Sentient Insight: the business blog for consumer behavior, brand tracking, and subconscious marketing

“In defense of marketing” is an on-going theme here at Sentient. As marketers, we are often put in a position to defend what we do as an ethical and valuable service. When faced with that challenge, our argument runs deeper than the standard “consumers need marketing in order to make informed choices” and puts forth a much stronger statement: Marketing has been ingrained in our species since the advent of sexual selection, we have needed effective subconscious marketing to ensure the survival of our genes, these same marketing tactics are at play in our current consumer culture, and it is therefore the responsibility of market researchers to understand the subconscious influences on behavior in order to provide products and services that are truly valued by consumers.

As a culture (or perhaps just a cold New England culture) we’ve developed stereotypes about some of the warmer states like sunny California (72 and sunny!) or the renowned hospitality of the genteel Southern states. There might be a scientific explanation for this kind of thinking. Research on interpersonal impression shows that warmth in particular can exert considerable power on how we judge people. When given a hot cup of coffee to hold by a stranger in an elevator for just a few moments, people rated this stranger’s personality more warmly. The opposite was true, too: if given a cup of ice coffee in identical circumstances, participants in the experiment rated the personality of the stranger as being colder.

I’m sure we’ve all noticed that “the weather” is the classic go-to conversation starter if you’re in need of small-talk, especially if you’re with a stranger and have nothing to say. It’s always a wonderful candidate for speaking-about-nothing because it’s ubiquitous (there’s weather everywhere), it affects everyone, and it’s a fairly objective, neutral topic. For those same reasons, it’s also an interesting topic for behavioral science.

We’re gearing up for the annual MRA conference being held in Boston this week! Aaron will be presenting a session, In Defense of Marketing: The Peacock’s Plume and Dancing Birds of Paradise Thursday at 11:00AM, and I’ll be working various stations, from hospitality booth to door monitoring some events. In addition, we’re sponsoring a wine and cheese reception Thursday from 4-6PM – planned so you don’t have to choose between the many after-hours events on Thursday including a Boston meet-up and the chapter event being held at the Aquarium.

Surely who we choose for a sexual partner is based on our conscious preferences, right? Perhaps not as much as you think. Apparently, the power of the subconscious is so substantial that male preference for romantic partners is dependent on how much change ($) we have in our pockets at the time of evaluating a mate for selection. In a brilliant experimental manipulation, Nelson and Morrison (2005) found that male preference for ideal weight of a romantic partner actually depends on whether we have money on our person when we are asked the question.

In 1996, behavioral psychologists Ulf Dimberg and Arne Öhman sought to test if the human mood is independent from its immediate external environment. Their study, Behold the wrath: Psychophysiological responses to facial stimuli investigated the affect of primed facial gestures on the participant’s mood. When I present these findings in talks, I usually tease that only a social psychologist could write a title like that. At Sentient, we affectionately call this study: Why am I so Happy? And the answer, as you will clearly see is, “I have no idea.”

Frugal behaviors and healthy living go hand and hand, according to the April First Command Financial Behaviors IndexTM and recently reported in The New York Times. The Index, commissioned by First Command and conducted by Sentient, examines financial behaviors, attitudes and intentions among U.S. consumers ongoing since February 2008. While there’s little doubt that the recession has had a negative effect on health by way of increasing stress and anxiety and other such ailments, there is evidence that recessionary behaviors may actually be improving Americans’ health. The April First Command Financial Behaviors IndexTM reports that nearly one-half of Americans (49%) believe that their frugal behaviors are making them healthier, and an additional 45 percent believe that at least some of their frugal behaviors are making them healthier.

I’m slowly recovering from the joint AQR/QRCA Worldwide conference on qualitative research in Prague last week: this year’s theme “Inspiration in Action.” The workshop day – with Wendy Gordon, Jay Zaltzman and Ava Lindbergh gave me enough to contemplate for a month, but the next two days were jam-packed with session after session that made me think and re-think qualitative research – specifically how we do it on a daily basis. The presentations were inspiring, provocative and beautifully done. Here’s a snapshot of my top Three Inspirations from Prague..(not in any particular order except top-of-mind!):