Reaching the subconscious mind of the consumer

Ninety five percent of all our cognition and purchase decision making take place in the subconscious mind," says Gerald Zaltman, a Harvard Business School professor who elucidates this statistic in his book, How Customers Think: Essential Insights into the Mind of the Market. His finding, though, gives rise to questions like "How can marketers begin to understand behaviors and attitudes of which the customers themselves are not aware?"

Zaltman believes that there are several helpful value-cues approaches to reach the subconscious mind of targeted consumers. One way is to double-check or match the stated beliefs of customers with their actual behavior. For example, many consumers report that they handle competing brands and compare prices at the point of purchase. However, the observations of these same consumers often reveal that they don’t even look at alternatives to the brand they choose. They get what has for a period of time satisfied their cravings. Thus, what they say is not necessarily what they do.

Another option is to use physiological or response latency measures, which can reveal what consumers actually believe or think, measured by their subconscious physical reactions and the contradictions in what they say when asked directly. Still another productive method is to study the metaphors consumers use to express their thoughts and feelings. This involves in-depth probing in one-on-one interviews, and focus-group discussions (FGDs) to generate the hidden meanings contained in their metaphors.

The idea of exploring the subconscious of the customer is traditionally linked to marketing communications that can allow product managers to expand the marketing strategy for their products or pave the way for out-of-the box approaches. Probing the subconscious mind of the consumer has tremendous value beyond marketing communication. For example, learning that a communication tool invokes deep thoughts and feelings about social bonding can be very helpful to research and development experts.

This suggests that tangible experiences of social bonding can be "engineered in" through product design and the execution of merchandising and promotion implements. In the personal-care product category, for instance, colors and scents are known to be evocative of social bonding experiences. In such cases, the basic idea of connection is central to the product’s value proposition and becomes a more profound basis for developing a marketing strategy than, say, technical superiority or long-lasting benefits. The connectivity is anchored on emotions more than reasons.

Many researchers tell us that one-on-one interviews are superior to FGDs. A few conventional one-on-one interviews, for example, can yield essentially the same data as several focus groups. Evidence abounds that personal interviews yield deep insights that can’t be surfaced in FGDs. In-depth, one-on-one interviews enriched by techniques from clinical psychology and sociology are now becoming a preferred methodology. Often, the results of such interviews can be used to design more comprehensive surveys, which, when properly designed and subjected to careful statistical analyses, can yield further insights into subconscious consumer thinking.

Zaltman underscores that the insights offered by methods that probe the subconscious mind are relevant at all stages of the product life cycle. Like when introducing a radically new product, it is necessary to understand how consumers currently frame their experience of the problem addressed by the new offering. That is, no matter how radical a new product is, it will always be perceived initially in terms of some frame of reference. It is essential that this frame be understood, especially if it is an inappropriate one and can prove detrimental to early product trials.

For a mature product, insights about the category or a specific brand can lead to modifications that will extend its life and sustain its economic value to the company. One company with a very "tired" brand explored consumers’ hidden thoughts and feelings and discovered a relevant, basic emotion that had been overlooked by all the brands in the category. Eventually, they were able to connect this specific emotion with their brand, giving it a major sales boost. Other organizations use the hidden treasures of the unconscious mind to identify new product and service opportunities. Using metaphor-elicitation techniques, they have identified important unmet needs, and their respective R&D departments use the information to alter the architecture of their offerings.

"The use of scientific advances requires the imaginative translation of scientific findings into effective practice in the marketplace," Zaltman avers. There are several companies that are ahead of the game in terms of acquiring advanced knowledge about consumer behavior, and in using that knowledge to benefit the consumers. Zaltman cites firms like McCann-Erickson, Procter & Gamble, Hallmark, Bank of America, Kraft, Samsung Electronics, IBM, Pfizer, J. Walter Thomson, and General Motors, among others. Their use of these techniques range from the development of new product ideas all the way to the repositioning of established brands.

Technology, Zaltman adds, "is revolutionizing our ability to understand customers. Insights about the workings of the subconscious mind, including memory, attention, information processing, the nature of human truths, and socially shared understandings, and the neurobiology of figurative thinking, for instance, have already outdated most thinking and current practices among managers. Many of these advances are the product of advances in research techniques. Still, the use of scientific advances requires the imaginative translation of scientific findings into effective use in the marketplace. This is where art meets science. Here, the imaginative thinking by product managers and market researchers is required to successfully apply insights from metaphor-elicitation and neuro-imaging techniques that can, for instance, generate helpful new products, more informative communication, and more rewarding in-store experiences.

The GM Case Study On Value-Cues Research

Zaltman shares the case of General Motors to illustrate the use of metaphors in its value-cues research program for designing vehicles, advertising, and dealership appearances. In a recent study, GM hired researchers to ask consumers to bring objects expressing "optimism" to a one-on-one interview. One participant brought an image of a champagne flute. The interviewee explained that the flute’s simple, open design expressed many things, including the dawning of a new day. GM’s designers then used this understanding to convey optimism in their car designs. One design-team member remarked, "It would be impossible to do this relying only on verbal cues. Getting customers to express themselves in the same design vernacular we use goes right to the heart of how we connect with them."

In another metaphor-elicitation project, General Motors’ designers asked consumers to show them photos of "friendly" watches. Respondents chose watches thatwere easy to read and could stand up under abuse. The dominant design features of these watches included a large face, easily legible numbers, and a low-tech, non-industrial "feel." Study participants also chose watches that appeared "fun," which was expressed through color, innocent or silly shapes, and designs "that make you smile," look comfortable, and invite comments from others.

By asking consumers to use non-automobile examples, the researchers gained a more complete understanding of the diverse meanings of "friendly" as potentially relevant to automobiles. In fact, in most metaphor-elicitation researches, consumers are asked to bring in pictures that don’t show the product in question, but depict their thoughts and feelings about that product, service, or experience. Thus, in a study of the essence of Mickey Mouse, the researchers asked consumers not to choose pictures relating to or including Mickey or Disney in general. As a result, consumers thought more deeply about the topic and produced more valuable insights that a company’s competitors can’t easily access through traditional research methods.

To fully understand the consumers, marketers must go beyond what is apparent. A deeper look at their psyche revealed that matching what they say with what they actually do is critical for marketing or overall business success.

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