Cracking the Code: Leveraging Consumer Psychology to Drive Profitability

Citation

Cook, G.R. (2012), "Cracking the Code: Leveraging Consumer Psychology to Drive Profitability", Journal of Consumer Marketing, Vol. 29 No. 5, pp. 390-391. https://doi.org/10.1108/07363761211247514

Cracking the Code in an extremely interesting and valuable collection of 14 articles dedicated to the idea of accurately predicting the highly complex subject of consumer behavior and the consumer decision‐making process. Success in today's highly competitive global marketplace is very dependent on the marketer's ability to predict the consumer's eventual reactions to products and services and how effective the marketer is at developing the appropriate messaging within the advertising and promotion effort. Academia and the business world have much to learn from one another in this critical area, and while progress has been made over recent years, there is still much to learn and progress to be made! Currently as an educator and professor of marketing related courses and formerly in the business world in various marketing positions for some 30+ years, I certainly understand why this joint partnership is critical. The so‐called gap between the two parties needs to be closed, and closed at a faster pace. And if the two parties can effectively connect with one another – it is clearly a “win‐win” situation for all parties involved – including the consumer! Following is a brief synopsis of each article in this book.

Article 1: “Bridging theory and practice” is about bringing together closer and more often both academia (theory) and the business world (practitioners). Without doubt there is a high degree of relevance in terms of academic research to the business world and also a high degree of relevance in terms of business world activities, challenges and opportunities to academia. Significant contributions can be made from both sides for a more highly successful outcome in the marketplace.

Article 2: “Optimal marketing for really new products (RNP)” discusses effective marketing techniques, tactics and strategies when “really new” products are involved. The key processes of initial awareness creation, differentiation and positioning platforms, media selection, and optimal messaging are thoroughly discussed. The challenges of effectively marketing “really new” products is quite different than marketing involving modified products or product extensions. The key is the proper messaging around the new products: differentiating features, attributes and consumer benefits in a believable and credible manner.

Article 3: “Consumer tunnel vision and implications for managing the product mix” talks about the typical “tunnel vision” approach that an average consumer takes when viewing and selectively processing marketing messages with regard to products and services. A key objective here is of course to have your product or service become a part of the consideration set, and with a plethora of product in the marketplace today, this is no easy task! The marketer is desirous of their product obtaining a “top‐of‐mind” status in the mindset of the prospective consumer. Recommended in this regard is a combination of selective advertising tactics, selective usage of the new social media, potential usage of sponsorships and celebrities to drive brand consideration, licensing, and consumer and trade promotion tactics.

Article 4: “How to target diverse customers” points out how marketing is becoming more and more challenging, involving highly diverse demographics, and particularly as the media becomes more and more fragmented. Traditional media campaigns are becoming less and less effective, thus requiring more customized approaches in order to reach the targeted audiences. Mentioned in this article are three specific processes to help construct and drive positive targeted marketing outcomes – identification, targetedness, and internalization.

Article 5: “Where to draw the line?” shows that there has been much consumer concern over the credibility and truthfulness in product claims found in media ads today. Deceptive advertising and promotional practices are susceptible to FTC review and, in some cases, stiff fines for the marketer where credibility in ad claims is questionable. The key question for the marketer here is “where do we actually draw the line” in terms of advocating (in media claims) what the real value and benefits the consumer will in fact realize? The authors provide us with some specific ways in which we can avoid deceptive advertising and potential misrepresentation of our products and services.

Article 6: “Verbal and visual information interaction in print advertisements” discusses in detail resultant consumer responses and behaviors in terms of both verbal and visual information interactions related to product information contained in various advertising and promotional media. Two specific areas of research are discussed here: effects of visual/verbal reaction to ad content on the memory and effects of visual/verbal reaction to print ad information on consumers' attitudinal responses. COO (Country of Origin) consumer perceptions relating to products produced outside the country by US consumers is also reviewed.

Article 7: “Comparative advertising research” discusses the value of comparative advertising, e.g. Ford vs Chevrolet, Coke vs Pepsi, etc. The key question, of course, is whether the comparative ads have a positive impact on consumer buying behavior for either the leading or challenging brand. Such advertising can, in some cases, effectively differentiate one brand from another, hopefully in a value‐added way. Credibility in ad content is of course key here, from the consumer's perspective.

Article 8: “Brand experience” reviews the overall importance and relevance of the “Consumer brand experience” as perceived by the involved consumer and provokes the question: Does this experience positively impact – repeat purchase, consumer satisfaction, consumer loyalty, positive word of mouth etc? A key point the author makes here is that there are perhaps specific dimensions of the brand experience: sensor; affective, intellectual, behavioral and finally social. Each of these could impact the consumer brand experience positively or negatively!. Best the marketer understand the individual and collective potential impact of these elements.

Article 9: “Success stories or narratives” suggests that using these within various advertising and promotional campaigns can be effective, believable and credible from the consumer's viewpoint, thus engaging the targeted consumer and evoking potential buying behavior. There have been several humorous stories in recent advertising that have been successful: AFLAC duck; Priceless campaigns by MasterCard and the GEICO ads with the little gecko. From the perspective of awareness creation alone, these ads have been highly successful. At a minimum a marketer would hope that such stories and narratives would turn a negative consumer attitude into a neutral state or even better, turn a neutral consumer attitude into a positive attitude!

Article 10: “The consumer – generated product review” discusses the potential value from consumer‐posted product/service reviews developed and displayed on the web of individual products and services and whether or not we should highly encourage them as marketers. Clearly, there is valuable information that marketers can glean from such postings – be they negative or positive. There is also the possibility that companies, in response to such postings, can develop consumer relationships that can lead to incremental business and positive word of mouth.

Article 11: “Improving the predictive power of consumer research by measuring naturally occurring judgments” deals with research centered around developing an understanding of the process of consumer attitude formation (towards brands, products and services), be it measurement induced (responding to standard attitude oriented questions) or be it spontaneous, on the spot and natural, such as a consumer responding to a particular TV or print ad at the point‐of‐sale promotion in a retail store. If marketers are able to differentiate between both naturally occurring consumer responses vs. measurement‐induced consumer responses and decision making processes, they will be able to initiate more effective and results‐ oriented marketing communication efforts.

Article 12: “Negativity and customer satisfaction” relates to the significant efforts that have been put forth by both researchers and marketers on customer satisfaction and how to continuously improve same – raising the bar and perhaps achieving the “delighted customers” status, above and beyond simple customer satisfaction. But our author indicates that we clearly need to understand the other side of the coin as well – customer dissatisfacation and the implications contained therein. We need to better understand and be able to compare and contrast the various psychological and behavioral characteristics of the emotionally dissatisfied with those of the satisfied customer. The “negative dominance theory” is discussed and explored in terms of its impact on repurchase, customer loyalty, consumer word of mouth, and of course, sales volume and eventual market share.

Article 13: “Nonconscious processes in consumer behavior” is a discussion by the authors to try and shed some light on the effects of nonconscious priming as it relates to the goal pursuit of individuals in the marketplace, and how our knowledge with regard to the nonconscious processes of consumption can be utilized by marketers to improve the overall marketing effort. The various primes reviewed are: visual; auditory; olfactory (scent); gustatory (taste) and hepatic (touch). Marketers need to better understand the value of selectively utilizing some and/or all of these primes to positively impact consumer attitudes and buying behaviors.

Article 14: “Marketing insights from a model of action and empirical findings” examines the importance of marketers needing to know exactly what goods/services to provide the consumer. This can be achieved by better understanding the nature of “human actions” as they relate to individual consumer's potential imbalance in their current state and quality of life and what they need in the future to further improve their overall status in life. Being able to examine, understand and assist the consumer in goal attainment here will be of great value to the marketer in properly allocating resources towards the development of desirable goods and services to this end.

In conclusion, this is a highly recommended read for both the academic researcher and the business/market practitioner, since it is clear that consumer psychologists have a lot to share with marketers and vice versa. Marketers today are dealing with a highly complex consumer who possesses perhaps a unique set of experiences, attitudes and attributes, all of which will likely influence his/her consumption behaviors. This important sharing that needs to take place between the two parties should culminate in a more positive ending with regard to more precisely meeting customer requirements on a continuous basis as well as improved market share, profits and ROI for the firm.