Your consumers will tell you everything you need to know about them -- if you just know where to look. The answer, of course, is everywhere. Then you just need to put the data together. All of it.
Your customers think they are unique. Market segmentation lets you treat them that way.
Forget Big Brother. Target has its eye on you. The Sunday, February 18, 2012, issue of The New York Times Magazine contained an article written by Charles Duhigg on the latest trends in market research. Look for "Psst, You in Aisle 5" to read "How your shopping habits reveal even the most personal information."
One of the key takeaways is the argument that as habit takes over thinking diminishes. Apply this to dieting, driving, shopping--and even voting. The scenarios are mostly not pretty.
The amount of information that market researchers can know about shoppers from their ordinary unremarkable habits is staggering. Even though we know as shoppers that we can't get something for nothing, doesn't it feel odd to have the tables turned on you? Market researchers get researched too, and Target appears to have it down to a science.
A new book titled The Power Of Habit: Why We Do What We Do And How To Change It by Charles Duhigg, an award-winning New York Times business writer explains how our brains form habits and how we can break those habits.
Duhigg conveys new research findings from psychologists, neurologists, and high-end corporate market researchers and analysts. There is, we are told, a three-step habit loop that solidifies behavior in our brains. The key factors, according to Duhigg, are cue, routine, reward. From my psychology undergraduate and graduate work, this is sounding very familiar. Skinner, Pavlov, even Lorenz. Classical conditioning redux. These days, of course, there are mathematicians and statisticians data mining like crazy to use our personal cue-routine-reward loops for optimal capital gain.
Do you feel a perverse urge to shop wildly and uncharacteristically for an indeterminate spell...just to throw the analysts off? I could be alone in this.
Don't mind someone always looking over your shoulder? Build your own Habitrail here.
A picture used to be worth a thousand words. Video ups the ante. Consumers are increasingly turning to video to inform and entertain. Nielsen reports that in one month's time, 25 million American women watched videos on their social networks. Those were most likely videos for entertainment. But just take a look at how powerful a video can be when designed as a consumer report.
As names go, Pinterest doesn't have much to recommend it. In terms of business volume, reports Social Fresh, the social network is steamrolling Google Plus, LinkedIn, and YouTube combined. After aggregating data from about 200K network publishers that reach about 260 million unique visitors each month, Shareaholic says that Pinterest is king of referral traffic. Read More...
Two little valentines I know -- 6 and 8 years old -- happily announce, "This is the best day ever!" Or "This is the funnest party ever!" Or "That was the best movie ever!" So in that vein, for the grown-ups in your life, share this: The best Valentine ever!
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