Customer Reviews

How Customers Think: Essential Insights into the Mind of the Market

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Few would have any argument with the central thesis of this book. Most new products fail rapidly in unexpected ways, suggesting that a misunderstanding of what is required by customers is part of the problem. Professor Zaltman goes on to suggest that his patented approach to considering more aspects of customer thinking (especially emotion, associations and context) can help improve matters.

The book argues successfully that most marketing research methods are misused (usually by being applied to solve the wrong class of problem). He also does a fine job of explaining how marketers' attitudes and opinions create myopia that prevents them from learning what they need to know.

There is extensive material in the book about how the brain works in the context of purchasing decisions. For those who are familiar with brain research, there is little new here.

As someone who has worked in marketing research for over 30 years, I found the explanation of how to do better to be abstract and often counter to my own experience with extensive one-on-one open-ended interviews. Let me share a few examples. First, he states that consensus maps (a graphic expression of the universal considerations and order that consumers go through to make a purchasing decision) of how consumers think almost always emerge after 10 interviews . . . far short of statistical norms. That finding made me wonder if the maps are done too abstractly to capture the richness of customer thinking. Second, all of the examples of specific brands seemed to relate to an adult making a decision with the item in front of her or him. Yet, many consumers arrive at the grocery store (for example, since much of the book is about food products) with a shopping list in hand. Are consensus maps the same for self purchase as for purchase for others? The book doesn't seem to address that point. If the items are to be purchased for another family member, how do the different consensus maps overlap and affect one another? Third, the book doesn't do much to address how misimplementation of new products and marketing strategies causes failure. In my experience, that problem is greater than a lack of understanding of how customers think. Fourth, the incentives in most marketing organizations favor using marketing research to locate reasons to justify a marketer's decisions. Professor Zaltman acknowledges this, but doesn't really address how to institutionally change the culture. His suggestions presume that everyone is more interested in promoting company results than protecting individual careers while the opposite is often the case. Fifth, the real weakness in most organizations is that the head of marketing research has an insufficient background in the subject to make the right suggestions and to persuade management to follow those suggestions. That problem isn't addressed at all. Sixth, the best applications for this kind of research are for services . . . yet there were few examples of services compared to food items. In services, you have more things you can change and the potential for improvement is greater. The strength of the book mostly comes in the service examples (which are often overly disguised).

The book also has a tone that I did not like. It seems to suggest that no one had ever developed thinking process maps or used depth one-on-one interviews before this patented process was developed. Many aspects of the concepts described here were in broad scale application in companies that I have worked with over 30 years ago. Many of these companies belonged to the Marketing Science Institute, with which Harvard (where Professor Zaltman practices) has long had a close association. In addition, those who have employed these concepts are universally praised. That was strange, because many of them have pulled some of the biggest errors that violate these principles. For example, the research on new Coke was flawed by not telling consumers that the existing Coca-Cola would be removed from the market. Yet Coca-Cola is cited universally as an example of advanced marketing research.

The book also comes across as a sales pitch far too often. That is almost unprecedented in my experience in reading a book from a professor. The same marketing research organizations are used as examples over and over again. You are also told that one way to get these good results is to hire a "wizard," which is presumably one of these firms. Wouldn't it make more sense to develop a proprietary skill in this area so that competitors would have less chance to learn what you find out?

Finally, the reports of success seem unconvincing. They are based on self-reported satisfaction with short-term results. Now, if you've hired someone to help you and spent a lot of money to do so, even the most inexperienced market researcher knows that there will be a bias towards reporting positive results. Also, paid market researchers will share their "best" results, rather than their average or below average results. I was left wondering what the long term benefits are, and what the average expectation can be.

Despite these reservations, I think most marketing executives will benefit from the book's discussions of what types of marketing research to use for what types of issues. But the total of that information could have been captured in a magazine article.

Both marketing executives and researchers will benefit from chapter 12.

Those who purchase or use marketing research would do well to become familiar with this book.

I hope that Professor Zaltman will write another book in the future that will be more helpful to marketing research professionals. It has always been the case that 99% of the profession is engaged in doing repetitive tracking research. With few looking into creative research to better develop new products, improve brands and enhance the lives of customers, we need to develop a larger cadre of well-trained individuals interested in these challenges if we are to ultimately improve on the dismal record of failure in making improvements.

Consumer research is a $6 billion business. But the ROI on research expenditures is being questioned as never before. This is ironic given that advances in information technology has vastly expanded analytic capabilities and increased customer data by an order of magnitude.

Jerry Zaltmans How Customers Think offers fresh insights into why companies are increasingly frustrated by consumer research. Drawing on contemporary brain research, he exposes fatal flaws in the hallowed premise in traditional consumer research that asking customers about their motivations is the best way to get clues about their future behavior.

Zaltman points out that surveys, questionnaires and focus groups fail to get behind the curtains of consciousness. This can prove fatal for a marketing program because at least 90% of mental activity that leads to perceptions, thinking and decisions takes place outside the conscious mind.

However, traditional research and marketing largely ignores the contents of the unconscious mind. Why is this so, when contemporary brain research has learned that this is where motivations as well as perceptions and decisions originate? Because lacking an understanding of how minds work, researchers and marketers must depend by default on consumers conscious rational responses. However, disconnects between what consumers consciously think and what they feel at deeper levels often lead to marketplace failure.

Zaltman reconnects the emotional, feeling dimension of consumers minds (right brain as it were) with the perceiving, thinking (left brain) dimension of their minds to yield a holistic picture of customers minds.

Marketing often fails expectations because undue attention is given the contents of the rational left brain that respondents disgorge in traditional consumer research. Zaltman observes that researchers and marketers widely ignore the deep shadowy realm of motivating emotions because it is easier to record, process and analyze what consumers say directly about their needs and motivations.

Zaltman observes that recent brain research shows that emotional arousal is essential to the generation of sustained interest in a matter. Brain patients whose emotional capabilities have been destroyed while still having normal reasoning powers cannot determine whether one brand or another is best for them. Brand loyalty, it seems, is determined more by emotional responses than by rational analysis.

Zaltman shows how to get better guidance than direct questioning of them yields about what will stir consumers emotions. In doing this he addresses one of the most curious defects in traditional research and marketing: decisions are more often determined by the rules of statistical math than by tenets of behavior science. However, this should not be surprising because few marketers have grounding in how minds work. After all, a person can earn an MBA in marketing without a single course in behavior.

If the primary functional purpose of marketing is getting the attention of minds and influencing them to action, then it should follow that a deeper understanding of how minds work will make marketers more effective in doing that. However, with Zaltmans book in hand, one needs not go back to school for a degree in psychology to gain a practical understanding of how customers minds work.

A word of caution, however: This book is to be studied, not scanned. It does not offer the simple, sound bite-sized solutions that are so commonplace in marketing books and that make them quickly forgettable. Zaltmans book will not be forgettable to any person who makes a study of his book because he/she will experience a quantum leap in understanding how customers think.

For most of its pages, "How Customers Think" is a silly book which conceals shallow content with glib explanations, pseudo-scientific rationales, and marketing / management jargon. Since it assumes the basic principles of marketing research without explanation, it is not useful to a beginning research practitioner or buyer. However, an experienced practitioner will find some interesting ideas, provided (s)he is willing to spend some time cutting through fluff to get to the meat.

The book's greatest flaw is its author's misconception, common to many authors in marketing and related fields, that books about marketing should themselves be examples of marketing. Much of the book reads like advertising copy for the marketing research methods and management principles expounded by the author. This slick style tries, but fails, to conceal a serious lack of content.

Most of the book's content falls into one of three categories, all useless. The first category: explanations of traditional qualitative questioning techniques, such as projection using pictures or collages. These methodologies are rehashed without any really new content or in-depth explanation. The second category: discussion of recent findings from cognitive science, along with case studies showing how these findings lead to better MR methods. Unfortunately, the author's own understanding of cognitive science is too shallow, and the connection between cognitive science and his successful case studies so tenuous, that one suspects cognitive science is nothing more than window dressing intended to sell services to clients. The third category: principles for successful business management. The author essentially proposes creativity and flexible thinking as magic bullets for business success, with apparently little understanding of how useless is the *mere* recognition of these principles.

"How Customers Think"'s one saving grace is its fourth category of content: genuinely innovative data collection and analytical methods, primarily for qualitative research. Most of this content relates to so-called "metaphor elicitation", a proposed technique for teasing out the language (and thus the concepts) relating to some core idea; and "consensus mapping", a proposed technique for systematically recording the results of many respondents' metaphor elicitation in a way that reflects the cognitive structure of the core idea. While these techniques do not represent a huge breakthrough, they are useful nonetheless. It's unfortunate that they take up such a small part of the book.

Heard the taped version of HOW CUSTOMERS THINK:
ESSENTIAL INSIGHTS INTO THE MINDS OF THE MARKET
by Gerald Zaltman . . . as the author, a Harvard Business
School professor, notes: approximately 80% of all new products
fail within six months or fall significantly short of their profit forecast . . . this shouldn't be surprising, he argues, since "a great mismatch exists between the way consumers experience and think about their world and the methods marketers use to collect this information."

Zaltman takes what could be a complex topic and presents
it so that most (marketers and those not in the field) should
be able to grasp the key points . . . but I'd still only recommend the book for those really "into" marketing . . . I am, so I found it quite interesting . . . but others will be bored.

Yet all should probably find the following passage of interest, in which six common marketing fallacies are presented:

First, consumers think in well-reasoned, linear ways as they
evaluate products. They don't. For example, consumers do not
consciously assess a car's benefits attribute by attribute
and decide whether to buy it. Instead, their emotions--the desire for happiness, prestige, and so on--play a bigger role than logic in the purchase decision.

Second, consumers can plausibly explain their thinking and
behavior. In reality, however, 95 percent of thinking takes
place in our subconscious minds. People use conscious
thought primarily as a way to rationalize behavior.

Third, consumers' minds, brains, bodies, and surrounding
culture can be studied independently of one another. In fact,
the mind, brain and external world interact with, and help
shape, one another. For example, people from different
cultures experience physical pain differently.

Fourth, consumers' memories accurately reflect their
experience. Research reveals that memory is not perfect,
and in fact it changes depending on the situation. For
example, when people are asked to recall an experience,
their memories are influenced by the sequence in which
the questions are asked, and even the color of the paper
on which the survey is printed.

Fifth, consumers think primarily in words. Yet brain scans
suggest that only a small portion of the brain's neural
activity ultimately surfaces in language.

Sixth, consumers can received "injections" of company
messages--and interpret them correctly. However, consumers
do not passively absorb messages. They constantly reinterpret
such messages in terms of the unique experiences. For instances,
people have long heard that they should visit the dentist every
six months. But research shows that most individuals are very
skeptical about the need for such dental visits.

To summarize broadly, Zaltman's work is multi-disciplinary -- it scuttles through neuroscience, psychology, surrealistic art, marketing etc. -- and offers a viewpoint that the strip-mining form of quantitative market research that is predominant in our businesses fails to uncover a lot of hidden (or tacit, or latent) forms of consumer thought.

Through an array of exciting examples of his own work, he builds a theory of information processing and thought formation in the human brain. This romp through a coterie of different fields is gratifying, as is Zaltman's captivating writing style.

I bet you will come away with some thought-provoking ideas. For instance, there's a suggestion that you could segment your markets along entirely new lines. Among other things, brain scans could be used to classify your customer base into people who prefer visual communications and those who prefer auditory ones, and then target the first group with a newspaper display ad and the second with a radio spot.

But now for my paltry quibbles. While I adore the way the theory is constructed, I do not entirely agree with the author's ideas. Some ambiguous findings are shrugged off with "Qualitative research is not a replacement, it is complementary." The truth in some of the cases is that all his metaphorical attempts with showing of eccentric visuals etc do not always lead to any more exhilerating insights than could have been attained through other forms of research, or plain gut instinct.

For instance, consider his study of executive MBA students at Harvard Business School who were questioned: "What do you mean by customer focused?" Part of the answer: It means collecting information, analyzing data, anticipating customer needs - all exactly what customer-service gurus advise. But further elicitation revealed another part of the answer: Being customer-focused means having integrity, caring about customers in an authentic way, being a company worthy of trust. This leads Zaltman to the conclusion that "The executives were surprised by how much of their individual thinking was shared by others, although they had never discussed these things with anyone."

I am not sure how "having integrity, caring about customers, being a company worthy of trust" translates into something seminal?

This is not to trivialize the impact of this book. I love it. I love the WAY in which the theory is constructed. Chances are you will indeed be goaded into thinking of issues pertinent to your function and gain a good deal of insight into how human beings assess and operate (spoiler: in images, not in linguistically confined words.)

I recommend this book wholeheartedly, perhaps even a must-read book for anyone involved in psychology or strategy, but just keep your reality hats on.

This book is a must-read for marketing researchers, academics, managers, or anyone else interested in why we make the decisions we do. Dr. Zaltman has integrated the latest findings from cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and sociology into an easy-to-read, but definitely thorough, discussion of how the brain works and consumers think. Zaltman accomplishes that task by providing real-life case studies coming from his years of experience as a consultant along with a well-summarized view of the underlying theories and evidence. His discussions about the role of the subconscious should result in a paradigm shift in marketing research. Anyone who has conducted a focus group or distributed a large-scale written survey and has been left with the feeling that there must be more going on, will be comforted by the fact their intuition was right (there is) but also troubled by the issue of how to gain more information from consumers. Zaltman's research method, Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique (ZMET), is presented as a way for managers to "dig deeper" into both their own and their consumers' decision processes. This book provides detailed information about ZMET and how real managers have gained unique insights from its usage.

As both an academic memory researcher and consultant I was particularly impressed with Zaltman's coverage of the role of memory in consumer decision making, both with its frailty, making it subject to distortion on more traditional market research measures, and its depth, as in the role of storytelling and relationship to deep metaphors. On a practical note, Zaltman has integrated some features that make his book user-friendly, such as usage of pictures or images to demonstrate his points, summary tables that concisely articulate his ideas, a short glossary of terms that is helpful to the novice reader and an appendix on ZMET which includes good/bad examples of interviewing techniques. In addition to Zaltman's breakthrough coverage of content, he is also a gifted writer that is a pleasure to read. I highly recommend this book!

In his book, How Customers Think - Essential Insights Into the Mind of the Market, Gerald Zaltman hits gold!

Professor Zaltman has expertly combined the disciplines of all the sciences to provide not only "rich insights", but equally as important, practical applications. It is essential that Market Research Professonals go beyond their "Suite of Tools" and explore the sub-conscious through Dr. Zaltman's sound methodology. At the very least, it should be addressed when outlining a preliminary research design.

As a market researcher for over 35 years, we've all been challenged by the mystery of how customers think...because, we know, that the sub-conscious rules and is difficult to measure. At last, we have an approach that I consider one of the best.

Companies today would be hard-pressed to explain why they haven't tried this approach to gain competitive advantage in the knowledge of their customer base.

I applaud Dr. Zaltman for publishing this book...and, will admit, have used his metaphor elicitation technique when tackling some very complex problems.

I urge market research professionals to take this book very seriously. It can make a difference!

Patricia Mordigan Hawkins
Private Consultant

Every marketing manager wants to understand the consumer's thought process. Yet few succeed.

That is Gerald Zaltman, a professor of marketing at Harvard Business School and a fellow at Harvard University's interdisciplinary Mind, Brian Behavior Initiative, message in this fascinating book. Marketers would like to think they control the image of their brands, but in reality it is brain and the mind of the consumer that controls an individual's brand perception.

To be effective, the author says, new marketing strategies will have to add neurology, musicology, philosophy and zoology to anthropology, psychology and sociology they currently use.

Many marketing managers handicap themselves by clinging to the following ideas:
* Consumers think in a rational way. In reality, Zaltman says, the selection process is affected by emotion, the subconscious and physical context.
* Consumers can explain their behavior. The Harvard professor says that after the fact attempt attempts to make sense of their behavior, but rarely explain its controlling factors.
* Consumers' mind, brain, body and culture can be studied independently. The best information, he says, from studying their interaction.
* Memories accurately represent their actions. He notes their memories change with time.
* Buyers think in words. Not true, says the professor. Their words expressed in surveys and focus groups come only after they consciously opt to express their unconscious thoughts.
* Consumers interpret marketing messages the ways marketers intend them. Since consumers do not think in words, a clever message does not guarantee a message will be absorbed.

Time spent reading this book will challenge marketing experts to deliver messages that are relevant to consumers' experience and context, rather than bombarding them with their own perceptions.

Disappointing. If you have read some bestsellers touching on with recent findings in neuroscience (e.g. Antonio Damasio) and memory (e.g. Daniel Schacter) then what's left of this book for you is largely an advertisement for Zaltman's commercial and patented (!!) market research technique called 'Zaltman's metaphor elicitation'.

Yes there are good reasons to doubt focus groups (more reasons than Zaltman discusses), as well as management intuition, and market research that asks consumers why they bought what they bought. But that doesn't mean we need to resort to Zaltman's consultancy which bears a strong resemblance to some of the excesses of 1960s motivational research. Anyway Zaltman makes a very poor case for this logical leap, he really presents it as a fait accompli (I believe so so should you).

For marketing managers the greatest weakness of this book is the lack of integration with known facts of buying behaviour. The discoveries of even 20th Century marketing science are ignored. So there are no facts in this book about how consumers actually buy, or consume media. And so such facts aren't used as a check against Gerry's ideas. Indeed there is no testing of any ideas.

The marketing examples are purely anecdotal, and often very vague - suggesting a lack of first-hand knowledge (they read as if they were mentioned by 3rd parties to the author at the end of a seminar or over a chat). I can't recall anything convincing about sales results, or anything public that could be externally validated, the anecdotes have to be taken on trust. Even so, surprisingly, they tend to make very weak vague claims:

e.g. "managers at Coca-Cola's German office found that new research on memory contradicted many of their prevailing assumptions about how memory worked and how to design effective advertising campaigns. By applying several key findings about memory.. [they] launched a successful marketing program in that country." You don't say, wow ! What assumptions, what research, what sort of advertising program ? All we readers get is:

"Specifically, the company created more meaning (sic) and effective advertising by understanding the reconstructive nature of memory and the various factors affecting the encoding and retrieval of memory".

It would perhaps be acceptable if that sort of anecdote came at the start of the book - you'd expect more exciting, harder, detailed evidence to come later once the reader was familiar with the book's key concepts. But this example comes from page 258 - this sort of feeble anecdote is about as good as it gets as far as evidence that this book has any real-world application value.

As other reviewers have noted it's also an overly long rather abstract book, with somewhat indulgent structure, for example the third part is about management thinking not "how customers think". This book talks a lot about insight but doesn't deliver much.

Every marketing manager wants to understand the consumer's thought process. Yet few succeed.

That is Gerald Zaltman, a professor of marketing at Harvard Business School and a fellow at Harvard University's interdisciplinary Mind, Brian Behavior Initiative, message in this fascinating book. Marketers would like to think they control the image of their brands, but in reality it is brain and the mind of the consumer that controls an individual's brand perception.

To be effective, the author says, new marketing strategies will have to add neurology, musicology, philosophy and zoology to anthropology, psychology and sociology they currently use.

Many marketing managers handicap themselves by clinging to the following ideas:
* Consumers think in a rational way. In reality, Zaltman says, the selection process is affected by emotion, the subconscious and physical context.
* Consumers can explain their behavior. The Harvard professor says that after the fact attempt attempts to make sense of their behavior, but rarely explain its controlling factors.
* Consumers' mind, brain, body and culture can be studied independently. The best information, he says, from studying their interaction.
* Memories accurately represent their actions. He notes their memories change with time.
* Buyers think in words. Not true, says the professor. Their words expressed in surveys and focus groups come only after they consciously opt to express their unconscious thoughts.
* Consumers interpret marketing messages the ways marketers intend them. Since consumers do not think in words, a clever message does not guarantee a message will be absorbed.

Time spent reading this book will challenge marketing experts to deliver messages that are relevant to consumers' experience and context, rather than bombarding them with their own perceptions.