Time is something that I think marketers often ignore or take for granted. Many marketers continue to push out a flood of messages through various channels like television, newspapers, and email although consumers do not have the time to receive these messages. Additionally consumers often will choose saving time over the added benefit of switching to a better product or service. In some cases, time can be your company's biggest competitor. Time is the theme of the recent book, The 24-Hour Customer, which examines the role of time in consumer decisions and explains how marketers can design strategies that can overcome the problem of the time-starved consumer.

Dominate your customers time and they won't have time for your competition

Webkinz is an extremely popular virtual world for kids that had 4.5 million unique visitors in January. With users spending an average of 154 minutes on the site each month, it was very hard for Beanie Babies World to compete. Since kids often have internet time limited by their parents, many are not able to also spend time on a different virtual world. I am a huge fan of the Madden game on Xbox and was willing to wait in line at midnight on release night to purchase it. There are other games that I would like to buy but I don't because I wouldn't have any time to play them since Madden dominates my time.

Create Dwell Time

The more time your customer spends in your store or website, the more likely they will buy something. According to the book, "Consulting firm Deloitte has found that customers that use a fitting room in a clothing store buy 85 percent of the time, compared with a 58 percent sales rate among shoppers who did not use the fitting room". I think one easy way for retail stores to create dwell time is to provide comfortable chairs (or a secret hideout) for husbands who have to accompany their spouses to the mall.

Integrate Purchase Into Consumption
According to the book, "US customers spend only about six minutes a day with e-commerce sites". However, Amazon is able to extend the time spent with a customer with the Amazon kindle. While the Kindle is great for consuming the books it sells, it also provides a way to purchase most books in under a minute from the same device. Nike also does this well with its Nike Plus site that tracks your runs with the help of the iPod sensor. While you are checking out your running stats, you can also view and order your next pair of running shoes.

Interesting Studies of Consumer Behavior

One reason I really like this book is that it is chalk full of interesting research on consumer behavior. Here are some findings that I that were really interesting.

• Only 42 percent of Americans report that they enjoy buying goods and services.

• Consumers are spending only about 28 minutes each day researching and buying goods and services -that's less than 3 percent of waking hours.

• A 2009 comScore report estimates that 8 percent of internet users are responsible for 85 percent of all ad clicks.

• USC research estimates that 45 percent of people's behavior is spent in repetitive and unthinking activities.

• A UK study found that shoppers tend to buy from a selection of the same 150 items every week from grocery stores.

• The Council for Research Excellence found that US adults spend an average of eight and a half hours a day looking at screens.

• US customers spend only about six minutes a day with e-commerce sites.

This book is a good choice of time for marketers who are interested in learning how to use limited time and attention to their advantage. Adrian Ott also lays out a solid framework on how to evaluate how your product or service as it relates to the consumer's propensity to spend time and attention.

Full Disclosure: I received a review copy

This is a great presentation by Scott Berkun, who is the author of the book Confessions of a Public Speaker. The talk which is titled "How to Call BS on a Social Media Guru" makes some interesting points about marketing and cognitive bias.

SMC Seattle May Event: How to Call BS on a Social Media Guru from SMC Seattle on Vimeo.

Berkun discusses how marketers take advantage of cognitive bias to persuade consumers to want to buy things without them knowing why they want to buy it.

"It's research that has been done over the past 10-20 years...that basically points out how flawed our brains are... at making decisions about things. There's all these inherent kinds of bias that we have that influences us in ways that we don't notice. Good advertising and marketing take advantage of these things" (9:40 minute mark of video).

He describes the example of a car commercial which shows a good looking guy driving a car through a beautiful valley next to an attractive woman, but the ad tells us nothing about the car.

According to Wikipedia's definition:
A cognitive bias is the human tendency to draw incorrect conclusions in certain circumstances based on cognitive factors rather than evidence.

There are a long list of almost a hundred cognitive biases that can be seen at Wikipedia.

Some biases that are really interesting are:

Confirmation bias: the tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions

Negativity bias: the tendency to pay more attention and give more weight to negative than positive experiences or other kinds of information.

Herd instinct: common tendency to adopt the opinions and follow the behaviors of the majority to feel safer and to avoid conflict.

Basically, Berkun wanted to raise awareness of how cognitive bias influences us to encourage us to make decisions based on evidence. I agree that we should be aware of how cognitive bias can influence our decisions, however I would point out that there are many situations where cognitive shortcuts are very helpful. If you are making routine decisions like which brand of soap to buy, it would be very time consuming if you conducted research on the empirical evidence on which brand is best for your skin. You will probably base your decision on which brand you have had positive associations with in the past with and go with that one.

Is focusing on eliciting emotional feelings in ads rather than focusing on the hard facts manipulative? It does appear to be a more effective method of marketing, but I believe that while marketing can influence people to have a stronger desire for a product or service, the individual always has the freedom of choice to not make a purchase and save the money.

Tom Asacker is one of the most underrated marketing thought leaders in my opinion. Here's a video of his presentation on marketing trends driven by the social changes that are taking place.

Placebos are a fascinating and incredible phenomenon that demonstrates the power of our minds to shape how we perceive reality. A patient who is given a sugar pill instead of an actual pain reliever can feel the same decrease in pain as if they were to receive a medication with chemicals that block the pain receptors at the cellular level. One explanation of the placebo effect is that we tend to experience what we expect. If you expect to hate a new restaurant, you probably will. If a friend hints that the movie you are about to enter received great reviews, you will probably enjoy it. Our expectations can be so strong, they can create feelings that contradict the actual reality.

An example of this contradiction occurred during a study performed by MIT professor Dan Ariely, author of Predictably Irrational. He asked people to rate how they liked two beers, one was a Sam Adams and the other was a Sam Adams with balsamic vinegar. Most people preferred the Sam Adams with the balsamic vinegar. However when he told people beforehand that one contained balsamic vinegar, most people hated it.

Marketers can take this knowledge and use it to improve the real experiences of consumers by creating an environment of positive expectations. This can be visually appealing packaging- high quality wine glasses or an aesthetically designed box. Or by helping raving customers share their satisfaction through social channels like web forums or Twitter. It can be hinting to a prospect that your company was awarded for great customer satisfaction.

Now that you know the power of expectations to shape perceptions of customer's experience, what will you do to improve customer experience?

Articles about Placebos

The Placebo Affect Seth's Blog

Marketing and the Placebo Effect Nueromarketing

How the Placebo Effect Works HowStuffWorks

Article reposted with permission from The Executive Marketing Blog.

According to Millward Brown's Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands of 2009 Report, the top 100 global brands have increased in value by 2% to $2 Trillion over the past year. Despite the global financial downturn, the top brands seem to be immune to the economic turmoil, if you trust Millward Brown's analysis. Some top brands seem to be excelling in the downturn like Apple and Amazon, while others have tumbled like Disney and Starbucks.

One of the biggest surprises is Apple's success despite the economic environment. Despite smaller wallets, consumers are still managing to pay for relatively expensive iPods and iPhones which sometimes require expensive AT&T data plans. This supports Millward Brown's analysis that the top brands are striving. This may be because consumers are looking for the most value for their money. They may sacrifice going to Starbucks for a month and make their coffee at home so that they can afford a new iPhone.

According to the report:

"Customers are not holding their breath during this economic volatility. They are adjusting their coping strategies, while remaining determined to purchase brands that contribute to the pleasure, quality, purpose, and security of their lives."

One of the biggest questions companies want to know, is whether the recession will cause a lasting change in the way consumers buy. One noticable change is the avoidance of conspicuous consumption as people try not to appear insensitive or greedy. Luxury brands still grew 10% in value, although this can be largely accounted for by growth in demand in China.

"Consumers are not in the mood for greed. And greed is not required for success. Once we are on the other side of the economic slowdown, consumer spending will pick up. But perhaps slowly, as people internalize the lessons of our recent boom and bust history. They will want quality, intelligently created, well-designed products. But they may not want one in every color."

The study suggests that even when money is tight, consumers will still spend on the strongest brands. Consumers know what they can expect from strong brands and are still willing to pay premiums for this assurance. The exception are brands that are perceived as unnecessary luxuries like a trip to Disneyland or a 4 dollar coffee.

This article was republished with permission from The Executive Marketing Blog

Recessionary consumer behavior is discussed in this video with Professor John Quelch of Harvard Business School. He also talks about 4 types of consumers who are reacting in different ways to the economic environment, whether current consumer behaviors will become permanent, and when you should invest in marketing in a recession.

Buyology is an interesting book because it describes a completely new approach to marketing research. Instead of traditional methods of research such as surveys, or focus groups, Buyology explores a new frontier in marketing research, neuromarketing.

Specifically, Martin Lindstrom, describes scientific studies in which subject's brains are scanned to see what parts of their brain lights up when exposed to certain marketing stimuli such as a brand logo or an advertisement. When different regions of our brain are active, the increased energy requirement means an increased flow of oxygenated blood to that region, which the fMRI can detect and display in a visual format. Lindstrom uses data from these studies to disprove commonly held beliefs in advertising, such as the effectiveness of subliminal advertising and that warning labels on smoking packaging can actually encourage smoking.

According to the book, roughly 90% of consumer buying behavior is unconscious, which is part of the reason Lindstrom believes nueromarketing can a more effective method to find out what consumers really want and reduce the number of product failures.

"Markers and advertisers on the other hand have spent over a century, throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping it will stick. The fact is that most marketing, advertising branding strategies is a guessing game...Until now marketers and advertisers haven't really known what drives our behavior so they've had to rely on luck, coincidence, chance, or repeating the same old tricks all over again. But now that we know that roughly 90% of our consumer buying behavior is unconscious, the time has come for a paradox shift."

I think this book is a very interesting read, though it is difficult for most marketers to implement fMRI studies without thousands or millions of dollars to spend on this new field of marketing. However, it looks very promising, as marketing becomes more science and numbers driven in the future.

You can download a free chapter of Buyology at the Martin Lindstrom website.

Often times positive attitudes lead to behavior that mirrors the attitude. For instance, whether you like Obama or you like McCain, you probably voted for them. However positive attitudes don't always predict behavior accurately. For instance, most American's think it is important to eat a healthy diet, however two out of every three Americans are overweight (1). Most American's think it is important to save for retirement, however our national savings rate was recently below zero, while Europe's savings rate is about 20% and Japan's savings rate is about 25%.

Why does behavior often contradict attitudes? One explanation is Lewin's Equation, which describes behavior as a function of the person and the environment B=f(P+E). In other words environment often has a strong influence on our behavior.

For instance, if we personally have the belief that education is important, but all our friends think it's a waste of time and encourage you not to study, then you may skip school or drop out. You may believe it is important to donate to charity, but you are broke, and so you don't donate money to the Salavation Army bell ringer.

Often marketing assumes that if we can just improve the attitude of our brand, more people will buy from us. However there may be many environmental influences that make this ineffective. I really like the Geico commercials, but I buy my insurance from Esurance because they cost less. I really like Miller, but all my friends don't, so I end up buying Coors a lot.

As a result, focusing all your marketing resources on attitudes can be ineffective. Spending lots of money on entertaining television commercials could mean more people have a favorable attitude about your brand, but it doesn't necessarily mean they will buy from you. If environment is a big factor in the behavior of your consumers, it is smart to invest in improving the environment side of the equation. This can include focusing on only the consumers that are in an environment that is conducive to buying from you. Pay per click ads target people who have the means and the desire to buy. Rewarding existing customers focuses on the people who have already displayed the desired behavior. Word of mouth campaigns can create a favorable environment by using social influences of an individual's peers.

Sway by Ori and Rom Brafman is a brilliant book about the forces than lead to irrational decision making. Understanding these forces can have many marketing applications since marketing often involves persuading customers to act irrationally.

One very interesting topic from Sway that relates directly to consumer behavior is value attribution. Basically this is when an individual is primed with a signal that forms a strong belief of the value of the item that sticks in the mind.

There are several fascinating examples of value attribution in action that are described in Sway. The authors tell a story of a Coney Island hot dog salesmen who attempted to undercut the competition by selling hot dogs for 5 cents instead of 10 cents back in the 1910's. However, the pricing strategy didn't work because people assumed there must be something wrong with them if they are only half the cost of the typical hot dog. Therefore people had associated a low value to the hot dogs even though they were made with real beef and tasted just as good at the 10 cent hot dogs.

There are numerous other examples of individuals who irrationally base value on one aspect of a product or person, even though additional information is present that contradicts their assumption. Sway describes an experiment in which a world renown violin player played a difficult piece on a million dollar violin at the subway while wearing jeans and a hat. Over a thousand people passed by and almost no one stopped to listen. NBA players who were picked later in the NBA draft played less minutes than players who were selected early in the draft, despite having statistics that were just as good.

The tendency of consumers to value something based on little information is very common. How can marketers use this to persuade individuals to make a desired buying decision? One method is dressing up an average product with superior packaging. Charging a higher price than competitors, having a celebrity endorse a product or advertising a single attribute that is superior to competitors can also sway consumer to assume a high value.

Learn more about the book at www.swaybook.com

by Gareth Kay

There's a ton of good stuff out there about how people really do things, and how behavior really spreads (Mark clearly has contributed a huge amount to this). And as someone working in advertising, it's often quite depressing learning that it's not what we do that really matters, but what people do to what we do; that advertising hasn't got the strong influence we might like to think it does (shock horror, people don't do what we tell them or think about things how we ask them to).

So, is there a role and future for communications? Well, perhaps there is but it's a little different to what we tend to think. This week's New Scientist has an excellent article about some research at the University of Groningen that empirically proves the 'broken window' theory. Here's an excerpt:

In the most striking experiment, Keizer left a €5 note protruding from a fully addressed envelope that itself was poking out of a mailbox. The team discovered that people were less likely to steal the money if there was no graffiti or litter on or around the mailbox.

With no litter or graffiti, 13% of the passers-by stole the money. Thefts doubled to 27% when the mailbox was daubed with graffiti, or to 25% when it was surrounded by litter. "It's quite shocking that the mere presence of litter doubled the number of people stealing," says Keizer.

In another experiment, motorists returning to collect their cars were three times more likely to trespass through an illegal, 200-metre short-cut to the car park if bicycles had been illegally locked to railings next to the forbidden entrance.

A massive 87% took the short cut when they saw the illegally parked bicycles, despite a police sign saying "No Trespassing". This compared with 27% trespassing when the bicycles were not locked to the fence.

Another experiment in a cycle park bearing a clear anti-graffiti sign, revealed that cyclists were twice as likely to leave litter if the researchers had daubed graffiti on the walls. The team attached bogus flyers to the bikes' handlebars to put the owners in a situation where they had to decide whether or not to litter.

So, perhaps we should think about communications as being more about environment management, creating an environment where people are more likely to behave in a favorable way. About seeding the right environment where behavior is more likely to take hold. Which puts us squarely back in the culture business...

Image by Nesster

You can read more great marketing content by Gareth Kay at his blog Brand New.