November 2002
Some things in life are certain – predictable, like death, and taxes, as someone once said. Many more things, in fact, are entirely predictable…
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Solid objects fall down, not up;
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Oil floats on water;
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There are 365 (and a quarter) days in a year;
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And the square of the hypotenuse is always equal to the sum of the squares of the sides of a right angle triangle.
Scientific – or mathematical – fact. I drop the glass, it definitely falls, maybe it breaks. If only people were as predictable – if only we could say scientifically, and for certain, which way they’ll jump.
The reality is much more fuzzy – making marketing, and marketing research, a much more inexact “science”; some may say, not a science at all. And while it may not be all that scientific, I can tell you from experience that studying people, and how they react, is much more interesting, and exciting, than studying chemicals, be they in a test tube, or a production plant. In fact, the only scientific principle that applies is Heisenberg’s Principle of Uncertainty.
In Heisenberg’s words…
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"The more precisely the POSITION is determined, the less precisely the MOMENTUM is known"
Put simply – the more we know about where something is, the less we know about where it’s going. A scary thought, when we think about consumers, and the conclusions that we often draw from what they tell us in research.
Heisenberg’s Principle undermines the very basis of our desire to draw conclusions about cause and effect. We assume that because someone likes our advertising, they’ll buy our product. We assume because our customers are satisfied with our service, that they’ll continue using us. We even assume, almost every day in a market research world, that people will do what they tell us they’re very likely to do.
But the reality is, that the past does not predict the future, and what people say they will do is not always what they actually end up doing. And most importantly, for all those dinosaurs out there still believing that all they have to do to keep customers in a competitive environment is to ensure that they’re satisfied…. well, that is simply just not so.
In the sharp formulation of the law of causality: "if we know the present exactly, we can calculate the future" it is not the conclusion that is wrong but the premise.
Are they happy? How happy are they? Are you sure your customers are happy enough to protect them from your competitors? Are you not only delivering to, but exceeding their expectations, in ways that matter to them?
People care a lot about their relationships, they (mostly) care a lot about what brand of beer they drink – but much less so about what bank they use or what brand of toilet paper they buy! If they don’t care, you have to rely on habit rather than emotion to get their loyalty – and habits, like rules, are made to be broken.
Is there some new competitor out there – or an old one, presenting themselves in a different way – tempting your customers in ways they can’t refuse.
Are they TORN between equally appealing but different options? Are you the safe, comfortable option, that they like to come home to – competing against the exciting ‘bit on the side’, with no strings attached? Is familiarity – with you and what you offer – breeding contempt or boredom, pushing them literally into the arms of a competitor.
People don’t always do what they say they’ll do, nor do they do what makes them happy.
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