A Leap in Time and Thought (Craig Douglass On Consumers)

Leap years are used in our calendar to keep time in sync with the Earth. And, as it happens, adding a day at the end of February every four years coincides with our quadrennial democratic responsibility to nominate and elect the president of the United States. I suppose we need an extra day every four years in order to get that right. (And to adjust our Gregorian calendar to Earth’s travels around the sun.) Go figure.

What leapt (sorry) to mind last Monday was the notion that we as consumers adjust every so often to the dynamics of the marketplace. In this case, this year, to the political dynamics of primary and caucus machinations, and the stimuli from candidates’ rhetoric. It’s the same with consumer behavior vis-à-vis retail and corporate brands, and the marketing communications programs in support thereof. We experience and we adjust.

In consumer marketing, as in party politics, research helps drive the message. Many of us who are umbilicaled to daily media — mainstream or otherwise — need to understand that research, polling, is desired to be predictive. And it is driven by the need for advertising dollars to fuel the media’s existence. So the polls you see on what seems to be an hourly basis these days are a tool of the media used to respond to viewers’ and readers’ seemingly insatiable appetite to know what’s going to happen. The idea was further fleshed out by Andrew Smith, director of the University of New Hampshire’s Survey Center, just last week at a noontime lecture at the Clinton School of Public Service. Edifying.

What is more helpful, however, to us as marketers and communicators (and persuaders) is the use of research not as a short-term predictor but as a way to learn more about prevailing or “trending” attitudes, motivations and ultimate behavior. One approach to this more helpful use of research is called “consumer culture theory.” According to the Journal of Consumer Research, consumer culture theory posits that “the consumption of market-made commodities and desire-inducing marketing symbols is central to consumer culture, and yet the perpetuation and reproduction of this system is largely dependent upon the exercise of free personal choice in the private sphere of everyday life.” Products and services are market-made commodities that are purchased. Political candidates are market-made commodities that are voted on. Same thing.

Different types of research yield different results. What is appropriate, it seems to us, is that research need not simply be results-driven, trying to determine who is going to win an election, but should be more about what influences the decision and how the decision is made and then to follow ever-changing behavior. Our focus is on the consumer, which is primary to the secondary motivations of the voter. Understanding voters, alas, is a lot more fun!

Research methodology, learned researchers will tell you, is key to the process and the veracity of the results. One such methodology in which we have become interested is called the panel survey. As researchers address the need to change traditional polling methods (telephone surveys), the panel survey may begin to take on more currency as a viable option, not in lieu of current methods, but in addition to them.

The panel survey incorporates a randomly selected group of adults who represent the community as a whole. Panels can, and usually are, composed of upwards of 2,000 — and, in some cases, 4,000 — participants. The panel responds to a series of questions, much like a telephone survey, but through a secure website. Panelists are paid for their participation. The beauty of the panel approach is that the same panel can be surveyed numbers of times on various issues, or the same issue, thus providing a glimpse of attitudes that change over time. We suppose you would call that a trend.

There’s a lot more to panel surveys than the above simple explanation. But the incorporation of random sampling with the collection of online data appears to be one way to better determine consumer thought as it adjusts — whether every four years or every four months.

Craig Douglass is an advertising agency owner and marketing and research consultant. Email him at Craig@CraigDouglass.com.