Still shopping in the Paleolithic age

So a new study from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania suggests what we all think we know: men and women are different kinds of shoppers. The study claims men shop with a purpose (hunting?) while women treat shopping as a total experience (gathering?). Not surprising really, especially when you consider that women do the vast majority of shopping for themselves, their family members, their friends and relatives, and the household itself. Of course women say they spend more time and thought in stores – they have to!

This kind of study makes me put on my Certified Gender Research Scientist hat and squint hard: on the surface, what you see is what you get. But look a little deeper and the gender knot unravels. What do we know in the world of gender studies that market researchers and MBAs do not?

Indeed, there’s always something that feels like truth in stereotypes. That's how they emerge in the first place, as a handful of superficial observations that eventually morph into a blanket over a whole group. I know plenty of men who zip into stores, get what they need, and get out. But then there are those other guys who take forever picking out a new jacket or a pair of running shoes. Heck, sometimes it’s the same guy – it just depends on what he’s shopping for. So, why does the stereotype exist – and why did the men interviewed about their shopping habits spew back what the researchers wanted to hear?

We’ve known since the 1970s that there are two kinds of gender effects in survey research. First, if the researchers are looking for differences between men and women, they will find them. It’s incredibly rare for gender research to turn up findings that oppose what the researcher set out to find (and this is not true for other kinds of research, so it’s something about our deep seated beliefs about the differences between men and women). Second, there's an effect that comes from this great concept called 'social desirability.' Here's one guy's version: "There's such cultural phobia about looking feminine, most men won't admit to liking shopping even if they do. Men are allowed to talk about buying cars, appliances, technology, and sports equipment. And maybe wine or beer." You want to appear manly? Then don't admit to non-manly behaviors -- especially in a co-ed focus group.

It’s too bad the "primitive psychology" angle was so attractive to the Wharton researchers (like others before them!). As any anthropologist will tell you, hunter-gatherer myths tend to play better in today’s ads than in the historical record. The Paleolithic analogy distracts from the truly interesting findings about sales staff: both men and women cared a lot about individualized service and problem solving by store clerks. Thus the study’s most interesting conclusion was ultimately its least surprising one as well:

"Retailers need to step up and deliver more sophisticated, segmented service… There's no such thing as customer homogeneity. We're not a homogeneous bunch at all. Yet as organizations, we end up treating customers as one big happy family. You've got all sorts of demographic and psychographic forces at play."

Even while concluding that consumption is deeply segmented, the authors still focused on gender differences as an easy approach to "solving" the segmentation conundrum. Unfortunately the slight differences noted by the researchers could tempt overzealous retailers into using sexist psychological sales tactics (wittingly or not). But imagine what could happen if these arguments started showing up as guidelines in corporate sales training manuals…

Tags: customer experience, shopping, retail

Brave new world of emerging media

You've got to choose between happiness and what people used to call high art"

-- Aldous Huxley

Lately, advertisers seem almost giddy at the prospect of all the new media channels available for selling product and creating brand images. Imagining all the ways digital media allows us to break out of flat spaces is a designer’s dream. Adweek highlighted the new Scion urban street displays, where passersby approaching the store window experience the cars moving further away. The Japanese are already masterful at using old and new digital media for short burst campaigns: the pop star Ayumi Hamasaki’s last concert featured a fleet of “tribute vans” each airbrushed with a different alluring image of Ayumi, tractor trailers wrapped with her album cover, and huge digital signs peppering the Tokyo skyline.

But those who venture into this Brave New World of Bluecasting, moving screens, and SMS often have trouble demonstrating how such venues will actually pay off in sales and profit. And then the biggest venues for marketing can complicate life with gate keeping techniques or worse, allowing your competitors to siphon off customers (think of the complaints about Google’s new “search within a search” feature.) Not only does it undermine a company’s ability to get to consumers first, but it can be counterintuitive. Like diet books advertised on a gourmet recipe page featuring molten chocolate cakes, if you don’t know the big Freudian question (what DO consumers want?) digital media can easily confuse or annoy rather than entice. Emerging channels are new to both the seller and the buyer. The savvy media campaign takes a line from Lou Reed and engages both sides in the “beginning of a great adventure.”

Companies need to get their feet wet with digital media, despite the uncertainty of its uses, especially to avoid those gate keeping measures and to establish brand identity in new venues. I don’t want a Scion (my dog, our daily muddy walks, and her serious furriness are better suited to something with a big washable hatchback. I’m so not Gen X or Y anyway…) but I’ve certainly been hyped at enough to know one when I see it. Scott Wensman claims that using emerging channels is more about developing an audience – and, most significantly, doing some solid consumer research to figure out what works. If emerging channels are going to evolve into the great advertising boon they’ve been hyped to be, advertisers are going to have to figure out how to sell product for people in lifestyle niches beyond teenagers, 20-somethings, and wannabes. While my 80 year old father might be enticed by a beautiful girl with a Red Bull LCD image on her chest, my 80 year old mother (who does all the shopping) would not. Show her an interactive video cookbook or a version of DDR with big band music, and you just might get her attention. Let her tell you what recipes to include or what songs she likes, and the technology gets sold along with the product.

Tags: customer experience, emerging media, bluecasting

IBM touts tech as the key to customer experience

Via David Polinchock at Brand Experience Labs comes a new research paper published by IBM entitled "how immersive technology can revitalize the shopping experience." Given IBM's role in providing back-end software, POS systems and interactive kiosks to a huge swath of retailers across the globe the insights from the paper are not exactly startling (technology -> better personalization -> improved customer experience). But one line I found particularly noteworthy was:

"Truly immersive experiences—which connect with shoppers on an
emotional level through personalized dialogues and give them greater
control over the shopping experience—are the new frontier in retailing."

After all, that can pretty much be done without any (modern) technology. In fact, the best examples of an emotional connection, personalized dialogs and immersive environments that I've experienced have all come from interactions in small shops that don't use high-tech gadgetry and in some cases don't even have an electronic cash register. Of course, that experience doesn't typically translate well into the modern retail era of huge megamarts and suburban sprawl, and that's certainly where IBM is focusing its attention with this report. One thing I will agree with, though, is that retailers must continue to evolve their experience if they want to stay relevant and competitive. As IBM notes:

"Walt Disney said, 'whenever I go on a ride, I'm always thinking of what's wrong with the thing and how it can be improved.' Disney knew: you must constantly improve the experience in order to stay relevant."

The particular tenet holds true regardless of a retailer's size -- the mom & pop shop has to continually refine their experience to keep customers loyal and happy, just as the big box guys and department stores do. IBM's take, of course, is that with the right technology, even the biggest retailers can create the same kind of personalized environment and custom-tailored atmosphere that small retailers use to their advantage to woo shoppers looking for some added attention.

Tags: customer experience, shopping experience