the same habits of mind about theory, procedure or methodology, and knowledge usage. For example, neurological research revealed that peo- ple don’t think in linear, hierarchical ways; figuratively speaking, they don’t experience a cake by sampling a sequence of raw ingredients. They experience fully baked cakes. This insight prompted companies like Citibank, Disney, Kraft, McNeil Consumer Health Care, and John Deere to change how they engaged consumers. They're now drawing on previously ignored research from an array of disciplines—musicology, neurology, philosophy, and zoology, along with the more familiar fields of anthropology, psychology, and sociology, among others—to under- stand what happens within the complex system of mind, brain, body, and society when consumers evaluate products.

6 | Preparing for an Expedition

Some managers are even importing experts, asking new questions, discovering powerful new knowledge; and then creating products and services that have unprecedented value in the eyes of customers. For example, the managers of one company met for two days with a neuro- biologist, a psychiatrist, an Olympic coach, a specialist in adult intellec- tual development, and a sociologist specializing in public health matters to examine new ways to use consumer incentives. The meeting gener- ated several innovative and practical ideas, one of which the firm imple- mented within two weeks. In the next seven months, the effectiveness of its consumer-incentive program soared by almost 40 percent.

Marketers are also gaining a new perspective on how their own minds work—how their subconscious mental processes influence the way they reach out to consumers, shape consumers' responses (some- times in unexpected and undesirable ways), and distort their own inter- pretations of consumers' behaviors and verbally expressed responses. Moreover, marketers have begun to see how powerfully the current marketing paradigm shapes the decisions, expectations, and actions of their colleagues—sometimes in ways that hurt strategy formation, budgeting efforts, and other key business activities.

Finally, marketers are beginning to realize that their own minds work in the same way consumers' minds do. That is, a similar mix of conscious and unconscious processes influences them. In fact, many companies are starting to use metaphor elicitation methods to help draw back the cur- tains on their own thinking as well as that of consumers.

When consumers and marketers interact—both of them operating from this maelstrom of mental activity—something called the mind of the market emerges. As we'll see throughout the rest of this book, the ability to grasp or understand the mind of the market and creatively leverage this understanding represents the next source of competitive advantage . for marketers.

Six Marketing Fallacies

“Marketers must understand how their thinking interacts with that of consumers.” We've heard it before, we believe it—but we don’t act on it. According to Chris Argyris, the James Bryant Conant Professor Emer-

A Voyage from the Familiar. | 7

itus of Education and Organizational Behavior at Harvard University and a director of Monitor Company, thats the difference between espoused theory and theory-in-use." "Espoused theory" is what we say we believe. “Theory-in-use” is the belief that underlies what we actually do. Sometimes espoused theory and theory-in-use coincide; oftentimes they don’t, and the theories-in-use reveal what managers really believe.

For example, many managers would say that, with few exceptions, conducting market research to confirm existing beliefs is a waste of resources. Thats their espoused theory. Yet, Rohit Deshpandé, Harvard Business School professor and former executive director of the Market- ing Science Institute, notes that over 80 percent of all market research serves mainly to reinforce existing conclusions, not to test or develop new possibilities. Managers act as if endorsing current views merits 80 percent of their resources. That's their theory-in-use.

As Argyris and other leading management scientists such as Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton point out, knowing better does not automati- cally lead to doing better? Bad habits die hard, especially in an orga- nizational climate that provides no incentives to take risks, no fiscal resources to collect worthwhile information, and no time to think deeply about such information, let alone keep abreast of well-founded advances in disciplines that study human behavior."°

The resulting paradigm in use—the assumptions about how the world works that manifest themselves in marketings actions—prevents marketers from understanding and serving customers effectively. The following section provides a few examples of limiting theories-in-use to stimulate further thinking and encourage managers to depart from such limiting ideas and practices and to open themselves to more promising and well-founded new ideas.

Consumers Think in a Well-Reasoned or Rational, Linear Way

Many managers still believe that consumers make decisions deliber- ately—that is, they consciously contemplate the individual and relative values of an objects attributes and the probability that it actualizes the assigned values, and then process this information in some logical way to arrive at a judgment. For example, consumers encounter an automo- bile, consciously assess its benefits attribute by attribute, and decide

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whether to buy it. Or consumers pinpoint a particular need—trans- - portation—seek a set of options that could meet that need, evaluate the pros and cons of each option, calculate the.cost of overall satisfaction per option, and then make a well-reasoned decision.

Consumer decision making sometimes does involve this so-called. rational thinking. However, it. doesn't adequately depict how con- sumers make choices.!! In fact, some of the very research that origi- nally supported such thinking now pegs this kind of decision making as the exception rather than the rule. As it turns out, the selection process is relatively automatic, stems from habits and other uncon- scious forces, and is greatly influenced by the consumers social and physical context.”

In reality, peoples emotions are closely interwoven with reasoning processes. Although our brains have separate structures for processing emotions and logical reasoning, the two systems communicate with each other and jointly affect our behavior. Even more important, the ` emotional system—the older of the two in terms of evolution—typically

exerts the first force on our thinking and behavior. More important still, emotions contribute to, and are essential for, sound decision making."

For example, a perfumes fragrance—a product attribute—may evoke a particular memory and an associated emotion in a potential buyer. If the memory triggers a painful emotion, then the individual probably won't buy the perfume, even if the fragrance, price, packaging, brand label, and other qualities meet her criteria. When the consumer departs from these criteria, expressed perhaps in a focus group or in response to traditional interviews, marketers will likely judge her behavior as irrational since they don't understand why she rejected the perfume."

Indeed, decision making hinges on the simultaneous functioning of reason and emotion, as the remarkable case of Phineas Gage reveals. In 1848, while laying a railway bed in Vermont, Gage suffered a severe head injury when a blasting cap exploded nearby. The blow destroyed Gage' capacity for emotion but left his reasoning skills intact. Before the - accident, people who knew Gage described him as trustworthy and well balanced. Afterward, they deemed him crass, indecisive, and unsure of himself. He could no longer choose wisely.^ More recent studies of the effects of brain lesions demonstrate that when neurological structures -

A Voyage from the Familiar | 9

responsible for either emotion or reasoning sustain damage, the affected individuals lose their ability to make the kinds of sound decisions that permit a normal life.!é

Yet despite claims to the contrary, marketers frequently prefer not to get involved in consumers’ emotions.!" Most managers, once they iden- tify an emotion, interpret its meaning based on how people generally use it in the popular vernacular. When pressed, they'll explore emotions only superficially, failing to acquire a deep understanding of the “anatomy” of a particular emotion. The anatomy of an emotion refers to the many qualities that comprise it and enable an emotion to take on different meanings in different settings. For example, a study of the meaning of “joy” conducted for one of the world's leading brands identi- fied more than fifteen elements of this basic emotion. These insights are leading the firm to a major overhaul of the brand story.

Some companies, such as Coca-Cola, Unilever, Hallmark, Syngenta, Bank of America, Glaxo, American Century, and General Motors, are beginning to conduct "deep dives" on specific emotions in order to understand their subtle nuances and operation. Companies that rely on popular conceptions of emotions usually compound this error by focus- ing on the more positive end of the emotional spectrum. (Fear is the one exception to this positive-emotion bias.) For example, they focus their attention on how joy influences consumer behavior while remaining unaware of the impact of disgust.!? Yet disgust—one of the most power- ful human emotions—plays a major role in peoples selection of clean- ing supplies, fabrics, food, and many services where joy is also present.

Consumers Can Readily Explain Their Thinking and Behavior

The limitations of this second belief and the research practices it fosters stem from the assumption that most of our thinking takes place in our conscious minds. In actuality, consumers have far less access to their own mental activities than marketers give them credit for. Ninety- five percent of thinking takes place in our unconscious minds—that wonderful, if messy, stew of memories, emotions, thoughts, and other cognitive processes we're not aware of or that we can’t articulate.’ George Lowenstein of Carnegie-Mellon University, a leader in applying psychology to economics, cautions us against exaggerating the role of

B C.U. "M. EMINESCU" IASI

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consciousness: "Rather than actually guiding or controlling behavior, consciousness seems mainly to make sense of behavior after it is exe- cuted."? Such information may be relevant, but it is also likely to be woefully incomplete.: Self-reporting methodologies like telephone or shopping mall interviews or interviews in a persons home that rely on conscious reflection might not provide any substantial insight into what really motivated a particular consumer action or decision?!

For example, marketers assume that consumers can readily inspect and easily describe their own emotions. In fact, emotions are by defini- tion unconscious. To surface them, skilled researchers must use special probing techniques.” The consumer whose purchase of a specific perfume is heavily influenced by a memory and associated emotion is unlikely to articulate this reason when a researcher explores the decision with conventional research tools. Why? The operation of our memory and emotions occurs below our thresholds of awareness. Most of what we "remember" and many of the emotions that those memories trigger lie beyond our convenient inspection, despite their powerful influence on us. | For example, when asked why they purchase an expensive brand of chocolate, people may be emphatic that they do so as a gift for others. But the truth may differ: Many of these same people actually make those purchases for their own immediate consumption. Moreover, the reasons for doing so involving guilt and joy lie beyond normal conscious inspec- tion and require a skilled interviewer to help the consumer bring them to a level where they can be examined consciously.

In fact, forces that consumers aren't aware of or can't articulate shape their behavior far more than marketers might think. A manufac- turer of ingredients used to make paints wanted to understand why firms were willing to pay some suppliers a price premium for an essen- tially commodity product. The manufacturer identified some traditional reasons, such as an unwillingness to rely on any one source. But by probing deeply, it uncovered an even more important feeling (related to self-esteem) among purchasing agents. The company was then able to strengthen its relationships with purchasing agents by acknowledging the feeling most closely related to self-esteem during sales calls.

Still, marketers continue to misuse surveys and focus groups in an effort to get consumers to explain or even predict their responses to

A Voyage from the Familiar | 11

products. Standard questioning can sometimes reveal consumers' think- ing about familiar goods and services if those thoughts and feelings are readily accessible and easily articulated. Yet these occasions occur infre- quently. Fixed-response questions, in particular, won't get at consumers most important thoughts and feelings if the manager or researcher has not first identified them by penetrating consumers unconscious thought. Most fixed-response questions and focus group moderator questions address at a surface level what consumers think about what man- agers think consumers are thinhing about.

Consumers’ Minds, Brains, Bodies, and Surrounding Culture and Society Can Be Adequately Studied Independently of One Another

Marketers believe that they can neatly divide and understand con- sumers’ experiences into “buckets,” such as what goes on in their minds, what their bodies are doing, and whats unfolding in their surroundings. Moreover, they assume that what goes on in each “bucket” has little to do with what's going on in the others.

In reality, consumers do not live their lives in the silo-like ways by which universities and businesses organize themselves. Rather, the mind, brain, body, and external world all shape one another in fluid, dynamic ways. To truly understand consumers, we must focus not on whats happening with one of these four “parts” but on the interactions between the parts. So, for example, when we learn about consumers psychological pro- cesses, our insights become richer and more actionable when we under- stand those processes’ cultural and neurological origins. In fact, the mind as we think of it doesn’t exist in the absence of the brain, body, and society? In any system—especially living ones—each part con- stantly influences and is influenced by the others. The most well-known examples involve blind taste tests in which the simple lack of brand information alters participants’ taste experience. Further, what is con- sidered a food delicacy in one cultural setting would cause violent phys- ical reactions in a different setting.

Of all the fallacies, this one will likely prove the most stubborn to correct, Nevertheless, research on the integration of mind, body, brain, and society will increasingly challenge the notion that all four of these components are disconnected.?* For example, studies have revealed that

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people from different cultures experience physical pain differently, - depending on their view and treatment of pain. Other studies demon- — strate that social class influences the incidence of heart disease, even when factors such as education level, knowledge about health care, use of medical services, diet, lifestyle, and other factors are taken into account. |

Consumers’ Memories Accurately Represent Their Experiences

Marketers also tend to think of consumers’ brains as cameras— mechanical devices that take “pictures” in the form of memories. Fur- thermore, they assume that those memories, like photographs, accu- rately capture what the person saw. They also believe that what a consumer says she remembers remains constant over time, and that a shopping experience a consumer recalls today is the exact same experi- ence she recalled a week ago or will recall some months from now.

But our memories are far more creative—and malleable—than we might expect. Indeed, they're constantly changing without our being aware of it and, as we shall see in chapter 7, memories are metaphors. For example, a major European retailer discovered that an experience recalled by survey respondents differed depending on the way the sur- vey questions were sequenced (and even on the color of the paper the survey was printed on). That is, the cues involved in retrieving a mem- ory, such as the sequencing of questions about it, alter what is recalled.

In another study, a major manufacturer of appliances found that dif- ferences in the way a focus group discussion began produced very dif- ferent recollections among consumers about what it was like to pur- chase a specific appliance using the Internet. As a comparison point, the researchers used the memory that each participant reported to the per- son who recruited him for the focus group. A “confederate” planted in each group and unknown to the moderator posed as an active partici- pant. The confederate elicited different accounts—that is, different memories—from the real participants by beginning the discussion in a positive or negative way and by providing nonverbal cues such as frowning, smiling, and so on while real participants presented their views. Nearly every reported memory was changed, and in about half

A Voyage from the Familiar | 58

the cases some of the changes were significant. (In a follow-up tele- phone call approximately two weeks later, most participants described yet a third version of the episode.) The results of this study revealed the well-known *mind guard" phenomenon. Through this process, one per- son, by silent agreement within the group, becomes the protector of an emerging consensus and often harshly prevents new ideas from entering the discussion.

Consumers Think in Words

Marketers also believe that consumers’ thoughts occur only as words. Thus they assume they can understand consumers' thinking by interpreting the words used in standard conversations or written on à questionnaire. Of course, words do play an important role in conveying our thoughts, but they don't provide the whole picture.” People gener- ally do not think in words. For example, brain scans and other physio- logical-function measures demonstrate that activations among brain cells, or neurons, precede our conscious awareness of a thought and pre- cede activity in areas of the brain involving verbal language. In fact, these latter neuronal areas become active only later, after a person unconsciously chooses to represent these thoughts to herself or to others using verbal language. i

Consumers Can Be "Injected" with Company Messages and Will Interpret These Messages as Marketers Intend

The belief that consumers think only in words makes marketers assume that they can inject whatever messages they desire into con- sumers’ minds about a company brand or product positioning. Because of this belief, marketers in effect view consumers’ minds as blank pages on which they can write anything they want—if only they can find a clever enough way of doing so. Thus marketers judge the effectiveness of, for example, an advertisement by asking consumers how much of the ad they recall and whether they liked the presentation. The beliefs behind these marketing approaches run contrary to a rich tradition of research on how people create meaning.

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When consumers are exposed to product concepts, company sto- ries, or brand information, they don't passively absorb those messages. Instead, they create their own meaning by mixing information from the company with their own memories, other stimuli present at the mo- ment, and the metaphors that come to mind as they think about the firms message. |

For example, consumers can accurately repeat messages from health care authorities about the recommended frequency for oral care checkups and the reasons why they should visit a dental hygienist every six months. Dentists and other health care professionals tell this story repeatedly. Yet although many consumers can replay this story when asked, they actually experience another, quite different story. This other story includes signifi- cant skepticism about the true need to visit a dentist every six months. A dental-referral service obtained this insight and the consumer thinking behind it only after carefully analyzing the metaphors that consumers used to describe their dental-office visits. For example, one consumer used a picture from a child’ fairy-tale book, specifically Little Red Riding Hood, to describe his feelings that health care professionals fabricated this advice. As this visual metaphor was explored further and the interviewer probed beyond the initial charge that the advice is made up, the person described dental professionals as the deceptive wolf. This revealed his judgment that they are motivated only by self-interest.

The lesson in these examples? The messages consumers take away from a communication may be very different from the ones that a com- pany intended to convey. Moreover, simply asking people what story they heard or believe is behind a marketing message does not reveal what story they have actually created for themselves.

Improving Practice

Taken together, problematic theories-in-use such as those mentioned in this chapter, among many others that managers must move away from, suggest several underlying themes that marketers must understand if they hope to advance their work. For one thing, consumers’ decision

making and buying behavior are driven more by unconscious thoughts

A Voyage from the Familiar | 15°

and feelings than by conscious ones, although the latter are also im- portant. These unconscious forces include ever-changing memories, metaphors, images, sensations, and stories that all interact with one another in complex ways to shape decisions and behavior. In addition, consumers aren't like machines; marketers cannot take them apart in order to understand and change them, as we might disassemble a clock to see how it works or to fix it. Rather, consumers are complex living - systems and not subject to the kind of manipulation so confidently claimed in the popular press. As such, they operate from conscious and unconscious forces that mutually influence one another—and that are difficult for outsiders to see and measure, let alone alter. |

In falling prey to the six misconceptions just outlined, marketers make some predictable errors that can destroy even the most carefully thought out product launch. These errors fall into three categories: mis- taking descriptive information for insight, confusing customer data with understanding, and focusing on the wrong elements of the consumer experience.

"Knowing That" versus "Knowing Why"

Many marketers view consumers thinking and behavior as com- modities that lack subtlety or depth. This assumption is especially obvi- ous in the case of business-to-business marketing. Thus marketers fail to dig more deeply into the forces below surface-level thinking and behavior while conducting market research. For example, knowing that customers prefer a container that has a round shape rather than a square shape is important. Knowing why they prefer this shape is even more important, because it may suggest a desirable configuration that is nei- ther round nor square.

So when a Canadian container manufacturer discovered too late that the preferred package design revealed by a careful conjoint study among its clients customers was simply the lesser of three evils, they had to undertake a costly redevelopment process. Had they understood the *why" behind expressed customer preferences, they would have dis- covered their error in time to produce a still better design right from the start.

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The error hurt both the manufacturer and its client. The manufac- turer could have collected essential information for a small additional cost in the original investigation. Instead, it found itself collecting data at a much greater cost, repeating the conjoint study. However, even this expense was small compared to the lost time and the damage to the firms relationship with its client.

The manufacturers error did not lie in its use of conjoint analysis but in the firm’s failure to dig more deeply into the “why” behind the “what” of customer thinking before conducting the analysis. Though all the details are not important here, these managers and research-team ` members made a major—and incorrect—assumption. They believed that customers would interpret a midpoint on a scale used in the study as indicating indifference (no strong feelings one way or the other). In fact, they interpreted the midpoint as signifying ambivalence (conflict- ing strong feelings). If the company had known this ahead of time, it could have used this knowledge to guide the design of its research and better interpreted the results.

Data Quantity Does Not Assure Data Quality

Along these same lines, marketers believe that by gathering a huge quantity of consumer data, they've automatically acquired a deep un- derstanding of consumers. But data volume and understanding are not the same. Indeed, most data that managers tend to collect—such as demographic data, purchase intent, and attribute preferences—yield only surface-level information about consumers. These data are not very helpful by themselves, because they serve largely as proxies for other, more important forces or decision influences.

For example, managers seldom stop to ask what chronological age -is really measuring. One firm discovered that differences between two

age groups actually involved differences in the importance of social con- nection and independence. Rather than relying on age, the firm found a better way of grouping people based on these variables and greatly improved the value of their segmentation strategy. In this case, the man- agers stopped to ask what really lay behind the differences in the two age groups—aside from the fact that their subjects were born in differ-

A Voyage from the Familiar | — 17

ent time periods—and sought more direct and reliable measures of social connection and independence. |

Worse still, marketers collect the wrong types of data primarily because these types are easy to obtain. This is akin to the old joke about the drunk who is searching for his glasses under a street lamp. When a passerby asks the drunk where he lost his glasses, the drunk points to a distant spot in the darkness. Incredulous, the passerby asks the drunk why he’s not looking in that distant spot. The drunk replies, "Because this is where the light is." Poor-quality thinking cannibalizes high-qual- ity thinking. In fact, poor-quality thinking confuses fast answers with

wise answers, ignoring that quality thinking takes time.

Why is a deep understanding so much more valuable than surface- level data? It enables marketers to apply the knowledge they gain from data to new situations. For instance, a company that understands what the phrase “nurturing my clothes” means to consumers in terms of fab- ric softeners might not only produce a more successful softener; it might. also develop other valued clothing-care products that eliminate wrin- kles, preserve colors, and extend fabric life.

A deep understanding of consumers also enables marketers to find common drivers of behavior shared by otherwise diverse target markets. That is, the deeper one digs into consumers thoughts and feelings, the more one finds commonalities across segments. These commonalities will likely be more important determinants of choice and tend not to change very quickly. For example, one firm offering oral care products conducted an in-depth study of how consumers in Asia, Europe, and North and South America experienced the concept of oral care. Four key factors influencing the choice of oral care products were identified as present in each of these regions. Three of these had been missed by prior research. The firm greatly streamlined its advertising development process and budget by focusing on these four factors, while also being attentive to the different ways in which these factors surfaced in different countries.

Without a deep understanding of consumers—that is, without knowing consumers' hidden thoughts and feelings and the forces be- hind them—marketers can't accurately anticipate consumers’ responses to product designs, features, and ideas that cannot be tested directly

' with consumers because of time, budget, or competitive reasons. This

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ability to anticipate consumers' responses based on deep knowledge about them lies at the heart of skillful marketing. As many writers on technological innovation stress, a deep understanding of customers is the only sound basis for developing marketing strategy for discontinu- . ous innovations.

However, true understanding takes work. For example, to grasp what "nurturing clothes" really means, a company must go beyond gathering information about just the functional and psychological bene- fits of clothing care (for example, longer clothing life or the wearers attractive appearance). Specifically, the company must understand what "nurturing" means to consumers on a deeper level. (For many, it means serving as a caregiver.) The firm must also know why and when con- sumers feel their clothing merits nurturing. Many consumers view their clothing as a personal “container” or an extension of the self. Thus, when they feel the need to nurture themselves, they may also need to nurture their clothing—as a major producer of womens hosiery recently discovered. | i

Marketers only compound the problem of surface-level data when they extract surface meaning from the data. Specifically, they rely on their first impressions of the data rather than allowing time for deeper or more counterintuitive insights to emerge. Often their first impres- sions prove incorrect or incomplete. For example, a European-based automaker experienced this problem when it concluded too quickly that word-of-mouth communication among consumers was the culprit behind a serious problem plaguing the company. The company then developed a strategy to combat negative word of mouth. Since the com- pany hadn't taken the time to discover the deeper causes behind the problem, the new strategy failed to solve the problem. Indeed, the situa- tion only worsened in the meantime.

The Complete Consumer Experience

In addition to confusing lots of data with lots of understanding, marketers also attend to the wrong level of consumer experience. Specifically, they focus 90 percent of their market research on the attrib- utes and functional features of a product or service and their immediate _ psychological benefits, at the expense of their emotional benefits. For

A Voyage from the Familiar | 19

consumers, emotional benefits stem in part from the important values and themes that define and give meaning to their lives. Though a prod- uct5 attributes and functional benefits are important, they represent just a small part of what really drives consumers.

For instance, a Nestlé Crunch Bar has immediate sensory benefits such as taste, texture, and sound. But these benefits also evoke powerful emotional benefits, such as fond memories of childhood and feelings of security. When Nestlé focused its marketing efforts on just the sensory benefits of the candy bar, it not only lost sales—it also opened the door for competitors to eat their way into the chocolate-bar business.

Marketers also underestimate the scope of the consumer experi- ence.?6 They believe that this experience consists of responses to specific events that unfold in specific periods of time—such as what happens during the time someone spends at a category display in a supermarket or between a TV advertisement and a visit to a store. They focus on these aspects of the consumer experience primarily because they can most easily address them.

But viewing the consumer experience in this way can be hazardous to a company’s financial health. A German snack-food company discov- ered this first-hand when it realized that mothers' decisions to buy the companys product in stores depended only partly on product place- ment, point-of-purchase cues, and pricing. The more powerful forces behind the womens purchasing decisions consisted of their beliefs about teaching proper nutrition practices to their children, among other things. As it turned out, these beliefs included principles governing how and when to reward children with exceptions to nutritious eating (that is, with snack foods). Until the company learned to present its product in a way that was consistent with ideas about good nutrition and special

treats, it missed out on major sales opportunities. Finally, marketers rarely grasp the full extent of the consumer expe- rience because they dont ask enough questions. Rather, they form answers based on first impressions, and then ask only those questions that verify their hypotheses. For example, because of anecdotal evidence reinforced by focus-group research, a manager at a major U.S. credit- card company decided that young adults prized ownership of credit cards for one reason in particular. She thus had a hypothesis in mind that implied a basic research question focusing on this specific reason.

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An expensive survey was designed that (not surprisingly) “proved” her hypothesis—because she had framed the more specific survey questions specifically to confirm her conclusion. Moreover, she had done so with- out being consciously aware of the bias in her survey design. —

If this manager had not focused on one particular answer, she might have learned that the initial question wasn’t the most valuable one to ask. In fact, she could have explored a more fundamental question about the meaning of credit-card ownership that could have yielded much richer information. Indeed, just as she was conducting her survey, a competitor began looking beyond the idea that young people value credit cards for the one reason the manager had identified. The competi- tor uncovered multiple underlying reasons—and discovered that they can change for individual customers depending on the context each time they use their cards. The competing company designed a far more effective marketing campaign based on its new knowledge—and won a significant share of this target market.

We must envision and embrace new ideas and find new ways to gather information if we hope to create a new paradigm. Managers who want to conduct truly insightful consumer analysis must progress through the lower two levels depicted in figure 1-2, acknowledging that mental activity emerges from the interaction of social and biological processes. Otherwise, they'll face the same precarious future as the ousted CEOs that Drucker describes. — —

FIGURE 1-2

Insightful Consumer Analysis

Goal: Insightful Consumer Analysis

Understanding of how mental activity occurs

Social and psychological Biological processes that process that consumers produce mental activity experience

A Voyage from the Familiar | M

Customer-centricity

Nothing affects an income statements bottom line as much as its top line—gross billings, the initial parameter within which all other "lines" operate. Marketing owns the top line, ultimately a measure of a firms customer-centricity, the degree to which it focuses on latent as well as obvious needs of current and potential customers. High customer-cen- tricity involves two acts of hearing or listening:

1. The customer *hears"—truly understands—that a firm's offer- ings merit a purchase.

2. The firm hears—truly understands—through skillful listening what current and potential customers are saying in their native language about their deep thoughts and feelings.

These qualities suggest two simple propositions:

1. The more skilled marketers are in listening to customers, the more effective their marketing strategies will be in establishing the value of the firms offerings. _

2. The more clearly current and potential customers understand the value of the firms offerings, the larger the top line will be.

A customer-centric firm, then, avoids technological arrogance—the notion that customers are passive and must be aggressively sold rather than skillfully heard. Skillful listening tells the management team how large a challenge they face, especially in terms of meeting latent needs. This intelligence leads to better teamwork and a winning business model and marketing plan.

A customer-centric firm understands how people can interpret the same data differently, why they see one creature more readily than the other, and how to respond so that those who must see a duck can do so without preventing others from seeing a rabbit. It also enables those customers who think that they want to see a rabbit also to see the duck when that’s in their best interest. This extraordinary core competence requires insights from several disciplines about how

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the mind works. Indeed, much of How Customers Think.involves . helping both managers and their customers to see beyond their first impressions.

Embracing New Knowledge through Imagination -

To change the current marketing paradigm, we must envision com- pletely new ways of thinking and open ourselves to ideas that initially may seem trivial or irrelevant to business. A lively imagination, and even a sense of play, can help.

To that end, let’s start our paradigm-shifting voyage by exercising our imaginations. Picture yourself hosting a dinner party. This party is no ordinary gathering. Your guests range from zoologists and art histori- ans to physiologists, financiers, and. neurosurgeons. They're milling around, sampling the hors d’oeuvres, and introducing themselves to one another. Even more unusual, you've gree them with a list of ques- tions to discuss, po eam

* Why does art matter in everyday life?

e What role do memories play in daily life?

e What is eating yogurt like?

* How do people feel about genetically engineered foods?

e What constitutes caring?

* What does cleanliness mean?

* What do global account managers experience?

e How does having a major new insight feel?

* Why pay a premium for a commodity ingredient?

e What role does breakfast play in the relationship between a mother and her children?

¢ What does “feel good" mean?

Granted, such a diverse group of guests would probably not mingle easily at a real party. But if you did orchestrate such a gathering, the resulting conversations would yield priceless information for marketers who want to understand how consumers decide whether to buy their products or services.

A Voyage from the Familiar | —23

Thus, this book serves as a surrogate party The quotation that appears at the beginning of this chapter expresses its central tenet. Our ability to tap into consumers' minds is limited only by our imagination; that is, our ability to reproduce images and concepts, reshape or recombine them into new images and concepts, and anticipate what the experience of these new thoughts might be like.’

We desperately need imagination to transform how we do business. Not only do we need more imaginative strategies for understanding consumers, we also need new ways of thinking about and using the information we glean from these efforts. We need both imaginative know- ing and imaginative doing.

The Tyranny of “Or”

Envisioning this strange party can help us stretch our thinking processes, but the party has another purpose as well: to break down the artificial distinction between theory and practice or, as the line is some- times drawn, between basic and applied research. |

Vincent Barabba calls the building of artificial and unnecessary dis- tinctions “the triumph of the tyranny of ‘or’ over the greater good of ‘and.” Barabba is right: Many topics do not fall exclusively into either the theoretical or the practical realm (any more than they belong to only one discipline). Theory and practice are nested within one another. When we split them apart and leave them that way, we lose valuable insights. Scientists often split things apart, but with the goal of better understanding how they work together.

Marketing managers—who already feel overwhelmed by proliferat- ing data, tougher decisions, conflicting advice, and a ticking clock—will find many of the ideas in this book brand new and disquieting, because they come from places where most marketers rarely tread. But readers can rest assured: The ideas discussed here all meet two important crite- ria for breaking down the walls between theory and practice and between disciplines. First, they are firmly grounded in the scientific research of multiple disciplines—that is, the formal research that supports every idea in How Customers Think meets each discipline’s standards of internal and external validity.

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Beyond traditional standards of validity, the ideas in this book also address real consumer phenomena—that is, they have “implementable validity.” According to Chris Argyris, implementable validity means that an idea lends itself to effective action. However, putting an idea into action requires that we use the knowledge explicitly, such as thinking aloud about it in the form of a causal proposition. For example, phar- maceutical research validates the following causal proposition: Medica- tions have greater efficacy when physicians use metaphors to explain how or why a new medicine works. A parallel business-oriented causal proposition might be: A company can enhance consumers' experience with its product by using metaphors that communicate how or why the product works. Drake Stimson, a marketing director at P&G, credits this principle for making Febreze the most successful new product launch in Procter & Gamble’s history. By using metaphors effectively in its introductory advertising for Febreze, a product based on a patented new molecule, P&G basically doubled first-year sales over what conven- tional thinking would have predicted? .

The term “customer” in the books title reflects a tradition in market- ing that embraces both business customers and ultimate consumers, although the book covers more of the latter than the former. Marketing managers in both industrial and consumer settings have applied nearly all the ideas in this book in both business-to-business (B2B) and busi- ness-to-consumer (B2C) contexts. However, readers shouldn't confuse - the successful use of valid ideas with their widespread use. Otherwise, we wouldnt need this book.

Viewed with an open mind, these ideas can unlock the riches offered by a diversity of perspectives and help managers win satisfied customers. Multiple perspectives can also help marketers avoid the all-too-typical trap, captured in figure 1-3, in which managers and researchers mistake their own reflections for those of consumers.

In your journey through this book, keep in mind that, above all else, the book is about quality thinking—which takes time, energy, the occa- sional suspension of disbelief and doubt, and an attitude of serious play. Quality thinking also requires the courage to look bad or feel silly or uneasy for a short time in order to succeed in the longer term. As with multiple viewings of an engaging photograph or painting, each subse- 'quent encounter with an intriguing idea can reveal something different.

A Voyage from the Familiar | — 25

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As you'll see, this book draws on the latest research from a wealth of disciplines. These insights often offer alternative—and far more effec- tive—ways of seeing and understanding consumers. The book also includes examples of how real marketers, in real companies, have applied this understanding successfully. By understanding more deeply . and more fully the true nature of the consumers mind, marketers can ask the right questions, get the right data, and interpret that data in fresher, more effective ways. The first step to this deeper understanding is to begin imagining what a new worldview might reveal.

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Chapter Two

A Voyage to New Frontiers

We are not candy-coated biological pellets rattling around in a social world independent of our biological world.

—Amnne Harrington, "Getting Under the Shin"

] F THE MANY different social and biological disciplines from 3 which marketing can benefit, brain science is one of the most important. To understand the emerging paradigm for consumer research, marketers must appreciate the power and complexity of the human brain.

This remarkable organ contains 100 billion neurons, or cells, and perhaps as many as 1 trillion. The cerebral cortex, the outer covering of the brain where cognition occurs, is about the area and thickness of a cloth napkin at an upscale restaurant. Relatively new in evolutionary terms, the cortex houses about 30 billion neurons that form a vast net- Work of about 1 million billion connections, creating neural circuits that stimulate conscious and unconscious thought and behavior. How vast is this network? The number of particles in the known universe is 10 followed by approximately 79 zeros. The number of neural-circuitry connections possible is 10 followed by more than a million zeros.! It's vast.

In reuniting artificially splintered fields of study, the new paradigm reestablishes the connections among brain, body, mind, and the social world that the old paradigm artificially detached. These four compo- nents are connected in one seamless, dynamic system. They each influ- ence—and are influenced by—one another. For example, our brains

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interact with the social and physical world around us; the body medi- - ates this partnership. The body senses information about the world, generates chemical and physical responses that create emotions and ` thoughts, and moves in response to the brain. `

The alliance of brain, body, mind, and society is mutually informing and fully codependent.? One can't exist without the others. The brains nearly countless neurons and interneural associations receive part of their ordering from the external world. For instance, social forces strongly influence which neurons gain or lose prominence or impor- tance and which connections among them will form, be reinforced, or become extinct.? Michael Tomasello, a cognitive scientist and codirector of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, points out how social forces have shaped the human brain:

The 6 million years that separate human beings from other great apes is a very short time evolutionarily, with modern humans and chimpanzees sharing something on the order of 99 percent of their genetic material. . . . There simply has not been enough time for normal processes of biological evolution involving genetic variation and natural selection to have cre- ated, one by one, each of the cognitive skills necessary for modern humans to invent and maintain complex tool-use industries and tech- nologies, complex forms of symbolic communication and representation, and complex social organizations and institutions.‘

So how have humans acquired these cognitive skills so quickly? According to Tomasello, the key mechanism has been social or cultural transmission, which works exponentially faster than organic evolution. Our social environment has developed concurrently with our biological characteristics and intellectual capacities.

Figure 2-1 depicts the interconnectedness of brain, body, mind, and society as a three-dimensional pyramid with four corners. For every individual (whether marketer or consumer), each of the four components occupies a corner of the pyramid and influences every other component. Whenever one component changes, the others do as well, below our awareness in the cognitive unconscious. Occasionally, _the results of these interactions enter our conscious thoughts. Have you ever savored a “delicacy” in the presence of a guest from a different cul-

A Voyage to New Frontiers | 29

FIGURE 2 - 1

The New Paradigm of an Integrated Mind-Brain-Body-Society

Brain

Mind Body

ture and noticed that guest grimacing in disgust? Or has another cul- tures “delicacy” disgusted you so that you got queasy just looking at it?

Marketing lies at the hub of these interactions. Thats why the other fields of discovery are critical to effective marketing practice. Companies like General Motors, Experience Engineering, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Procter & Gamble, and the Coca-Cola Company are learning more about consumer needs, satisfaction, and loyalty by studying the totality of the brain-mind-body-society system's four components than by examining the parts individually. A leading Euro- pean electronics firm recently launched a research program to under- stand how the tactile experience of personal communication devices varies among consumers around the world and how those differences manifest in their usage behavior. However, too many managers study customers as if only one of the four components mattered and end up eliciting the wrong information from consumers, interpreting it incorrectly, and developing products and services that underwhelm the marketplace.

Why? Because turning one’s worldview inside out is scary, difficult work.’ After all, we form our assumptions about how the world works very early in life—long before we learn how to examine our beliefs objectively. Our worldview is deeply embedded and hard to see, let alone change. Also, scientists whose work could help us open up the pyramid often communicate unintelligibly and seemingly inconsistently to nonscientists. l

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Anne Harrington, science historian and director of Harvard Uni- versitys Mind/Brain/Behavior Initiative, offers an evocative image that may help managers more easily understand the systemic nature of the pyramid:

[H]uman beings are . . . like sponges. Sponges, of course, are animals who are saturated by the ambiance in which they live, and whose physi- ology presupposes the presence of that ambiance. It would not mahe sense to speak of the physiology of sponges on the one hand, and the watery “context” in which they live on the other hand; the water is part of the internal works by which these animals function.’

We are not, as Harrington notes further, hard, candy-coated biological pellets rattling around in a social world that is independent of our bio- logical world. | |

The partnership between the brain and society takes on even more weight when we start thinking about the mind of the market—that all- important interaction between marketers’ and consumers’ conscious and unconscious minds. As with consumers, marketers' experiences with the outside world strongly influence their thoughts, abilities, and emotional responses. For example, if you grew up with parents and teachers who encouraged you to notice anomalies or unusual occur- rences, then you may be especially adept at spotting emerging con- sumer trends. If you enjoy embarking on risky new adventures outside of work, you may take more risk with a new market research method in your job. Such interactions between mind and environment also fea- ture feedback loops that either reinforce or discourage a managers behavior, For instance, if an adventurous type works in an organization

that discourages risk taking, he or she may eventually take fewer risks at work.

Among consumers, the experience of a problem, the search for goods and services to solve it, and the evaluation of these offerings all derive from the mind-brain-body-society partnership. For instance, the social context assigned to an object can produce markedly different physiological reactions. In one experiment, people were presented with an odor that the researchers told them came from an aged cheese. Most

A Voyage to New Frontiers | 31

people reacted in a mildly aversive way to it but indicated a willingness to taste the cheese. The researchers told another group of participants who received the same odor that the smell came from old gym socks. As you might expect, these people recoiled from the odor.

The Mind of the Market

As we saw above, the mutual-influence structure represented by the brain-body-mind-society pyramid shapes the thinking and behavior of each marketer and each consumer. What happens when a “marketer pyramid” and a “consumer pyramid” come together, when marketers and consumers interact? The result appears in figure 2-2. As the figure shows, marketers and consumers influence one another on both a con- scious and unconscious level. Marketers have failed to tap into the unconscious level where pyramid dynamics are most active.

As an illustration, consider the possible influences at work in the purchase of a car. A man who drives a sports car may have deep-seated emotional reasons, not just practical ones, for buying it. He may want others to perceive him as youthful, daring, sexy, and aggressive. Cultural influences, such as advertising and the car-buying habits of other peo- ple, may have fostered those internal desires. They may have roots in

FIGURE 2-2

The Mind of the Market

Consumers Marketers Conscious Processes

Unconscious Processes

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childhood events, like seeing a suave young uncle in a red-hot sports car with an attractive passenger.

At the same time, these internal Tem and early influences are what make advertising or other forms of social influence so effective. These desires enable the aspiring sports-car driver to create meaningful experiences based on the information he sees in an ad and his experi- ences in test-driving, purchasing, and using the vehicle. Thus, “outer” marketing activities play an essential role in evoking the “inner world” of consumers. A consumers decision to buy a particular product doesn't arise solely from either world—it arises from the interplay of those two worlds. The failure to understand that a consumers inner world can powerfully transform a marketers outer-world message leads to most product-development failures.

In the last few years, tremendous advances in sociology, anthropol- ogy, cognitive neuroscience, and psychology (to name but a few fields) have helped managers to understand the dynamics shown in figures 2-1 and 2-2. We've learned more about how. marketers’ unconscious assumptions and expectations influence which questions they choose to ask consumers, how they frame those questions in a survey, whom they select as participants in a study, and which analytical tools they use.? These unconscious processes shape what information consumers pro- vide—and what they don't.

Unconscious processes among consumers also influence their responses to marketers’ questions. For example, the order in which researchers pose questions can make a big difference in the answers they receive, as the following example illustrates. A consumer-satisfaction question in a survey conducted in Japan by a European automaker con- sistently indicated a high satisfaction rating. A question about repair fre- quency followed later in the survey. When the automaker asked the question about repair frequency first, the satisfaction rating decreased and the reported repair frequency increased. Both changes were signifi- cant. By sequencing the questions differently, the survey designers unknowingly primed consumers’ responses in different ways—all with- out anyones awareness. The carmakers managers accidentally became

aware of the priming, and the company had to revisit its conclusions about consumer satisfaction in its global markets.

A Voyage to New Frontiers | 33

A Closer Look at the New Paradigm

If the brain-body-mind-society pyramid represents the heart of the new paradigm, then how might the rest of it appear? To envision this, keep these two principles in mind from figures 2-1 and 2-2:

e Culture and biology go hand-in-hand. * The mind of the market emerges from the interaction of con- sumers' and managers' conscious and unconscious minds.

The contours of the new paradigm reveal startling truths about the nature of human communication, thought, emotion, and memory. We glimpsed these realities in chapter 1; in the rest of this chapter, we'll examine them more closely. Remember to suspend your judgment to avoid prematurely dismissing an idea; instead, ask yourself, “If this idea were true, would it change how I think or what I do?" If the answer is yes, then explore further.

~ Thought Is Based on Images, Not Words

Human thought arises from what neuroscientists call images. These topographically organized neural representations occur in the early sen- sory cortices—an admittedly rather technical description. When neu- rons are sufficiently activated—that is, when a sound, sight, or other stimulus turns them on and causes the connections between them (the Synapses) to fire—we may experience those electrochemical discharges as conscious thought.’ An important difference exists between how a thought occurs (neural activity) and how we consciously experience a thought, if at all, once it occurs. So we must carefully distinguish among how thought happens, what stimulated it in the first place, and how the thought is expressed afterwards. Words can trigger our thoughts and enable us to express them. Thats why people believe that thought occurs largely as words.

The neural activities, or images, involved in thought are not necessar- ily images as we usually think of them. However, since about two-thirds

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of all stimuli reach the brain through the visual system, we often experi- ` ence images (as neuroscientists think of them) visually as well as ver- bally and in other ways. Stimuli leading to a thought may take many forms.!! For example, the neural activity stimulated by the fragrance of coffee on a walk to work may produce a picture in our minds eye of reading the morning paper at the coffee shop. We may even hear a response in our minds ear—"Yeah, I’ve got time" or “No, I'd better not"—or even voice these conclusions aloud when walking with some- one else.

. Neural activity may be stimulated by sound, touch, motion, back- ground feelings such as moods, and emotions.” The neural activity may also be expressed in these and other ways. For example, a Coke adver- tisement can stimulate neural activations. The consequences of these activations—for instance, the recall of an experience of sharing a Coke with a friend, reaching for a Coke, and tasting it—involve other neural activations. Thus different kinds of images or thoughts are linked to one another and occur together. ;

As we've seen, verbal language factors into the representation, stor- age, and communication of thought.? But despite its great importance in facilitating thought, verbal language is not the same as thought.'* Yet managers persist in seeing thought as word-based. Indeed, “the view that thought is internalized conversation is widespread," Jonathan H. Turner explains in his book, On the Origins of Human Emotions: A Socio- logical Inquiry into the Evolution of Human Affect. Turner continues:

But a moment of reflection would reveal this to be impossible. If thinhing were merely covert talk, we would seem very dim-witted, since talh is a sequential modality and hence very slow. . . . [While] we can often slow the process of thinking down by “talking to ourselves," this kind of think- ing is the exception rather than the rule. . . . [The] subordination of other sensory inputs under vision shapes the way humans actually think: in blurs of images, many of which don't penetrate our consciousness.'5

Examples of people who have thought without language—ranging from deaf-mutes in preliterate societies to adults with brain dysfunc- tion—have received substantial attention.!5 Nobel Prize winner Gerald Edelrnan has observed that "conceptual capabilities develop in evolu-

A Voyage to New Frontiers | 35

tion well before speech." Stephen Pinker, Peter de Florez Professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, asks and answers the following question:

Is thought dependent on words? . . . Or are our thoughts couched in some silent medium of the brain—a language of thought or *mentalese"—and

_ merely couched in words whenever we need to communicate them to a. listener? . . . The idea that thought is the same thing as language is an example of what can be called a conventional absurdity. . . . There is no scientific evidence that languages dramatically shape their speakers’ way of thinking.!9 (emphasis in original)

Cognition, then, shapes language, not the other way around. We develop particular verbal terms to express thoughts—neural activities— that matter to us. Of course, these important concepts are reinforced as new generations of speakers learn existing terms. The connotation of “Please be quiet” differs from that of “Shut up!” because we have devel- oped a need to express the shades of meaning in each phrase. The exis- tence of these phrases doesn't create the different thoughts and feelings that they express. If a phrase or word has no relevance or meaning to us, then we won't retain it. When we encounter new ideas through verbal communication, they root themselves within a preexisting system that gives them relevance. Different cultures emphasize different thoughts; thats why each verbal language has expressions not found or readily translated by other languages.'?

We must view "language" in a multimodal way that includes many channels of communication, not just literal speech. This principle fac- tors into the use of psychodrama wherein body language helps surface insights about individual and organizational issues that verbal language alone can't reveal. Similarly, a key part of metaphor-elicitation tech- niques involves the creation of visual stories or collages that uncover consumers’ and managers’ hidden thoughts and feelings.”° By engaging the language of visual imagery, we enable a richer verbal description of inner feelings. For example, in a study of the hosiery-wearing experi- ence, women who created collages were able to articulate far more clearly than those who did not create collages the nature of their con- flicting feelings about wearing hosiery.

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Most Communication Is Nonverbal

Experts generally agree that most human communication (as much as 80 percent) occurs through nonverbal means. These means include touch; vocal intonations; gestures; body posture; distance; sense of time; - eye contact, gaze, and pupil dilation; and visual cues such as apparel and adornments. Through these nonverbal channels, people exchange messages and meaning.”

Tone and manner of speech (also known as paralanguage) also influ- ence this exchange. For example, a person who says “Yeah, right!” may communicate the exact opposite message by using a sarcastic tone of voice. The way in which we present our spoken statements—especially if we combine tone of voice with other cues such as gestures—conveys a great deal of meaning. The resulting message may communicate our true feelings or thoughts far more than our spoken words do. Marketers who rely too much on analyses of printed consumer transcripts miss out on these messages. For example, an R@D lab at a major communica- tions company performed a voice-pitch analysis of customer responses to a service satisfaction question. Voice-pitch analysis is a method for isolating various psychological states present while a person is speaking. The lab concluded that a high level of uncertainty was present in many of the most positive responses given. That is, although the literal state- ment customers provided indicated high levels of satisfaction, the uncertainty expressed in their voices indicated considerably less satis- faction. Had the company relied only on literal verbal language, they would have had false confidence in their service delivery systems.

Knowing how to interpret paralanguage is important in many mar- keting settings, such as telemarketing, face-to-face selling, and voice- over advertising. Researchers have conducted some especially intriguing studies involving “voice masking," in which a speaker's actual words are masked but his or her tone of voice remains distinguishable to study participants. According to these studies, our judgment about the value and merit of a speakers statements hinges on our evaluation of his or her tone of voice. For example, if we think that a speaker sounds honest or sincere, we will likely give his or her literal message—the actual words he or she is speaking—more weight. Indeed, in the event of an apparent contradiction between tone of voice and spoken statements, listeners -

A Voyage to New Frontiers | — 37

will believe the former over the latter. Thus, the paralanguage of sales personnel or spokespeople in a televised commercial may influence con- sumers' behavior far more than the literal content of their message.

Edward T. Halls classic work The Silent Language provides further evidence of the power of paralanguage. Hall identifies ten “primary mes- sage systems” involved in human communication.” Only part of one of the systems he identified—interpersonal communication—involves verbal language. The other nine systems rely on nonlinguistic forms of communication.

This surprising power of paralanguage becomes less surprising when we examine the development of spoken language. As it turns out, spoken language emerged relatively recently in human evolution. More- over, written, phonetic-based language developed even later, about 5.000 years ago, as a byproduct of our ability to detect the edges of shapes.? With so much evolutionary practice, our brains are far better at sensing and interpreting paralanguage than they are at understanding spoken or written language. Yet most market research tools rely on lit- eral language to capture information, synthesize and report survey responses, draw conclusions from focus groups, and trace literal data such as those from scanners. Thus, a great mismatch exists between the way consumers experience and thinh about their world and the methods mar- heters use to collect this information.

Metaphor Is Central to Thought

Metaphors, the representation of one thing in terms of another, often help us express the way we feel about or view a particular aspect of our lives. For example, if a man says, *My hair is my signature," he does- nt mean that he uses his hair to sign his name. Rather, he means that something about his hair signals what kind of person he is to others. This metaphor is therefore rich with meaning about identity, individual- ity, and the significance of other people.

Metaphors stimulate the workings of the human mind.” By one estimate, we use almost six metaphors per minute of spoken language.? Through brain-imaging technologies, researchers better understand the neural bases of metaphor. For example, although both halves of the human brain enable literal and figurative language (which includes

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metaphor), the right half is more strongly associated with metaphoric - language.?6 ~, t |

Why do we think so often in metaphors? They help us interpret what we perceive in the world around us; indeed, they help us perceive the world, period. They help us see new connections, interpret our experiences, and draw new meaning from those experiences." Meta- phors also affect imagination? Philosopher Mark Johnson explains, “Without imagination, nothing in the world could be meaningful. With- out imagination, we could never interpret our experience. Without imagination, we could never reason toward knowledge of reality."? Speaking metaphorically, metaphor is the engine of imagination. In fact, the use of metaphor together with visual imagery lies at the heart of all major advances in science, according to Arthur I. Miller, professor of history and philosophy of science at University College London.”

Metaphors are so basic to our thinking that marketers and their audiences alike are often unaware of them. As we'll see, market re- searchers can glean valuable knowledge by encouraging consumers to use metaphors. Why? Because metaphors can help bring consumers' important—but unconscious—thoughts and feelings to the surface?! Indeed, metaphor constitutes a powerful tool for unearthing the hidden thoughts and feelings that have such a profound influence on con- sumers' decision making. Indeed, consumer researchers around the world have found using metaphors effective in helping people to bring their unconscious experiences into their awareness and then to commu- nicate those experiences.”

Many metaphors also reveal whats called “embodied cognition"— the referencing of our sensory and motor systems to express our think- ing? Examples of such metaphors abound: “I hope you see what 1 mean” or “get the point”; “I don’t wish to get too far ahead of myself” or "in over my head”; “I hope these ideas don't put you off" by “being beneath

you" or “sounding unbalanced”; and “I want these ideas to reach people" with different "viewpoints."

Emotion's Partnership with Reason

As we saw in chapter 1, most market research methods are biased toward reason and away from emotion.?* Marketers collect and interpret

A Voyage to New Frontiers | 99

survey and other consumer information as if consumers' decisions stemmed primarily from conscious, logical processes. Why? Its less messy to interpret the resulting responses from consumers. Consumers share only the logical aspects of their decision-making process because marketers ask for those aspects—and conscious, logical thoughts are much easier to articulate than emotions.

. Few managers would dispute the importance of emotions in their own and consumers' decision making (their espoused theory), yet in their behavior they persist in their pro-reason bias (their theory-in-use). Managers and researchers collect and present information as if decisions derive from conscious processes (in particular, from logical inference), in which emotion has only a bit part in the drama of making decisions. This approach reflects a bias, itself a reflection of powerful emotional drivers, that decision making ought to involve as little emotion and as much rea- son as possible. This bias, in turn, may produce unreliable data.

The pro-reason bias in research is half-right. It is also half-wrong. Multiple, complex reasoning systems do work together during decision making. And as we saw in chapter 1, so do multiple systems of emo- tion.” More important, both sets of systems collaborate. Reason and emotion are not opposites; they are partners who occasionally disagree but depend on one another for success. Joseph Turner elaborates:

To select among alternatives requires some way to assess the relative value of these alternatives, and this ability to assess alternatives is tied to emotions. Emotions give each alternative a value and, thereby, provide a yardstick to judge and to select among alternatives. This process need not be conscious; and indeed, for all animals including humans, it rarely is. Thus to be rational means also to be emotional; and any line that we draw separating cognition and emotion fails to understand the neurology of cognitions. One can't sustain cognitions beyond working memory without tagging them with emotion.”

That is, if an idea doesn't have emotional significance for us, we're not likely to store it and therefore won't have it available for later recall. Studies of patients with particular patterns of brain damage (in- cluding the classic example referred to earlier involving Phineas Gage) reveal that when reasoning systems are intact but emotional capacities

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damaged, poor decisions result. The same outcome occurs when emo- tional systems are intact and reasoning capacities damaged. The separa- tion of reason and emotion, however convenient;.is misleading, accord- ing to Antonio Damasio:

The lower levels in the neural edifice of reason are the same ones that regulate the processing of emotions and feelings. . . . Emotion, feeling, and biological regulation all play a role in human reason. The lowly orders of our organism are in the loop of high reason.?

` The emotion-reason partnership argues for using research methods that enable both reason and emotion to surface and reflect their coexistence and mutual influence.??

Most Thought, Emotion, and Learning Üccur without Awareness

According to most estimates, about 95 percent of thought, emotion, and learning occur in the unconscious mind—that is, without our awareness.? As important as it is, consciousness is the end result of a system of neurons processing information in largely unconscious ways.*° Feelings, the conscious experience of emotions, are only the tip of the iceberg. Now picture, if you will, a few seals lounging on the top of the iceberg. The few seals represent our limited ability to hold more than a few chunks of information at this tip of our consciousness at any one time. If new seals arrive, others must go.

In marketing, much knowledge about consumer decision making is based on information gathered through verbal protocols (telephone interviews, group meetings, questionnaires) that rely on self-reflection and self-awareness. In other words, these methods are largely confined to seeing only what is on the tip of the iceberg. However, as leading neu- roscientist Joseph LeDoux cautions: “We have to be very careful when we use verbal reports based on introspective analyses of ones own mind as scientific data. "^!

So much of our knowledge is unconscious or tacit that we can never be fully aware of all that we know. We often devise surprising new answers by synthesizing information at hand, which is a basic function

. A Voyage to New Frontiers | Al

of our inductive and deductive thinking skills. These unconscious thinking processes use existing “data” to produce conscious thoughts that consist of new answers.*? For example, long-intimate couples can usually answer questions about how their partners would react to unex- pected events because of their deep understanding of each other. This understanding enables them to infer their partners future reactions based on past behavior. Similarly managers who deeply understand their consumers may accurately anticipate their responses to a new . product before the firm presents it. By synthesizing existing knowledge, à manager may know implicitly whether a proposed consumer incentive will achieve a particular unit sales goal. Sales personnel know automati- cally when to begin closing a sale, although they may struggle to explain this knowledge.

Because most knowledge is hidden, surfacing it presents a major challenge. Managers can use metaphors involving both conscious and unconscious processes to address this challenge. By evoking and analyz- ing metaphors from consumers, marketers can draw back the curtains on consumers' tacit knowledge, encourage consumers to look in, and then share what they see so that managers can create enduring value for customers in response to the insights revealed.

The Importance of Socially Shared Mental Models

As we've seen, thought occurs when neurons become active. Differ- ent groups of neurons—thoughts—communicate back and forth with one another. One thought literally leads to another, which may lead back again to the earlier thought. Sets of connected neuronal groups constitute mental models, or what researchers sometimes call scripts or schema. Mental models help us interpret the flood of stimuli and infor- mation that our brains absorb from the world around us. Because we simply can't process all of the incoming information entering our brains, we need a system to filter it, to group it, and to otherwise render it more understandable.

For the sake of efficiency, our mental models help us decide which information to attend to and what to do with it. For example, peoples mental models determine their approach to ill-structured problems,

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their attraction to a particular auto design, their disposition toward - snack foods, and their conduct in an upscale boutique shop. Can you imagine a situation where mental models are absent?? Probably not.

Moreover, groups of people—as diverse as purchasing agents for chemicals used in industrial paints, European consumers of Coca-Cola, or parents bringing their children to Disney World—share important features of their individual mental models.“ Called consensus maps, these shared features can yield valuable insights for marketing strategy development.* In fact, consensus maps are possibly the single most impor- tant set of insights that a manager can have about consumers. Consensus maps, when surfaced through metaphors, reflect consumers’ uncon- scious and conscious thoughts and feelings as well as the commingling of emotion and reason.

As you might imagine, human beings possess an extraordinary number of mental models, although most of them lie dormant at any one time. When they are activated by our experiences, we're generally not aware of their activation. We often become aware of our mental models only when an experience dramatically contradicts those models and the expectations that lie at their core.

The notion of mental models is well established in the social and management sciences.** Quantitative methods in these fields have greatly improved our ability to depict mental models, especially those elements that otherwise different individuals have in common. The task of managing mental models—or, more important, the consensus maps that reflect a market segments common thinking—is less well devel- oped as a formal activity. However, as managers use new insights from various disciplines to understand consumers’ deeper thoughts and feel-

ings, they will likely become more proactive in reshaping their cus- tomers’ consensus maps.

The Fragile Power of Memory

People tend to think of a memory as a snapshot of a past experience that can fade or be lost over time. However, if we view the human expe- rience as the intersection of mind, brain, body, and society, then mem- ory becomes a creative product of our encounters, beliefs, and plans. This creative product develops at a preconscious level; that is, we're not

A Voyage to New Frontiers | 43

aware of its development. Rather than a printed photograph, managers will see a memory reconstructed each time it’s recalled. Sometimes, the differences from one activation to another are small and unimportant, such as recalling our name. Other times, they are larger with great con- sequence, as we have learned from eyewitness testimony research."

Furthermore, marketing is a major source of influence on what con- sumers recall. That is, marketing efforts such as product and service development and delivery not only make memories possible in the first place, communications about them also alter consumers’ subsequent recollections of product or service experiences. This is one of the impor- tant ways in which managers’ conscious and unconscious minds influ- ence consumers’ minds. As we shall see, memory is story-based and, together with universally shared archetypes and core metaphors, mem- ory affects the stories or coherent meanings that consumers create about brands and companies. The consensus maps shared by consumers rep- resent a kind of diagram or outline of these important stories.

The rapid accumulation of insights about human behavior reveals the outlines of a new way of understanding consumers’ thoughts and behavior. While the conscious and unconscious minds are active part- ners, Consumers’ unconscious minds contain the vast majority of rele- vant information for managers. As we'll see in part II, marketers can uncover this information through a variety of innovative research tools and techniques.

DIMAN Ls

Part I

Understanding the Mind of the Market

acht

Chapter Three

Iluminating the Mind

Consumers’ Cognitive Unconscious

Most of what we know we don’t know we know.

It usually seems that we consciously will our voluntary actions, but this is an illusion.

-—Daniel Wegner, The Illusion of Conscious Will -

l MAGINE A FILTER that enables you to see, in color, the varia- tions in tlie heat intensity of objects. Through such a filter, a fresh loaf of bread cooling for fifteen minutes resembles a rainbow as different parts of the loaf lose heat at varied rates. The bread retains its usual shape and texture, but looks far more interesting through this fil- ter. Now imagine a similar filter applied to consumers unconscious thoughts. More colors appear than any fireworks show could ever hope to display. These new colors represent the hidden treasures in the shad- ows of the mind—the cognitive unconscious. Learning to see and use these colors is the major frontier managers must explore as they seek new insights into consumers thinking and behavior. Indeed, most in- fluences on consumer behavior reside at this frontier; consumers en- counter these influences and process them unknowingly! Firms that

4]

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most effectively leverage their explorations of this frontier will gain cru- cial competitive advantages. 3

Equally important, consumers will benefit as well. The limitations managers face using surface-oriented research methods are also limita- tions on consumers. Consumers are empowered, instead, when research | methods are used that allow them the freedom to explore and express their innermost thoughts and feelings along with those on the surface.

The term cognitive unconscious, sometimes called the unconscious mind, refers to the mental processes operating outside consumers' awareness that, together with conscious processes, create their experi- ence of the world. As used in this book, the term does not refer to psy- choanalytic concepts, although those too have an important presence in the unconscious mind and merit treatment all on their own.? Before we explore the unconscious mind, let5.discuss its relationship with the con- scious mind. |

Being Human

We share a great deal with other creatures? For instance, 98 percent of our genes are common to those of chimpanzees. They and other species maintain elaborate social hierarchies, as do we. Ants, for example, have castes; systems to organize labor and food cultivation; characteristics such as altruism, sacrifice, care for the injured, and sharing in times of scarcity; and the ability to mount preemptive military strikes, follow - norms of reciprocity, and so on.*

Their intricate communication structure, which is based on taste and smell rather than sight and sound, enables them to coordinate com- plex activities and to convey such things as the exact location of food and whether to pursue it. Other creatures display degrees of thinking, emotions, feelings, and certain kinds of intentionality—the sense that doing one thing leads to another. The latter might take the form of giv- ing a false impression for individual gain, such as fooling a predator or a competitor for food, or attracting a mate? Much of what we know about human emotion comes from the study of other animals due to such sim- ilarities.* Thus, neither social activities nor the existence of emotions and feelings are uniquely human. Rather, our ability to reflect on these

illuminating the Mind: Consumers’ Cognitive Unconscious | 49

states and activities and to make considered judgments about them makes us special. The human aptitude for self-awareness and self-reflection, then, is what differentiates us from every other living creature. We refer to this ability as “high-order consciousness,” or just “consciousness,” in this book.

Consciousness is a developmental process in humans. An infants capacity for awareness grows as it learns what the mind is and what the mind does.” At around eighteen months, children begin to consider hypothetical situations involving basic human concerns such as aban- donment, fear, change, and love—matters that begin to involve aware- ness of awareness. Our state of consciousness varies over our lifetime and even over the course of a day. Elements of it appear and disappear while we work, walk, sleep, and dream.

High-level consciousness serves an important purpose. In response to the question, "What is consciousness for?" the late Harvard Univer- sity philosopher Robert Nozick answered, “to help us make considered choices." These choices, and the higher levels of consciousness they require, are created through social and technological changes.!'? High- order consciousness evolved to cope with an increasingly complex social world that demanded the ability to learn in new situations.!! For consumers, these complexities can be challenging and even a source of complaint. For six consecutive years, consumers in developed econo- mies have rated the proliferation of product choices one of the top five issues of concern.7 Consumers like the idea of many choices, but not the mentally taxing efforts to cope with them.

Where Does It Come from Now?

Hungarian goulash has a particular flavor; when you take a bite there is one overall taste. Any chef will explain, however, that the combination of spices and ingredients mix and mingle through the cooking and eat- ing process to create a unique essence that is goulash. Diners may not consider the preparation involved; they taste only the result. High-order consciousness is a little like Hungarian goulash. We focus on the overall outcome, not on the complex process that produces it. Whatever its evolutionary origins or developmental history, high-order consciousness

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emerges from, and is defined by, its base ingredients: lower levels of awareness and unawareness.P? |

Whether or not the base of the goulash or "x source of high-order consciousness is initially recognized, it comes about only through the exercise of other activities and component parts. John R. Searle, a lead- ing contemporary philosopher at the University of California at Berke- ley, notes that for something to be unconscious, we must in principle be able to bring it to a conscious level.'* Gazing at our goulash, a food connoisseur most likely couldn't describe in detail how a particular fla- vor came about, but after enjoying the total taste experience, he could | probably deconstruct it. Vague awareness and unconscious information emerge in our conscious mind and we can guess what’ in the goulash after all.

The 85-5 Split

Consciousness is crucial in daily life for many obvious reasons. How- ever, an important fact and one of the key principles of this book is the 95-5 split: At least 95 percent of all cognition occurs below awareness in the shadows of the mind while, at most, only 5 percent occurs in high-order consciousness. Many disciplines have confirmed this insight. John Haugeland explains this idea eloquently:

Thus, compared to “unconscious processing" . . . conscious thinking is conspicuously laborious and slow—not a lot faster than talking, in fact. What's more, it is about as difficult to entertain consciously two distinct trains of thought at the same time as it is to engage in two distinct con- versations at once; consciousness is in some sense a linear or serial process in contrast to the many simultaneous cognitions that are mani- fest in [unconscious action].

Nobel laureate and neuroscientist Gerald M. Edelman and his col- league Giulio Tononi note that the “occurrence of a single conscious state rules out billions and billions of other conscious states, each of which may lead to different potential consequences.”!” To come to con- scious awareness a thought must emerge from its primary and highly

Illuminating the Mind: Consumers’ Cognitive Unconscious | 51

crowded habitat in the unconscious mind. The processes that determine which of a near-infinite array of possible states from this habitat enters consciousness are themselves unconscious. “Most of the data available to us from the external world and from our bodies never enter con- sciousness,” wrote J. Allan Hobson, psychiatrist, director of the Labora- tory of Neurophysiology, and a leading sleep researcher.

We process many inputs automatically, and we have no conscious idea of the vast amounts of data that are saved or discarded. But consciousness is supra automatic in that it is the mental attribute that allows us, occa- sionally at least, to transcend automaticity.'?.

Consciousness allows us the freedom to understand unconscious events. To quote Edelman and Tononi once again: “Unconscious aspects of mental activity, such as motor and cognitive routines, and so-called uncon- scious memories, intentions, and expectations play a fundamental role in shaping and directing our conscious experience.”!”

Consciousness evolved to help us critically review past actions, plan, and organize choices to make in new situations. Not surprisingly, mar- keting managers and researchers focus mostly on conscious consumer thinking. They ask consumers to think consciously about specific topics and respond within formats convenient for both consumers and man- agers. They also observe consumer behavior directly or indirectly using large databases ‘and providing their own highly conscious interpreta- tions. These activities make sense; they seem easy and logical.

But this focus mistakenly ignores arguably the most significant fea- ture of higher order consciousness: the ability to recognize and explore the unconscious mind. The 5 percent of our thinking that is highly con- scious enables us to confront the other 95 percent of mental life below this stratum. This ability is also a quality of being human. We can contem- plate what we're aware of, but many other elements are at work. There- fore, the managerial tendency to focus on conscious consumer thought, while understandable and natural, also blocks managers’ access to the world of unconscious consumer thought and feeling that drives most consumer behavior.

Owning a bicycle and knowing how to ride it are important for tak- ing a bike trip. However, a meaningful journey requires a willingness to get

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on the bike. Similarly, the conscious mind permits meaningful travel in the unconscious mind only if we commit to such a journey. When man- agers forgo such a trip to understand consumers, they are like the well- intentioned stranger who claims to know us from photographs, videos, or one arbitrary encounter, but lacks any real knowledge of who we are. | Like the cartoon of the scientists in figure 1-3, these strangers look at themselves backwards and typically see only the conscious elements staring back.

If everyone knows that so much thinking is unconscious, then why

.do managers (and researchers) miss the mark? Partly because we be- come enamored with (and distracted by) ourselves and our own reflec- tions, like a puppy that enjoys chasing its own tail. As psychologist Daniel Wegner of Harvard University states, “The illusion of will is so compelling that it can prompt the belief that acts were intended when they could not have been. It is as though people aspire to be ideal agents who know all their actions in advance.””! Our experience of consciously willing an action does not mean that we consciously produced it. Far from it.

Typically, we ask consumers to consider and comment on their own ideas and others' in focus groups or to provide careful, conscious answers to careful, consciously developed survey questions. We analyze aggregate consumer data through the crafted lens of particular quantita- tive models and experimental designs. Through these activities, con- sumers and marketers alike get caught up in the explicit issues brought to their attention by researchers and managers. This approach feels right because it employs the very mechanisms that are the assumptions of the approach. The logic is of this sort: "The data collected, based on my assumptions, support those assumptions." Indeed, consumers do learn

. from their satisfying and unsatisfying choices by identifying those biases or decision rules that led to their wise choices and to their mistakes. Relying on their innate storytelling capacities, consumers can reasonably account for their behavior when asked, especially when managers facili- tate the storytelling with questions or other cues.

These reasoned accounts are unlikely totally wrong. The critical issue is how complete they are. If a puzzle has only three pieces and you have two of them, then you can probably figure out what third might be. If the puzzle has 500 pieces and you have only a few important ones,

Illuminating the Mind: Consumers’ Cognitive Unconscious | 93

the larger picture will forever remain a mystery. Sometimes, the puzzles that marketers open have only a few pieces and other times, a great many. The latter case, typically the most important one, requires tap- ping into high-order consciousness and digging deeper into the uncon- scious mind for a more complete picture. The very existence of our high-order conscious mind gives us the capacity to understand the unconscious foundations on which it rests. Unfortunately, often we become entranced by our awareness of our awareness and ignore the unconscious mind that makes it all possible.

- The Unconscious Mind in Action

We needn't search long or far for examples of the unconscious mind in action.

* The social context of eating has enormous impact on consumers' experience. This experience includes how foods taste, what sounds seem pleasant or harsh, and what strikes the person as repulsive or appealing. The exact same dinner will taste different depending on whether one is dining with a close friend or an unpleasant stranger.

* Many more units of a product are sold at a price of $9.99 than at $10.00. Certainly the one penny savings on identical products does not account for this.

* The correlation between stated intent and actual behavior is usu- ally low and often negative. For example, more than 60 percent of consumers participating in an at-home test of a new kitchen appliance indicated after trying the product that they were “likely” or “very likely" to purchase the appliance in the next three months. Eight months after the products introduction, only 12 percent of these consumers actually made a purchase.

A survey among those who did not follow through on their stated intent found that most consumers couldn't explain their behavior.

* Blind taste tests may suggest that consumers prefer formula- tion A over formulation B by a significant majority. Yet when

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consumers know the formulations' brand names and can see their packaging, they strongly prefer B. :

Consumers using both a store brand and a national brand of an over-the-counter medication insist that they know the two brands are identical except for price. However, when their symptoms are severe, the great majority of these same con- sumers use the higher-priced name brand. Moreover, if the med- icine is for a child or spouse, the purchaser will almost always select the national brand. Unconsciously, the buyer believes that the national brand works better and is therefore better for her loved ones. |

e A stimulus that appears only for milliseconds and doesn’t regis-

ter consciously can affect responders' future behavior. For exam- ple, a European manufacturer was testing a sensing system that measured the speed of a vehicle and the distance of an object in the vehicles direct path. When the system detected a certain combination of speed and object distance, it displayed the mes- sage "Brake!" on the vehicles windshield. In simulated driving tests, the system increased reaction times of test participants. The R&D staff experimented with different message intervals, such as one or a few seconds during which the alert would appear. Interestingly, the fastest reaction time occurred when the message flashed subliminally, so quickly that people were unaware of reacting to it.?

When judging sincerity in advertising, consumers unconsciously select many of the cues. Moreover, both creative staffs and con- sumers remain unaware of consumers' selection of these signals. For example, in a Mind of the Market study, Maya Bourdeau found that, in judging sincerity, both consumers and creative staffs unconsciously use criteria related to neoteny, or people's fascination with infants and baby animals. Neotenous character- istics include large, round eyes and high foreheads that remind us of infancy, innocence, and naiveté. People perceive messages transmitted by a baby-faced person as more sincere because they see babies as innocent and honest. However, neither the con- sumers nor the creative personnel in this study were consciously aware of the power of neoteny.

illuminating the Mind: Consumers’ Cognitive Unconscious | 55

These examples are, to use a cliché, just the tip of the iceberg of the unconscious mind. Nevertheless, they raise important challenging ques- tions. Currently, managers’ notions that consumers engage in calculated rationality strongly guide their approach to consumers.” But price, demonstrated product effectiveness, and even consumers’ confidently stated claims simply don't reliably predict what consumers will actually do. When using traditional research methods, managers must augment the idea of calculated rationality with equally sensible but typically invisible insights.

From Unconscious Decision to Conscious Action

The areas of the human brain that involve choice are activated well before we become consciously aware that we've made a choice. That is, decisions “happen” before they are seemingly “made.” In fact, uncon- scious judgments not only happen before conscious judgments, but they guide them as well. A cleverly designed study by Antoine Bechara, a neuroscientist at the University of Iowa, and his associates tested this idea. The study participants included normal individuals and patients who had suffered damage to the prefrontal lobes of their brains—the structures responsible for decision making.?* Bechara’s team asked both groups to perform a task using four decks of cards, two of which were advantageous decks and two disadvantageous. Playing mostly with the advantageous decks produced an overall gain of money, while the disad- vantageous decks produced an overall loss. The researchers tracked the number of cards that each group drew from each deck and monitored changes in participants' skin temperature, awareness of their progress in the game, and attitude.

The study generated interesting findings. For instance, before they realized that two decks were “bad,” but after they experienced all four decks, the normal participants generated high anticipatory skin- conductance responses when they pondered making a choice from a "bad" deck. They did not consciously know that they were about to pull a card from a disadvantageous deck. However, their high anticipatory skin-conductance responses before they took a card from the bad deck revealed their unconscious reaction to the games parameters. The

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patients with prefrontal brain damage displayed no such distinction even after they had identified the good and bad decks. In fact, they dis- regarded this knowledge as they continued playing the game. At some level, the normal patients recognized that choosing from a bad deck was a bad strategy. They arrived at this decision without the added assurance provided by conscious knowledge. Whether they perceived it, the nor- mal patients used their unconscious learning from prior experience to inform their future decisions.

Often our actions seem to derive from conscious decisions when we actually made them much earlier. For example, imagine that you are walking where people have seen poisonous snakes. Suddenly, you notice a coiled object under a bush. This sight triggers an immediate, unconscious activity involving the amygdala, a subcortical area of the brain involved in certain emotions. The activity in the amygdala triggers an immediate defensive act: You freeze or perhaps step back. This rapid, complex action involves a number of brain and other physical systems working simultaneously to produce an action that we can consider only after it occurs.”

Human beings store images in a part of the brain called the hip- pocampal system. Images related to snakes comprise your explicit mem- ories of actual interactions with snakes, garden hoses, or perhaps tree roots that resemble snakes. If you see an object that more closely resem- bles a snake than a garden hose, then your innate plan for dealing with dangerous snakes kicks in. If you realize that the object is a garden hose, then your awareness unfolds unconsciously as you retrieve various images, compare them, and then evaluate them before consciously deciding how to react. If the object more closely resembles a tree root, then you resume walking. Your heart may race a little faster, your mus- .cles may tense, and you may even blush. None of these critical responses ever required conscious thought. If they did, our species would have gone the way of the dodo bird. After all, when faced with a possibly dan- gerous snake, who has the time to think about a response? Our uncon- scious processes often protect us better than our conscious processes do. A conclusion that we consciously experience (“That snake is dangerous") already happened in our unconscious mind. Our awareness of it takes the form of an inner voice saying that its okay (or not) to continue what we were doing (strolling through the woods). That inner voice creates the illusion that we have made a conscious decision.

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The Neurological Foundation of the Unconscious Mind/Brain

As we saw in chapter 2, the brain is an extraordinary and still mysteri- ous organ. Consider again the small but important cerebral cortex, which factors into thinking, speech, and complex movement patterns. The cerebral cortex has approximately 30 billion neurons, which serve as the building blocks for thought. And as it turns out, different neurons like to “talk” with one another. Thus, they form clusters akin to conver- sation groups or chat rooms. These clusters form what are called con- structs or specific thoughts and ideas. Moreover, these clusters like to communicate or gossip with one another. These “conversations” involve reasoning processes linking constructs. That is partly why the same idea may trigger different thoughts among different people or even in the same person at different times.

Most of the brain spends its time communicating with itself; only infrequently do we consciously witness these conversations.” Put differ- ently, conversations among neurons and groups of neurons are generally quiet; they involve a silent language we do not “see” or “hear.” What do neuronal groups talk about? They converse about actions, feelings, and thoughts. Occasionally, the results of these conversations bubble up into our consciousness, and we become aware of them. Other times, we may have a “feeling” that the conversations are occurring, but we may not be able to grasp their nature. Most of the time, though, we have no idea that they're taking place. Whether we perceive it or not, the activity of the brain gives rise to the mind, which consists of tools for thinking.^" Cog- nitive neuroscientists say that the *mind is what the brain does" and use the term *mind/brain" to denote this concept.

The Processes behind the Unconscious Mind

Consciousness is the awareness of awareness and is a prerequisite for healthy functioning in a complex society. It influences our ability to make choices—as well as marketers’ ability to understand consumer behavior. Market researchers can certainly acquire valuable information at consumers' conscious level relatively easily through standard research methods. For example, through surveys they can obtain useful informa-

08 | Understanding the Mind of the Market

tion about preferred bium designs già they present. consumers. with clear alternatives.

However, approaches that dope on EES thinking often do not go far enough. This isn’t surprising y when we remember that con- scious activity represents only about 5 percent of human cognition. As George Lowenstein suggests, the conscious mind explains actions pro- duced by unconscious processes. And, as scientists in several disciplines point out, these explanations are often woefully incomplete. For instance, a product-development team at a graphics software firm used a focus group consisting of ten dissatisfied users of their new software to better understand customer complaints. The team predicted that the users would express dissatisfaction with the clarity of the instructions and the confusing nature of certain icons. Thus, they asked the modera- tor to explore these areas. Indeed, discussions in the focus group identi- fied the instructions and icons as main sources of trouble. The company improved these features—but complaints decreased only marginally. Later, while using in-depth, one-on-one storytelling to develop adver- tising for this and related products, the firm identified another, more serious source of consumer dissatisfaction. A group setting relying on the conscious exchange of ideas had failed to surface this more seri- ous issue.

Unconscious processes generally serve us well. In fact, as the earlier example about encountering a possible snake suggests, what people sometimes mean by intuition or gut reaction is really the manifestation of distilled wisdom accumulated in our unconscious mind. In the mar- ketplace, unconscious processes enable us to make purchase decisions more efficiently and effectively than we could if we had to consciously process every relevant factor. Moreover, many unconscious processes— for example, our ability to acquire and use verbal and nonverbal lan- guage—are innate.?? :

We acquire many other components of our unconscious mind sim- ply through having different experiences.” In fact, the unconscious mind learns quickly. We quickly transform good and bad experiences into tacit rules of thumb that guide us when we encounter new situa- tions. We then adapt to those new situations and acquire new social norms without conscious thought. The unconscious mind also serves as a repository for skills and other forms of knowledge that we learn con-

Illuminating the Mind: Consumers’ Cognitive Unconscious . | 89

sciously but that become automatic through repeated use. These skills range from walking, tying our shoes, and dreaming in a second language to knowing when a consumer is ready to commit to a sales offer. Working in partnership with each other, the innate and learned components of the unconscious mind powerfully enable us to take action. For instance, they can produce a response to potential danger so quickly that we become aware of the response only after it has occurred. Or they may cause us to continue working on a mental task even after we seem to have put it out of our minds; for example, when we sud- denly recall a name that was “on the tip of our tongue” hours ago. This information retrieval often catches us by surprise because, at the moment it occurs, we've made no conscious effort to prompt it.

The Interaction of Consumers’ and Managers Unconscious Minds

Recall figure 2-1, which depicted how consumers’ and managers’ think- ing interacts. It was noted that when managers think about consumers, they do so using both conscious and unconscious levels of thought, since important thinking tools reside at each level. The same is true of consumers when they consider a firm’ offerings. The managers’ con- scious and unconscious levels of thinking commingle with one another and, ultimately, commingle with the same processes among consumers. In this way, the mind of the manager is present in the mind of the con- sumer, and vice versa.

Two examples will help illustrate the subtle interactions that can occur between marketers and consumers. In a study of unconscious communication, dental patients received a placebo painkiller during a typically painful dental procedure. The patients experienced a lack of discomfort only if the dentists also believed that the treatment they administered was an authentic painkiller. Unconscious behaviors ema- nating from these dentists reinforced their patients’ belief in the placebo. However, when the dentists knew that the treatment was not authentic and merely pretended it was, patients experienced consider- able discomfort. (All patients involved in the study were undergoing the same procedure with the same likelihood of pain.) Something in the disbelieving dentists’ unconscious behavior signaled to the patients that

4

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the supposed painkiller was a sham. Patients processed and acted on this nonverbal cue unconsciously while consciously believing that they had received an authentic painkiller—and the dentists unconsciously colluded in maintaining this belief.

A second example comes from a proprietary experiment spon- sored by a professional association. Not surprisingly, this study found that a salesperson's confidence in a product (his belief in its efficacy) is an excellent predictor of sales success. But even more interesting, the representatives confidence conveys in subtle, nonverbal ways a sense of authenticity that “adds great persuasive power even when [the equipment] is not the best available. Confidence contrived does not work.” Like the dentists who believed they were using a real painkiller, salespeople who truly believe in their product will influence customers in their favor. The unconscious expression of belief by sales personnel is a powerful cue that customers process both con- sciously and unconsciously. Thus, the first “sale” must be to the sales representative.

A Closer Look at the Placebo Effect

Much of marketing is about placebo effects. The term placebo is Latin for “I shall please.” In common usage, it carries with it negative connota- tions of fakery, trickery, falseness, and sham. This is unfortunate, because the so-called placebo effect is very real, and stems from actual neurological mechanisms. Although the technical quality of goods and services is crucial in providing satisfying consumption experiences, an important part of consumers’ total experience with a firms offerings results from what consumers believe and expect these offerings to deliver. When product quality declines, so do the added benefits created by the mind of the consumer.

How does the placebo effect work? Our beliefs, expectations, and possibly prior experiences cause biological changes roughly equivalent in magnitude and effect to those produced by chemical substances known to have the same effects. For example, naturally occurring painkillers in the brain, called endorphins, are similar in chemical struc- ture to opium-derived narcotics and act much like morphine. When

Illuminating the Mind: Consumers’ Cognitive Unconscious | 64

a placebo analgesic is administered to postoperative patients, many of them experience an easing of pain. Their belief that they have taken an authentic painkiller is enough to stimulate naturally occurring pain- killers.

This and other research shows that, for many people, the belief or expectation of a positive outcome can trigger the same physiological processes and hence produce the same benefits as an artificial sub- stance. In fact, in most studies of the effectiveness of a medication, between 35 percent and 50 percent of participants receiving the placebo treatment show the same improvements as those being treated with the actual medicine. This is not based on self-reports of patients, but on monitoring of physiological conditions. For example, one recent study involving antidepressants used brain-scanning techniques to show that patients who improved following placebo treatments and those who improved after receiving an actual antidepressant medication (38 percent and 52 percent, respectively) showed changes in activity in the same area of the brain.?! People who did not respond to either the placebo or the antidepressant showed no change in this same area of the brain. The placebo effect is so real and so grounded in neurochem- istry that it occurs even in other animal species, such as rats, that pre- sumably are not subject to *tricks of the mind" or high-order conscious expectation. Research of this sort indicates that the placebo effect can operate through conditioning, not just through conscious expectation and belief. —

Most scientists generally accept that the placebo effect produces a significant amount of the benefit derived from an authentic medication. This benefit is additive; it supplements the benefits already provided by the active ingredients or intervention. For instance, one popular over- the-counter treatment for stomach distress doesn’t kick in until at least thirty minutes after ingestion. However, many frequent users report sig- nificant relief within the first twelve minutes. This relief is very real and is accompanied by changes in body chemistry. The actual treatment takes effect later, sustaining the positive experience. In doing so, it rein- forces the expectation of more immediate relief—and therefore its deliv- ery. This phenomenon demonstrates the combined action of expecta- tion, conditioning, and authentic treatment. The power of this combination has far-reaching implications in the world of medicine and

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beyond. The benefits of placebo-only treatments, however, often decline rather soon. But when coupled with an authentic treatment, placebo benefits continue. | : |

As we've seen, belief factors into the placebo effect. For example, - participants in one experiment were told that a substance they would be asked to drink might induce vomiting. After drinking the liquid, nearly 80 percent of the participants actually vomited. When they received a placebo "antidote" to stop their vomiting, their condition improved almost immediately. As you may already have guessed, the antidote was the same inert substance but in a different color.

An experiment reported by V. S. Ramachandran demonstrates the power of the mind to reshape the bodys neurological systems. Although not strictly in the domain of placebo effects, the experiment tapped into the mysterious world of whats known as phantom pain. Common among amputees, phantom pain is pain perceived in a miss- ing limb. This pain, often excruciating, may occur in various ways. In one sufferer, it took the form of a vivid sensation that the person's miss- ing hand was uncontrollably curling up in a clenched fist, causing agony as the fingers dug mercilessly into the palm. Using a special system of mirrors, the researchers asked the man to insert his intact hand into a transparent box that superimposed the reflection of the intact hand's actions onto the reflection of the missing hand. Thus, the missing hand appeared to mimic the actions of the intact hand:

Robert looked into the box, positioned his good hand to superimpose its reflection over his phantom hand, and after mahing a fist with the nor- mal hand, tried to unclench both hands simultaneously. The first time he did this, Robert exclaimed that he could feel the phantom fist open along with his good fist, simply as a result of the visual feedback. Better yet, the pain disappeared. The phantom then remained unclenched for sev- eral hours until a new spasm occurred spontaneously. Without the mir- ror, his phantom would throb in pain for forty minutes or more. Robert took the box home and tried the same trick each time that the clenching spasm recurred. If he did not use the box, he could not unclench his fist despite trying with all his might. If he used the mirror, the hand opened

instantly. . . . We have tried this treatment in over a dozen patients and it works for half of them.

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Referring to another patient undergoing the same treatment, Ramachandran notes, “This is a mind-boggling observation if you think about it. Here is a man with no hand and no fingernails. How does one get nonexistent nails digging into a nonexistent palm, resulting in severe pain? Why would a mirror eliminate the phantom spasm?” Much of Ramachandran’s book, Phantoms in the Brain, provides a neuro- logical and social answer to this question. He explains:

Everything I have learned from the intensive study of both normal people and patients who have sustained damage to various parts of their brains points to an unsettling notion: that you create your own “reality” from mere fragments of information, that what you “see” is a reliable—but not always accurate—representation of what exists in the world, that you are completely unaware of the vast majority of events going on in your brain.”

This discussion of placebo effects demonstrates the power of the unconscious mind to produce very powerful and beneficial experiences over and above those expected from the technical merits of the product. Consider the extra experience that people have when they know that they're consuming their favorite brand compared to the lesser experi- ence of their brand in a blind taste test. We'll probably discover that this special functioning of the mind accounts for loyalty to a brand or service provider, especially in commodity products. While the mind of the manager may ultimately yield the technical features of a product or serv- ice, the mind of the consumer adds significant value about the con- sumption experience. Rather than treating these consumer sources of added value as frivolous, we must understand and encourage them. They factor into the consumers storytelling process when creating brand meaning, covered in chapter 7.

Mechanisms Underlying the Unconscious Mind/Brain

A number of mechanisms support the operation of the unconscious consumer mind. We look more closely at these mechanisms in the fol- lowing sections.

64 | Understanding the Mind of the Market

Priming

Imagine that you're conversing with someone, and the person hap- pens to casually mention the word doctor during the conversation. Then he shows you a jumble of letters in which the letters "n," “u,” “r,” "s," and *e" are embedded, among many other letters. The person asks you to find a word in the seemingly random bunch of letters. As research reveals, under these conditions you would probably quickly find the word nurse in the jumbled letters. The prior mention of the word doctor has primed your thinking. It has caused you to focus your attention unconsciously in a way that another phonetically similar word (such as curse) would not. Though the priming process has a powerful effect on our thinking, we are generally unaware of it. For example, in the above scenario, you'd be unaware that the-word doctor enabled you to identify the word nurse more quickly than you would have without priming.

Similarly the music played in retail settings can significantly increase or decrease the amount of time consümers spend in the store, which can affect sales volume. In one experiment commissioned by a major European retailer, researchers found no significant differences in shoppers' self-reported time spent in three store situations: no music played; music designed to decrease shopping time; and music designed to increase shopping time. However, shoppers' actual time spent in the store differed as predicted across the three situations. Although most participants perceived the presence of background music in the store, few could accurately describe the style being played. Thus, their deci- sion to stay in the store longer, or to leave more quickly, happened unconsciously. Moreover, the researchers found no differences in the impact of the music on time spent in the store between those who recalled music playing and those who did not. Even if the presence of the music didn’t register consciously, at least as measured by the ability to recall music later, it still influenced shoppers' behavior without their knowing it.

Sometimes information can prime unwanted actions or thoughts. For instance, stop-smoking campaigns often backfire, prompting smokers to light up more often. This backfiring stems from so-called trigger cues. Even if a billboard communicates the obvious health haz- ards of smoking, the giant cigarette in the graphic display may activate

Illuminating the Mind: Consumers’ Cognitive Unconscious | 65

a smokers unconscious cravings. One advertising campaign designed to discourage illicit drug usage featured a visual of drug paraphernalia in unpleasant surroundings to highlight the disease and victimization. All the ad's viewers consciously—and accurately—understood the mes- sage in the ad, regardless of whether they'd used drugs or were recover- ing drug addicts. However, the images only heightened recovering addicts’ desire to relapse. The ad made these individuals’ recovery so difficult that it was withdrawn. We will revisit the topic of priming later in this chapter. nit

Adding Information That "Isn't There"

Our senses, acting on environmental cues, help us create our under- standing of the world around us. For example, in the words of Harvard University biologist John Dowling, visual perception is "reconstructive and creative... . The image that falls on the retina is two-dimensional, yet we live in a three-dimensional world. . . . Not only does the visual system use the information impinging on the retinas, but it draws on visual memories and experience to construct a coherent view of the world.” The third dimension comes from unconscious inferences drawn by applying our tacit knowledge and rules. Thus, we uncon- sciously use judgments based on one set of cues to create judgments about other matters. Figure 3-1 is an example of this phenomenon.

After viewing this figure for three or four seconds, people ranging from fifth graders to senior executives offer remarkably similar accounts of the scene. As they see it, the figure shows a large creature with an angry expression on its face chasing a smaller creature who looks fright- ened. Note that this "story" comprises several elements: social relation- ships (one creature chasing another), emotions (anger and fear), inten- tion (render harm and seek safety), and physical orientation (large and small, and locomotion).

As you may have guessed, both creatures are identical in every way. Without being aware of it, we use several visual cues to infer the story in the picture. In this case, the converging lines suggest a hallway or tunnel and create the optical illusion that one of the creatures is farther in the distance than the other. A lifetime of experience with depth perception tells us that, if two objects look identical in size but one appears farther

66 | Understanding the Mind of the Market

FIGURE 3 - 1

Two Creatures in a Hallway

From Mind Sights by Roger N. Shepard, O 1990 by W. H. Freeman. Reprinted by permission of Henry Holt and Company, LLC.

away, then it must be larger than it actually looks. Since we "see" one creature as farther down the hallway, we *know" that it’s bigger than the creature that appears closer. If the converging lines disappeared, then we'd deem the two creatures identical in size. When the two appear the same size, viewers will likely not infer that one of them is chasing and menacing the other; this particular social element evaporates.

Yet figure 3-1 has another intriguing lesson: Even after we learn that the creatures are identical in every way, one still looks bigger to us. Our unconscious processes keep producing an experience that contradicts and prevails over our conscious knowledge. Moreover, after learning the truth about the creatures in the drawing, people who initially judged

Illuminating the Mind: Consumers’ Cognitive Unconscious | 67

one creature larger than the other still take longer to scan the “larger” creature in their mind’s eye.

The perception of an angry look on the “larger” creature and a frightened look on the “smaller” creature, together with the judgment that one is chasing the other, reflects the ability of the unconscious mind to add emotional meaning to and define relationships between charac- ters in a scene. This phenomenon speaks volumes about our natural, automatic capacities to generate stories based on just a few cues as we discuss in chapter 9, Memory, Metaphor, and Stories.

.. What does all this imply for marketers? Physical, social, and psy- chological settings and a consumer's emotional state—all of which com- prise what researchers call context—profoundly shape consumers’ inter- pretation of images, as well as sounds, smells, and other incoming sensory information.?? Visual cues, such as the lines suggesting a hall- way, prompt us to generate information (“One creatures chasing the other” or “The big one’s angry”) that simply does not exist in the actual image. How our brain receives and processes sound causes us to judge the direction from which the sound is coming, the distance of its source, and the event causing the sound. These judgments create other judg- ments telling us, for example, whether we should feel threatened or comforted, angry or amused. However, we are aware only of the judg- ments, not the sophisticated processing that produces them. As with placebo effects in medicine, our minds are very active creating or pro- viding qualities not otherwise presented by a stimulus, be it a supposed painkiller or wine from a famous vineyard.

Lets explore this process further. When viewing figure 3-2, most people will "see" a triangle (as well as pizza and the video character Pac- man). Many people will even see the white inside the triangle to be brighter than the white outside of it. New brain-imaging techniques show us that the brain records the lines as if they were actually present.

In the same way, consumers record as present an experience with a product or service that they expect to be present even if its not. Absent information is counted as present. Thus, if consumers know they are sipping their favorite beverage, they add special qualities to the con- sumption experience such as smooth taste, smoky flavor, a relaxing feel- ing, and so on. In a blind taste test, these added qualities do not materi- alize, because in such tests brand name does not play a part in participants' expectations. Blind taste tests can help marketers develop

68 | Understanding the Mind of the Market

FIGURE 3-2

What Do You See Besides Pacmen?

new product formulations before introducing them as brands. However, in these early developmental stages, marketers should also analyze the impact of environmental cues, such as package design, brand name, and logo, on the consumption experience.

Brand meaning is even more elusive than marketing researchers pre- viously thought, because consumers' predispositions generate thoughts and feelings toward the brand that unconsciously influence their reac- tion to that brand. They fill in missing information, which becomes as real to them as if it were physically present in a product or in promo- tional materials. Consumers add qualities to a familiar brand just as they see the missing lines in figure 3-2. These qualities are experienced as real and duly recorded in the brain as such. They are real, because con- sumers' minds (more than the brand) have supplied them with that information. Remove any knowledge of the brand, and the special qual- ities tend to disappear.

Subtracting Information That /s There

Our minds also subtract information. Information one would ex- pect to be visible isn’t. We often believe we take in more information than we actually do. For example, in one study, researchers showed par- ticipants a short video in which a pendulum in the center of the picture

: illuminating the Mind: Consumers’ Cognitive Unconscious | 69

swings dramatically back and forth. With the first version of the video, mud splashes appear randomly on the screen. In this version, viewers didn’t see the pendulum moving. With a second version of the video, in which the mud splashes are removed, viewers did notice the movement of the pendulum—and were surprised that they missed it in the earlier version.

In another experiment, participants counted the number of times a basketball is passed among a small group of people, as shown on a video.? In the video, a gorilla walks past the group—but viewers don't mention seeing the animal. When the researchers showed the video without first asking the subjects to count, the gorilla becomes the most conspicuous element of the scene. In the first version of the experiment, the focus on counting causes people to unconsciously subtract the gorilla, a presence otherwise remarkable.

We subtract details from our experiences because we have a limited capacity to hold information at a level of conscious inspection. We can't afford to attend to cues that are not obviously relevant to the task at hand if we want to perform that task well. Yet participants’ subtraction of the gorilla in the previously described experiment doesn't necessarily mean that they completely discounted the gorilla from the experience. In all likelihood, had these same participants seen a photo showing a large number of different animals (including a gorilla) soon after view- ing the film, their eyes would have moved first to the gorilla.

This tendency to subtract information explains the frequent phe- nomenon in which people recall an advertisement but not the product being advertised. What engages our attention is not the brand but some other element of the message. In another example, a manufacturer of marine engines brought a group of boat builders to a marine-engine production plant to impress on them the quality and care with which the engines were manufactured. The plant manager had developed a specific list of “learning points” he wanted to convey to the builders. After the visit, the builders recalled very few of these points while eval- uating the experience. Upon investigation, the company discovered that several graphic and clever safety and motivational posters intended for employees had distracted the visitors. These posters were removed, and during the next visit the boat builders successfully retained the learning points.

70 | Understanding the Mind of the Market

Figure 3-3, also shown in chapter 1, graphically demonstrates a variation of the information-subtraction phenomenon. When viewing this figure, most people first see either a duck lying on its back or a rab- bit nibbling grass. Very few people will see both animals at once.

After staring at it, people eventually see whichever animal they missed at first. The two views will then continue to alternate; viewers see one animal and then the other. Even when they know that both ani- mals are present, most people can still see only one at a time. Seeing one animal requires them to deny unconsciously the presence of the other; they know it’s there but can't see it.

This phenomenon, in which awareness of one idea requires the sup- pression of another, helps explain why people may view a brand differ- ently at different times. The context in which a brand is viewed will favor the surfacing of one interpretation over another. Thus, a duality or paradox emerges in consumers' perceptions of a product or service. For

FIGURE 3 - 3

What Do You See?

From Mind Sights by Roger N. Shepard, € 1990 by W. H. Freeman. Reprinted by permission of Henry Holt and Company, LLC.

Illuminating the Mind: Consumers’ Cognitive Unconscious | 71 ——

example, a person may describe Coca-Cola as invigorating or relaxing in one setting and as an American symbol or a universal icon in another context. Package recipients judge the delivery of a package by Federal Express as slow or fast depending on their own social and psychological conditions—even if the actual delivery timing is constant. For instance, if a recipient is eager to receive the package, he will perceive the delivery time as slow.

These alternating perceptions involving the interaction of uncon- - scious and conscious processes suggest that firms must be particularly sensitive to that element of a duality that occurs most often in con- sumers' conscious minds and what may cause a shift to the uncon- scious. Companies can then build in cues in the design of a service set- ting or a product and its packaging and advertising that will encourage activation of the more “silent” element in the duality.

The unconscious mind represents a significant frontier where marketers may establish secure beachheads of competitive advantage. Certainly no firm can claim to understand consumers without colonizing this land of opportunity. Indeed, companies must grasp how conscious and uncon- scious thinking interact with and shape one another if they want to mine the treasures hidden in this frontier. Equally important, marketers must also understand how their own unconscious minds influence mar- keting mix and other key decisions. Finally, the mind of the market con- sists of the interactions of both managers' and consumers' conscious and unconscious thinking, adding yet another challenging complexity. The mind is what the brain does, and managers must pay considerable attention to the mechanics and paradoxes that characterize it.

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Chapter Four

Interviewing the Mind/Brain

Metaphor Elicitation —

Imagination is the soul of the mind

and metaphor its primary nourishment.

The elaboration of metaphors is an imaginative form of rational thinking.

—Richard E. Cytowic

Vi ARKETING PROFESSIONALS have numerous research meth- ods at their disposal, including one-on-one interviewing, surveys, ethnographic studies, projective techniques, and focus groups. All have their strengths and weaknesses. This chapter begins with a short commentary on research methods, then focuses on metaphors that transport unconscious, tacit thought to a conscious level where it may be examined. The next chapter reviews two additional methods for interviewing the mind.

About Research Methods

All research methods involve compromises with reality.’ Researchers pre- fer more than one method whenever possible, because human thought

n

14 | Understanding the Mind of the Market -

and behavior are too complex for any one method to capture fully. Also, when different methods converge on the same insight, the researcher can feel greater confidence in its soundness. Excepting focus groups, which have little grounding in any science, the most commonly used market research methods all have situations in which they are and are not appropriate to use.

Marketers must develop and use research methods that dig deeply into the mind of the market by taking new approaches as well as improving upon old ones. Traditional quantitative and qualitative meth- - ods work well in several circumstances: when managers have substan- tial brand and category knowledge, when little has changed among con- sumers or in the competitive environment, where consumers can readily articulate what they think, and where issues of recall are not present or relevant. For example, the brand manager who wants to know what opinion leaders think about an established brand might use a survey, especially if she knows the relevant drivers of purchase. If she wants to study the opinion leaders' vocabulary, she could conduct a focus group exclusively of such leaders.

Tactical issues usually suggest traditional techniques. For example, statistical analyses of questionnaire data or opinions expressed in focus groups can help identify the most attractive package design. Marketers can use scanner data to determine which products to promote together or whether to discontinue a particular promotion; in-store observations and scanner data together to assess the value of particular product placements within stores; statistical analyses of scanner data, simulated settings, and store exit interviews to assess the effects of lighting, music, and other in-store environmental cues on purchase volume; and user observations to determine the utility of an established product or a pro- totype of a new product.

Standard research methods address basic marketing issues such as: How do purchase frequency and store preference differ among market segments and are they changing? How has market share changed among competing brands? Do consumers prefer product attribute bun- dle A over bundle B? Is the taste of formulation A preferred over formu- lation B?

Standard methods falter in addressing such important issues as: What frame of reference do people use when thinking about a brand?

' Interviewing the Mind/Brain: Metaphor Elicitation | — 79

Why do consumers prefer one attribute bundle over another? What role does a product play in consumers' lives? How do consumers feel about the basic problem a product is designed to solve? What do people mean by “good health,” “luxury,” “managing money,” or “a company I can trust”? Why are consumers loyal to a particular brand? What are the dimensions of the customers’ total experience with a product? What latent needs are causing consumers to use a product differently in differ- ent situations?

In these cases, marketers need methods that go beyond what cus- tomers can readily articulate—that get at what people don’t know they know. This is more critical than ever before, as rapid technological change requires managers to understand consumers’ latent needs. Put differently, people’s responses to very new products and services are governed by their deeply held and hard-to-express thoughts and feel- ings rather than by surface-level attitudes and opinions. The more radi- cal the product, the more important is the unconscious mind in accounting for the acceptance or rejection of the innovation.

The most limiting aspect of research, however, does not stem from inherent compromise but from human nature. That is, the person using a method—rather than the method itself—most determines both the benefits and problems that the method will generate. These limitations come largely from the inappropriate matching of a method to a problem. Sometimes, too, researchers forget or ignore the compromises that a method entails and present findings as more robust and reliable than warranted.

Trained in mathematical sociology, I favor survey research and tech- niques that require thoughtful statistical analysis. Advances in mathe- matical analyses permit more sophisticated inferences and promise to dig deeper into customers’ and consumers’ unconscious minds.” These inferences, however, must still be informed by important advances about how customers think. They must also build on deep ini- tial explorations into relevant thoughts and feelings, the building blocks of sound quantitative inferences. The new insights from several disci- plines introduced here, plus recent advances in qualitative investiga- tions to be discussed here, should benefit the more quantitatively ori- ented researchers.

I highly regard various observational techniques when skilled observers use them, whether in laboratory settings, a consumers home,

i6 | Understanding the Mind of the Market: 1

a retail store, a customers office, or a manufacturing plant. At the same time, these techniques simply cannot uncover all the important aspects of consumers' unconscious and conscious thoughts and feelings. Given the prominence of the unconscious mind, or the cognitive unconscious, we must augment existing research methods with methods designed SEES to probe unconscious cognition.?

“Penetrating the Mind by Metaphor"

As we saw in chapter 3, the unconscious gives the orders and the con- scious mind carries them out. Or, as Gerald M. Edelman and Giulio Tononi, authors of A Universe of Consciousness: How Matter Becomes Imagination, put it, “Unconscious aspects of mental activity, such as motor and cognitive routines, and unconscious memories, intentions, and expectations play a fundamental role in shaping and directing our conscious experience.”

If the unconscious mind is so powerful—and so elusive—must managers and consumer researchers despair of ever surfacing the treas- ures within it? Happily, no. Researchers from various disciplines have developed numerous devices for mining the unconscious and using those revelations to create real value for consumers.5

One particularly intriguing device involves metaphors.’ By inviting consumers to use metaphors as they talk about a product or service, researchers bring consumers' unconscious thoughts and feelings to a level of awareness where both parties can explore them more openly together. The appendix to this chapter provides guidance for doing this.

Because metaphors can reveal cognitive processes beyond those shown in more literal language, they can also surface important thoughts that literal language may underrepresent or miss completely? For this reason, specialists in clinical psychology and psychiatry are increasingly using metaphor elicitation to help patients make unconscious experi- ences progressively more conscious and communicable.

Metaphors direct consumers' attention, influence their perceptions, enable them to make sense of what they encounter, and influence their . decisions and actions.’ Therefore, understanding and influencing con-

Interviewing the Mind/Brain: Metaphor Elicitation | — 77

sumers’ thoughts and decisions—and designing more valuable offerings for them—requires an exploration of the metaphors they use.

Like much research on metaphors, this book treats them broadly to include similes, analogies, allegories, proverbs, and the like. All of these forms express one thought in terms of another. Historically, novelists and poets have used vivid imagery in metaphors to express love, desire, pain, and life in general. However, metaphor making is a fundamental aspect of the mind.!° Indeed, metaphors have a neurological foundation, which accounts for their prominence and operation.” Different social contexts, ranging from a people's overall cultural environment to small social cliques, affect the way these wirings operate.

More firms are using metaphors as a formal way of understanding their customers.!2 Some use consumers’ metaphors to develop entire new lines of business. For example, Hallmark launched a new division based on the insights gained from consumer metaphors relating to memory. A major European-based cosmetics company has used three core metaphors it discovered in consumers’ thinking to develop new beauty-care product lines. Still other firms, such as Bank of America, Samsung Electronics, Procter & Gamble, Schieffelin and Somerset, DuPont, and Diageo, have used consumer metaphors to generate new product and service ideas. Other companies, including Glaxo Well- come, Immunex, Hewlett-Packard, McNeil Consumer Healthcare, Mer- cedes, and the Story. Development Studio, have made explicit use of metaphors for understanding auto design preferences; the experience of medical conditions such as high cholesterol, rheumatoid arthritis, and erectile dysfunction; home health care issues; and audience reactions to film and television programming content. In all cases, these firms spent considerable time understanding the basic nature of metaphoric thought, not just examining the consumer metaphors they found inter- esting. Then they adapted their communications and offerings to meet the needs represented in consumers’ metaphors, based on knowledge of how metaphors work. Metaphors have a strong presence in advertising. For example, the muscle-bound man climbing out of a bottle to clean floors, the giant in the washing machine, and the Rock of Gibraltar all represent security and strength. The challenge, however, is to make tacit thinking about metaphor explicit so that the powerful role of

18 | Understanding the Mind of the Market

metaphor in consumer (and manager thinking) can be leveraged more effectively. |

Metaphors can hide as well as reveal thoughts and feelings.? An example comes from a study conducted for the Lifetime Television net- work on how women see their day. One interview participant brought — with her a picture of a solitary tree growing in a barren landscape. Ini- tially, the interviewee used this picture to describe her sense of loneli- ness, a lack of help in raising a preschool-age son, and the absence of recognition of her struggles. In short, the tree represented the woman's solitary effort. Later, when the interviewer revisited the image in a differ- ent way with the interviewee, an additional—and dramatically differ- ent—interpretation of the picture emerged from the interviewee. (Remember the rabbit-and-duck picture in chapters 1 and 3?) In this alternative interpretation, the tree represented the woman's sense of achievement and her courage in the face of difficult odds. Other women who used different metaphors echoed the dual meaning of the lonely but strong tree. As a result, the network incorporated these ideas into a film script about strong but lonely women. |

When properly elicited and interpreted, consumers’ metaphors can uncover deep as well as surface-level thoughts.* Wini Schaeffer, a Motorola manager, describes how the use of metaphors has *enormous implications for positioning products. . . . You get answers to questions that you never thought to ask. I can’t imagine you'd get that from a survey.” DuPont researcher Glenda Green describes how metaphor- based research provided the first positive things they could act on in their marketing of hosiery. The metaphor research provided "inten- sity, texture, and depth that we'd never gotten from other studies . . . bringing out subtleties related to sexual issues that you don’t get in a straight interview. Also, rather than a love-hate attitude toward hosiery, we discovered something more complex, a like-hate relationship." As a result, hosiery manufacturers and their distributors changed their ads to include images of sexiness and allure along with images of super- competent career women. One company began including cards with a yin-yang symbol in its packaging to acknowledge the like-hate feelings woman held, and on the other side of the card, a personalized quote to convey a message of understanding and female affirmation.!6

Interviewing the Mind/Brain: Metaphor Elicitation | E

If managers understand the full range of metaphors consumers use to think about a product, they can design more effective communica- tions about the brand and increase the likelihood of a purchase. For ex- ample, managers at a major Midwestern bank found that their small- business customers used metaphors relating to vitality when evaluating banking services. In response, the bank designed more meaningful ma- terials to communicate with these customers in a way that spoke to the need for vitality. A leading architectural firm has used metaphor-elicitation techniques with their residential and commercial clients to help align architect and client thinking.

A Closer Look " Embodied Cognition

Many metaphors consist of references to physical motion, bodily sen- sations, or sensory experiences. This *embodied cognition" isnt sur- prising: We begin creating metaphors early in life in order to make sense of our world. The systems we experience most intimately at this and later stages throughout our lives are related to our bodies. Con- sequently, many metaphors rooted in our sensory and motor systems link the outside world with the brain. Here are just a few everyday examples:

“I hear what you are saying” reflects comprehension.

"You'll see" forewarns or predicts a future state.

"Those rules stink” indicates repugnance and dissatisfaction. "What a touching scene" conveys a special feeling about a situation. “She's a pain" indicates irritation.

"Don't get ahead of yourself" suggests slowing down.

"She' a go-getter" describes motivation.

"Hes falling behind in his payments" describes tardiness. "I'm feeling really up" describes a mood.

"He lords it over us" portrays an attitude.

"Lend a hand" refers to a request for or offer of assistance.

“I got a kick out of that” describes a type of reaction.

“She's in it up to her neck” suggests trouble.

80 | Understanding the Mind of the Market

Numerous disciplines provide evidence that abstract thought is often rooted in sensory and motor systems. That is, we use our senses and our bodies as metaphors to represent ideas that have nothing to do with the specific sense or body part. Since these systems have one.pur- pose—to inform us about the world and help us navigate within it—not surprisingly, we rely on them to help us represent our abstract thoughts and actions." Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio has this to say about embodied cognition:

The lower levels in the neural edifice of reason are the same ones that regulate the processing of emiotions and feelings, along with the body functions necessary for an organism’s survival. In turn, these lower levels maintain direct and mutual relationships with virtually every bodily organ, thus placing the body directly within the chain of operations that generate the highest reaches of reasoning, decision making, and, by extension, social behavior and creativity. Emotion, feeling, and biological regulation all play a role in human reason. The lowly orders of our organism are in the loop of high reason.!8

And as linguist George Lakoff and philosopher Mark Johnson explain:

[From a biological perspective,] it is eminently plausible that reason has grown out of the sensory and motor systems and that [reason] still uses those systems or structures developed from them. . . . [This] explains why our system for structuring and reasoning about events of all kinds should have the structure of a motor-control system.!?

Embodied. cognition in metaphors is universal among human beings. Every culture and every society uses such expressions, although they may emphasize different senses and motor systems in expressing particular thoughts. Box 4-1 provides additional examples of embodied- cognition metaphors, all of which are present in one form or another in all cultures. Because embodied cognition is so basic and automatic, we often fail to appreciate such metaphors’ special power to reveal more complex, hidden meaning.?°

Interviewing the Mind/Brain: Metaphor Elicitation | 8

ae a IM GUMCUMZGNGINMMENCOM UNS C EUER SEUM

Box 4-1

Sample Metaphor Categories

. Linguist Andrew Goatly has identified several metaphor categories that apply across cultures?! Notice the prominence of embodied cog- nition, as well as references to the impact of the natural world on our physical world, in this classification scheme. Metaphors from diverse market research projects conducted by Olson Zaltman Associates illustrate each category.

Human qualities: Dead, lively, living, overwork, bring to mind, dis- sect, mutilate, flesh out, body, backbone, head, shoulder, heart, scar, hand. The project conducted for Lifetime Television concern- ing how women picture their day brought forth the following quo- tation in reference to an image of a heavily damaged ceiling: "That is how my heart feels all day. It wears a big scar."

Plants/vegetables: Take root, uproot, transplant, plant, blossom, bud, barren, green, seasoned, peel, grow. While exploring the learning environment at General Motors, one executive described his responsibilities this way: “The first thing | had to do was to nur- ture new ideas and have patience while they grow. Give them a chance to bloom.”

Games: Volley, ball's in your court, kick off, start the ball rolling, opponent, goal, strike out, foul, win. The CEO of a services firm who described difficulties in recruiting talented personnel explained her initial philosophy for finding promising talent: “We didn't want people who hit singles all the time. We wanted the grand slammer, the person who scores touchdowns, not goals."

War/fighting: Battle of wits, in-fighting, truce, attack, strike, defend, resist, bombard, fire away, shoot mouth off, shoot down ideas, point blank, ammunition, flak, double-edged sword, com- bative. The same services-firm CEO also noted: “We were shoot- ing ourselves in the foot. In any event, we have stopped sabotag- ing ourselves and are pretty aggressive with anyone promising."

i (continued)

82 | Understanding the Mind of the Market

Liquids: Spout, leak, pour, spit, brim over, dry up, in midstream, © torrent, stream, against the tide, mainstream, new wave, hold water, drained, test the waters, hot water. A study on what it means to have breakthrough thinking in globally networked organizations illustrates the liquidity of ideas. As one CEO partici- pating in the study commented, “One breakthrough idea can be a tidal wave sending people scurrying to higher ground for protec- tion.... But people are just afraid to swim in moving waters, they prefer wading in a stagnant pool.” |

Walking/running: Run over/through, as the saying goes, he goes over and over, stop, ramble, wander, sidestep, roundabout, falter, halting, stumble, retreat, find your way, passage, maze.

A project involving trial users of Febreze, a spray-on product

for removing odors from fabrics, produced a number of motion metaphors: "People will be tripping over themselves to get

this stuff." "Before using this on my clothes you could see people step back from me when | got near; | guess it was all my smoking.”

Food/drink: Food for thought, half-baked, raw, sweet, rehash, spill, drink in, chew on, ruminate, digest, regurgitate. A project for the Story Development Studio analyzing a script for a feature film invoked several food and drink metaphors: "| thought it would be just warmed-up leftovers from Police Academy." "This had my stomach going." "It'll be just another puke film."

Money: Cheap, rich, payback. A study for Citibank concerning retail banking operations provides these examples: "The place oozes money ... not because it's a bank, but the marble floors and even the smell inside says 'class' like a house from the 'Rich and Famous." In a study of attitudes toward financial planners, the money-as-wisdom metaphor was evident: "If they [financial plan- ners} are so smart, why aren't they rich?"

Cloth/clothing: Texture, material, weave, tag on, tailor, fabricate, decorate, embellish, padding. The Lifetime Television project involved many clothing metaphors. For example: "You just don't outgrow some memories the way you do your jeans.” "| wish the `

Interviewing the Mind/Brain: Metaphor Elicitation | — 83

creeps could be in my shoes even for an hour, even fifteen min- utes.... They'd button their mouths up fast.” .

Movement/transfer: Drop, release, throw, pass, take back, ex- change, put, pose, place, catch, gather, extract, find, store, hold, hang on, vacillate, tough going, advance. A Procter & Gamble study of consumers’ weekly grocery experiences provides this - example: "I wish | could just chuck the whole experience out the window." Someone who engaged in boutique shopping said: "IVlisiting a boutique even if | don't buy anything is a kind of rush. It sort of raises my mood.”

Vehicles/vessels: Launch, go under, captain, crash, run, embark, torpedo, lifeline, pilot, wreck, harbor. Another project addressing parent-child relationships produced several vehicle-related expressions: "After an hour with the kids shopping for school, I’m a complete wreck. They drive me crazy." "Dealing with him is like being on a roller coaster, except that on a roller coaster you know it's going to end soon." Weather: Atmosphere, climate, sunny, dark, gloomy, hot, cold, cloud, frosty, storm. A project about motivation among R&D teams - in an electronics company provides these examples: "[The team leader] blows hot and cold; you just can't forecast his reaction." "The team can be all excited until he calls the meeting to order, and then it's like a cloud moving across the sun." "Compared to my last company this is a breath of fresh air."

Vision: See, overlook, watch, search, transparent, faint, murky, in- distinct, enlighten, screen, picture, sketch, sparkle, bright, blind, focus, short-sighted. Vision is a fundamental metaphor for expres- sing comprehension (“I see what you mean"), an unusually perceptive person ("She's a true visionary"), an attitude ("See?" as in “I told you so"), and so on. Probably no other sense is used so often in metaphor in so many different ways. For example, a proj- ect on sincerity in advertising generated such expressions as ‘| could see right through them," "It's all smoke and mirrors,” and “They try to pull the wool over your eyes'—all of which referred to the firms that had created the ads.

BucNunc mu meme DM MC om m P P SRETU ME TS ETRE (continued)

04 | Understanding the Mind of the Market

Places: Lot, sphere, spot, near to, away from, enter, exit/leave, occupy, fill/empty, void, abandon, possess, sucked into, tied to, exclude, boundary/line. A project on spirituality encountered refer- ences to "finding an inner void,” “filling a void,” “abandoning my roots,” “falling into a rut,” "becoming one with the universe,” and “leaving old ways behind." An investigation of people's attitudes toward germs generated expressions such as, "They are every- where,” “Germs know no boundaries,” "It's like a doctor's office, not a lived-in home.”

carrera arse FORTRESS OLE SAG STN MELISS BD SO oT UU T

Social Constructions

As box 4-1 suggests, people in all cultures face the same basic problems and key events in life; not surprisingly, they display similar responses to those problems and events at a fundamental, level. For example, every society has developed belief systems involving justice and punishment, commerce, and the production of goods and services. Many social beliefs and practices pertaining to community, religion, family, games, and work have coevolved with and even influenced our physiology.” Expressions of these fundamental domains appear in every society's day- to-day speech, although different societies use different expressions. For instance, consider the domains of family and community, religion, and sports.

FAMILY AND COMMUNITY:

* “She's in a family way" refers to a pregnancy.

* “She's like a sister to me” conveys a sense of bonding.

* “Somehow we never connected” describes the absence of a solid relationship.

* “She got left out" refers to social exclusion.

RELIGION:

e "Hes the high priest of comedy" suggests professional status. * “What an angel" expresses appreciation.

Interviewing the Mind/Brain: Metaphor Elicitation | 85 -

© “She's full of the devil” describes a character trait.

e “Whatever possessed me" indicates loss of control.

° "Stop preaching at me" rejects someones behavior.

e “He received the family’s blessing" describes acceptance.

SPORTS OR PLAY:

e “She hit a home run with that speech” represents success.

° “He scored points with employees” reflects making a good impression. |

e “He struck out” expresses failure.

These core institutions—sports, religion, politics, family, law, and many others—inspire a number of expressions that we use to convey thoughts completely unrelated to those institutions. Moreover, many of these expressions combine social, sensory, and motor metaphors. For example, “heads of state” command “foot soldiers,” and in most societies “higher up” is better than “lower down.”

Metaphors in Action

So far, we've had just a glimpse into how some companies have used metaphor elicitation to better understand consumers. But managers have also used metaphor to help understand their own thinking. The following examples shed light on both uses of metaphor.

“They Try to Skin You"

In this study, researchers asked consumers to collect pictures from any magazines, newspapers, and other sources of their choice that rep- resented the thoughts and feelings that came to mind when they thought or heard about a particular credit-card company. Participants were to bring these pictures to an interview and talk about them there.

One consumer offered a picture of a meat cleaver to express the treatment she experienced from this firm. “They try to skin you,” she commented. Later in the interview, her interpretation of the image

88 1 Understanding the Mind of the Market | m

shifted. Originally, she had spoken of the company as being the aggres- | sor, but later she described the meat cleaver as.a weapon she used against the company. Specifically, in a composite image that she created near the end of the interview, she depicted the meat cleaver as severing a credit card. In the picture, several other former consumer *victims" wielded the handle of the knife. By engaging in this activity, these ‘consumers transformed themselves into “victors” in a battle with the company. Without the added stimulus of the pictures, such deep thoughts and feelings as these might have remained hidden during the interviews.

"Godzilla Should Go Away"

- Metaphors can also help managers understand their own thoughts and actions. For example, one global industrial-goods manufacturer used metaphor elicitation to explore executives' experiences with inno- vation within the company. (More and more firms are using this tech- nique to address internal organizational issues, especially issues about change, learning, and diversity.)

Below is an excerpt from one three-hour interview. The italicized - words are those of the interviewee. The picture of Godzilla that is refer- enced is just one of several pictures that the manager was asked to find before coming to the interview that would.help describe the experience of being innovative in the company.

[T]here is a picture of Godzilla. Godzilla depicts people who are the protectors of the old way of doing things. Maybe that is management.

How do you feel toward the Godzillas when it comes to innovation?

I feel that Godzilla should go away and let the people learn how to defend themselves or go on the offense to stop whoever is coming. I would call this ingenuity and innovation. Down the leg of Godzilla is the word “Princeton” because of the style Princeton uses when it plays basketball, a very slowed down style, very methodical, but they do win most of the time. So I’m not saying that’s a bad process, but I think it hinders the innovation process, because it slows it down.

Interviewing the Mind/Brain: Metaphor Elicitation | | 87

So, how would you relate that to the way you approach innovation?

I would be on a different team—one that's full of a lot of people who can play on a team, but have individual characteristics.

Any reason why Godzilla is as big as it is?

Yeah, Godzilla is tough to handle, very strong, built on "This is the only way of doing things," which has worhed [in the past]. It hard to beat Godzilla. | |

As a metaphor, Godzilla represented this managers view of senior managers who protected old ways that impeded learning, moved methodically and slowly, and, ultimately, obstructed innovation. This particular manager preferred to be on a team that valued and encour- aged individual expression. At a deeper level, she expressed feelings about the power of the status quo, a lack of speed at the company, the need to fight a discouraging internal attitude, and isolation.

As it turned out, many others in the firm shared these feelings. The revelations generated by the metaphors compelled senior management to take action. They decentralized and simplified the process of initiat- ing new plans and procedures to offer additional autonomy to people. Months later, an audit found that more new ideas emerged successfully in the eight months after these changes than had emerged in the prior two and a half years.

“Negotiating with a Gorilla with a Huge Chip on His Shoulder"

Another study, this time about how industrial customers viewed corporate image, involved a picture of a gorilla. In this project, man- agers talked about what they believed purchasing agents thought of their company. This information was then contrasted with findings from interviews with purchasing agents about their views of the company. While some ideas overlapped, especially those relating to product qual- ity, their thinking clearly diverged in certain areas. Two of the purchas- ing agents, reflecting the thoughts of many others, brought in pictures of gorillas. In one case, the gorilla reflected the companys obstinacy in negotiations. In another, it depicted an insensitivity to the purchasing agent's needs. In contrast, managers from the vendor brought positive

88 | Understanding the Mind of the Market

pictures to describe how purchasing agents saw them, such as people -. shaking hands, a doctor speaking with a patient, someone tending a gar- den, and a mother and child baking a:cake together. Subsequently, the - vendor worked to close the gaps between the managers' and purchasing agents' perceptions of the company and developed a survey based on the issues surfaced by metaphor elicitation. The firm now uses this method periodically to monitor purchasing agent attitudes. .

- Values-Cues Research

General Motors uses metaphors in its Value-Cues Research program for designing vehicles, advertising, and dealership appearances. In a recent study, GM hired researchers to ask consumers to bring objects expressing "optimism" to a one-on-one interview. One participant brought an image of a champagne flute. The interviewee explained that the flutes simple, open design expressed many things, including the dawning of a new day. GM's designers then used this understanding to convey optimism in their car designs. One design-team member re- marked, “It would be impossible to do this relying only on verbal cues. Getting customers to express themselves in the same design vernacular we use goes right to the heart of how we connect with them."

In another metaphor-elicitation project, General Motors' designers asked consumers to show them photos of *friendly" watches. Respon- dents chose watches that were easy to read and could stand up under abuse. The dominant design features of these watches included a large face, easily legible numbers, and a low-tech, nonindustrial "feel." Study participants also chose watches that appeared “fun.” “Fun” was ex- pressed through color; “innocent, silly” shapes; a round face; and designs "that make you smile," look comfortable, and invite comments from others.

To its amazement, the design team also learned that “slight changes in design can drastically change the metaphor conjured up by cus- tomers.” With watches, as with human faces, the difference between a mean and friendly look can be very subtle indeed. That's why the Value- Cues Research program uses “in-depth one-on-one interviews rather than focus groups to probe deeply and figure out why a subtle change in design produces a major change in the metaphors used to describe one

- Interviewing the Mind/Brain: Metaphor Elicitation | — 89

design option versus another,” according to Dr. Jeffrey Hartley, a psy- -chologist and manager of Brand Character and Theme Research at Gen- eral Motors.

By asking consumers to use nonautomobile examples, the re- searchers gained a more complete understanding of the diverse mean- ings of "friendly" as potentially relevant to automobiles. In fact, in most of its metaphor-elicitation research, Olson Zaltman Associates asks con- sumers to bring in pictures that don't show the product in question, but depict their thoughts and feelings about that product, service, or experi- ence. Thus, in a study of the essence of Mickey Mouse, OZA asked con- sumers not to choose pictures relating to or including Mickey or Disney in general. As a result, consumers thought more deeply about the topic and produced more valuable insights than otherwise would have been the case.

Metaphors Involve Mental Models

Metaphors do not exist as words in memory, but as networks of abstract understandings that constitute part of our mental imagery? We call these networks consensus maps when a group of people shares them. Fig- ure 4-1 shows a simple consensus map of consumers’ understandings of Chevrolet trucks in terms of a rock, in response to Chevy's “Like a rock" advertisement, one of Chevy's most successful. The company designed it based on metaphor-elicitation research with consumers; as a result, it effectively identified the associations present in the thinking of dedi- cated Chevy truck owners and then, through advertising, established these associations in the thinking of a broader truck-buying public (see figure 4-1).

The phrase "like a rock" inspires four basic associations in con- sumers minds: “rock” with “take abuse"; “Chevy” with “reliable”; “Chevy” with “rock”; and “take abuse” with “reliable.” When consumers make a connection between the idea of a Chevy truck and the idea of a rock, they attribute certain rocklike qualities, such as the ability to take abuse, to Chevy trucks and translate them into notions of reliability and ruggedness. Figure 4-1 shows how these qualities enter consumers’ awareness directly through advertising or other marketing decisions.

90 | Understanding the Mind of the Market

FIGURE 4- 1

Metaphor Structure for Chevy Trucks

Rock ——————————- Chevy Truck

Take Abuse —————————————— Reliable, Rugged

These qualities in turn are embodied in the Chevy truck logo. Thus the mutual influence between marketers and consumers flows back and forth, as each responds to the others metaphorical communication.

Another example of how companies both represent and influence consumers thinking through metaphor is the Folgers “Coffee Dancer” TV commercial. The ad shows a young woman waking up in the early morn- ing, enjoying a cup of coffee, becoming increasingly alert, and finally par- ticipating in an energetic dance rehearsal, presumably later that same morning. The music in the ad starts out slow and then quickens its pace, mirroring the womans physical movements. The associations here include “Folgers Coffee" and “dance”; “dance” and “energy”; “Folgers Cof- fee" and “being alert”; and "energy" and “being alert.” The ad further sym- bolizes the idea of alertness through its. depiction of the connection

. between energy and dance. The creative staff of an advertising agency also developed this idea based on its analyses of the metaphors that con- sumers used to describe the experience of drinking coffee.

Clearly, social and physical experiences interact strongly to produce the metaphors in our minds. Figure 4-2, which shows how one con- sumer thought about smoking and the neutralization of cigarette smoke in her home, provides a simple framework for thinking about these associations. The figure also reveals the ways in which social and physi- cal experiences work together to influence how consumers communi- cate about their problems and how marketers can present information about the products intended to solve them.

A company created this figure by eliciting consumers’ metaphors describing their experiences with smoking and with using a smoke-neu- tralizing product for fabrics during in-home trials. One respondents data illustrates this point. Like others in the same study, this person

Interviewing the Mind/Brain: Metaphor Elicitation | gt

FIGURE 4-2

a —————

The Interaction of the Social and Physical Experience

Physical World Sensory Motor

... others are watching me... ... can’t wait to get out...

Problem

Social Container; ` World movement

Solution | ...aren't stink i ... they think I’ve bombs anymore... kicked the habit...

found cigarette-smoke odor to be more than just a sensory experience; it affected her image as a person, a homemaker, and a mother.

According to this consumer, the smell of smoke stuck to her kids clothing, her furniture, and the inside of her car. She commented, “I feel others are watching me when my kids visit their home." This statement conveys a social problem (disapproval by others) linked to the sense of vision (cell 1 in the figure). Later in the interview, the woman said, "I know when they drop by here to pick up their kids they can't wait to get out.” This statement also reflects a social problem (“They can't wait") but is linked to physical motion through expressions such as “pick up" and “get out” (cell 2 in the figure). At another point in the interview, while discussing how the odor-neutralizing product worked, this same partici- pant commented, *Now when my kids go over to a friends house, they aren't stink bombs anymore." Thus the consumer sees the product as a solution to a social problem because it defuses a “stink bomb" (the smell of cigarette smoke on the kids’ clothing; cell 3). The kids’ no longer smelling of cigarette smoke suggests cell 4, revealed by the womans comment, "they think I've kicked the habit" This same consumer described using the product on her car upholstery. She said it enabled her to offer rides to friends without embarrassment. "So long as I get rid of the butts, they think I've kicked the habit"—Aanother example of cell 4.

Notice that the consumers statements have direct and indirect refer- ences to “containers,” things that hold other things. This participant mentioned containers such as "a stink bomb," a home (both her own

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and others' homes), her car, and clothing and upholstery (which absorb cigarette smoke). Thus the researchers placed the word “container” in | the center oval to show that it is a more fundamental thought—a core metaphor—that generates the thoughts located.in each of the four cells. Another candidate for this center oval is the idea of movement: walking stink bomb; a bomb explodes, spreading its contents; her kids’ “going over to” friends’ homes; other parents’ picking up their kids and being impatient to leave her home; people riding in her car; her “kicking the habit”; and so on.

Using Metaphors to Discover Products That Meet Consumers’ Needs

The significance of metaphors for marketing managers comes from their centrality to consumers’ imagination. Understanding consumers’ meta- phors enables managers to imagine the nature of consumers’ needs with respect to discontinuous innovations outside of consumer experience and beyond the reach of more conventional, literally oriented research tools, With that information in hand, managers can tailor their commu- nications to consumers, as mentioned earlier. But even more important, they can envision new, more effective ways to respond to those needs through specific products and services. The interplay of consumers’ own metaphors with those used in marketing communications also enables consumers to imagine how companies’ offerings might satisfy their needs.

In short, metaphors are the primary means by which companies and con- sumers engage one another attention and imagination. Consumer needs are metaphors representing potential product ideas to managers who can interpret those needs in terms of new products or enhancements to existing products. Similarly, consumers see a firms offering as a meta- phor—a representation of a potential solution to a problem.

The metaphors a company uses in its advertising messages strongly influence how consumers interpret the messages or see a products value. Thus firms must take great care in selecting metaphors.?* Simi- larly, the right metaphor can cause consumers to "see" information in an ad that is not actually present anywhere in the ad'5 text or graphics. For

Interviewing the Mind/Brain: Metaphor Elicitation | 93 .

example, when consumers view a beverage ad depicting a koala bear, most of them conclude that the beverage is intended to be consumed warm. By contrast, when they view an ad showing a polar bear, they conclude that the drink should be consumed cold. In one study, an ad showing a koala bear paired with a cold beverage produced confusion among consumers.

Establishing the relevance of a product innovation to a consumer . need is a challenging task for managers. It requires uncovering the metaphors consumers use when thinking about a problem or need and using those metaphors to develop new products, modify existing offer- ings, and demonstrate a connection between the products and the con- sumers problems. The task becomes even more challenging when con- sumers don't understand their own needs or how new technologies relate to them. In this case, using metaphor elicitation to help con- sumers articulate their experiences can prove essential. According to Stephen Cole, an expert on the use of metaphors for developing mail surveys and perhaps the only experienced market researcher holding a doctorate in the field of philosophy:

Nearly all of the most successful new products I've studied in several industries over the years have involved managers or engineers making clever use of buyers’ metaphors in conceiving, designing and introducing new products. The biggest flops [occur] when metaphors are ignored as a way of establishing a real connection with buyers.”

Identifying Core Metaphors

Like the thoughts and feelings they represent, some metaphors are surface-level and explicit while others are deeper and more tacit or unconscious. Understanding these deep or core metaphors can help marketers identify some of the most important but hidden drivers of consumer behavior.

Recall from box 4-1 how several basic metaphor categories or themes emerge from everyday phrases and from figure 4-2 how the statements in each cell imply deeper thoughts about containers and

94 | Understanding the Mind of the Market

movement. Two additional examples will clarify the contrast between surface-level and core metaphors. 7

Indigestion and the Core Metaphor of "Balance"

A consumer participating in a research project for an over-the- counter treatment for indigestion commented on a picture of dollar bills, “I know that when I eat rich food, I'll pay for it later.” Another per- son remarked on a picture of a chef: “Moderation is the key. You’ve got to learn what exactly is the right amount [of food] for you and what things accompany other things well.” Both people used metaphors of wealth and money—"rich" food and “paying for it.” But on a deep level, these metaphors also express the concept of balance. In the first case, the participant alluded to the idea of moral balance (the sin of over- indulging is offset by paying later). In the second case, the individual implied the idea of material balance (not too much and not too little) and systems balance (eating foods that go together).

For both consumers, the concept of balance underpins their way of thinking about indigestion. The first consumer made other observations related to balance, such as: “Some days its like being on this seesaw. You're up and then you're down. You take something and then you're up again for a little while before plunging back.” The second consumer implied a social imbalance when discussing a picture of the scales of jus- tice: “It just isn’t fair that some people eat anything they want and get away with it, and I can't. Its not right.” Yet neither consumer explicitly mentioned balance or imbalance. Rather, the idea of balance is a kind of magnet around which many thoughts about indigestion cluster. These thoughts then take the form of surface metaphors to convey more spe- cific ideas. ~ Owing to the prominence of the core metaphor of balance (ex- pressed by nearly everyone in the study), the company decided to make this metaphor the keystone of its indigestion-aid advertising strategy. This concept replaced the idea of relief as the primary benefit of an in- digestion aid. Balance and relief are related, but the core balance metaphor expressed consumers' larger need: They sought products that would help restore and maintain their relief in order to experience bal- ance, not the other way around. This shift represented a unique posi- tioning in the industry, given that competitors stressed relief as the ulti-

Interviewing the Mind/Brain: Metaphor Elicitation | 95

mate purpose of an indigestion aid (without understanding why con- sumers wanted relief).

After the ads aired, the company credited the new strategy with an immediate significant increase in unit sales. Equally important, the company performed this metaphor-research project before issuing its creative brief to the advertising agency. By thinking about metaphors early in the creative process, managers could focus on deeper levels of consumer thought and not get bogged down by surface comments.

Telephone Help Lines: Force and Movement

An additional core-metaphor example comes from a study in which a major software provider explored consumers’ thinking about the com- pany’s telephone help line. In the study, one consumer complained that trying to get “good service from a help line is like banging your head against the wall.” Another customer, speaking about the same help line, noted: “[They] respond in a flash. Like greyhounds chasing a rabbit.” While each consumer used different imagery and represented dramati- cally different experiences, both expressions strongly suggested force and movement. Other consumers offered additional statements suggest- ing force and movement: “the speed of molasses,” “getting me going again,” “stuck,” “slam down the receiver,” and so on. While “getting me going again” and “slam down the receiver” suggested increased move- ment, other phrases—such as “the speed of molasses” and “stuck”— implied a lack of movement. This absence of force and movement is especially salient—that is, noticed —among consumers, because people expect help lines to “get them moving again quickly.”

In this example, force and movement are core metaphors that guide the expression of more specific (and sometimes contradictory) thoughts and feelings about telephone help lines. By focusing on the core metaphors, the company could tailor its communications and services so as to address all its customers’ needs, rather than make the all-too- common mistake of trying to address conflicting, surface-level needs.

The companys managers used the metaphor-elicitation research to