Customer Reviews

Market-Driven Thinking: Achieving Contextual Intelligence

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Whilst this book will be read by many market researchers and academics it maybe the one book that helps customer-focused executives gain competitive advantage through contextual intelligence. Woodside is admirably qualified as a Professor of Marketing at Boston College and Editor of the Journal of Business Research to write on this subject matter. His book like no other helps to focus on thinking about thinking in B2C & B2B marketing. Rarely do we find authors who intimately understand both these disciplines. The core proposition revolves around the contention that very little will be learnt from consumers through focus groups and questionnaires that you didn't already know. In fact we know it's no good asking a consumer their intentions towards purchases and product/service usages because what they tell you will inevitably not be what they turn out to do. Probably if only for the reason that they don't even remember their own reasons and beliefs. For most this thinking is automatic as Woodside reminds us and culturally imprinted during an early age.
Companies are spending millions on trying to look inside the minds of customers using brain electrodes and MRI but this text will help you get there faster and with considerably less dollars! The book includes in depth analyses of examples such as a Jewish couple buying a German Car; a parent of a teenage son buying Barq's root beer; moving to/from Finland; and Eric's heavy consumption of beer on a Friday night to talk to girls. Each of these help to illustrate the unconscious as well as the conscious thinking that takes place in the minds of customers when buying or consuming products.
Imagine the choice of sifting through the analysis of 1000 questionnaires or 25 in depth interviews. Much if not all of what you learn from the thick descriptions that you get from the in-depth interviews will apply to all your customers. Executive MBA students will find such thinking refreshing along with their bosses.
Woodside shares in this book an arsenal of tools and examples to help surface the unconscious thinking that has remained elusive for so long using the traditional blunt marketing instruments e.g. questionnaires. An electronic copy of the text is now available which will help consultants to readily use some of the instruments such as the forced metaphor elicitation technique (FMET).
I look forward to using this text for teaching on the next Executive MBA class as well as helping some of my consulting clients achieve a competitive advantage.