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The Truth About Cats and Dogs….And Their Owners!

A light-hearted discussion about cats and dogs this week led Simi Dhawan to question what drives behaviour and to what extent we should believe the statistics we are told.

Would you say that you are a dog person or a cat person? Common belief has it (or what I’m possibly more inclined to refer to as “semi-pseudo social philosophy”) that an individual either prefers one or the other – rarely both, as reflected in their personality.

It was a recent conversation with work colleagues over the weekend that led to this issue being raised wherein it was concluded that I was the latter following my inarguable mini-obsession with a colleague’s pet cats…….or rather, giant cats of the Maine Coon kind. For those of you unfamiliar with this breed, a short synopsis is that they originated in Maine, North America and are renowned for growing larger in size than your average domestic cat, characterised also by longer coats and a bushier tail. I include an exemplary picture below:
 

 
I have to say that whilst I do rather like oversized furry felines, I was reluctant to dismiss my love of dogs based on this very factorial – I happen to like a range of dogs – varying from those which are furry and oversized (think Samoid as pictured on the left below), to the downright so-awkward-they’re-cute “Sausage Dog” types (as pictured on the right)!
 

 
But questions which ransacked my brain did leave me wondering where these facts, beliefs or indeed myths really stem from. Are they actually rooted in any truth?

In a frenzied quest to curb my curiosity, I ran a quick internet search to see if I could find out whether my colleagues were right about my social disposition, carrying out a short “Pet Personality” quiz online at the following location: http://quiz.ivillage.com/home/tests/catdog.htm. After some rather banal questioning which commenced by asking me about my preference for a “Perfect Friday Night” (of which the possible tick box choices differentiated the socialites who enjoy “a wild night out” from the less extreme independent impartial persons who “prefer a quiet night in with a book” (original, eh?), the quiz concluded that I was indeed, a “Cat Person”, with the following personality traits:

 
“As a cat person, you approach life with thoughtfulness. You are self-aware and have close friends who will be there for life. The subtleties and mysteries of the world intrigue you. Your ideal Friday night is good conversation or a movie you can’t figure out the ending to. Your take-charge attitude sometimes meets with conflict, but you always surpass expectations when it comes to your work. You value intelligence, grace and independence, which is why a feline friend is best for you”.
 

Crumbs. My colleagues were right. However, having the typical Cat Personality trait of being intrigued by world mysteries (I would argue true in specific cases!), I decided that I wanted to dig deeper into how public opinions are formulated.

As a starting point (and whilst continuing on with this captivating “Cat” theme), I recall a colleague at the aforementioned gathering discussing the popular TV series “8 Out Of 10 Cats”. A majority will have probably heard of this, but for those who haven’t, the programme is centred on quizzing teams of celebrity respondents about various opinion poll findings and statistics. The title of the show was famously derived from a Whiskas Cat Food campaign which claimed that 8 Out Of 10 Cats prefer Whiskas. Whilst this campaign was one of the first to adopt this style – triggering others to do the same, the inevitable question “overlooked” is ‘What on Earth are these cats / cat owners comparing Whiskas to and saying they prefer it over?’ Is it another cat food product? Is it a multitude of cat food products? Is it something other than cat food such as Heinz Baked Beans (in which case, no contest really!)? What exactly is it?

It is a common underpin of opinion polls used in advertising to state a loose statistic completely out of context, which excludes the comparative element that would allow it to make logical sense! We shouldn’t have to wait too long in an evening before any such campaign graces (or plagues!) our television screens. Yesterday evening, for example, I was informed that 9 out of 10 people with sensitive teeth do nothing about it (thanks Sensodyne Toothpaste) and that 9 out of 10 women would recommend the new “falsies” mascara range to a friend (thanks Maybelline). But in what context has this data been derived? Is this plausible data which has virtuously reached a conclusion from a fair and objective series of questions whereby respondents were introduced to a number of competitor products, or are we, the consumer, being led into a false sense of security by a set of makeshift claims? In other words, are these findings drawn from designing a study that is biased from the start, intending to flog us a “credible” product backed up by statistics?

In the case of our dog or cat person phenomenon, we could use our logic and life experience to assume that this has been clearly born as a by-product of social situations, based on the following premises:

• Dogs and cats are the most commonly owned domestic pets in most Western countries;
• Most animal lovers will lean towards a preference of one or the other;
• This has led to conversations where people have discussed and justified their decisions to keep either dogs or cats;
• The reasons stated are seldom aesthetically focused i.e. about size, fluffiness etc, but rather, behaviours and personalities i.e. dogs are more loyal, gentle, friendly, less temperamental, obedient and tolerant, whilst cats are not as reliant on their owners for walks, do not slobber, take up too much space, are quieter and do not require as much fuss and attention.

Statistics and previous studies tell us that the majority of people are dog persons and not cat persons. I have to say that following a quick chat amongst my colleagues, this point was supported when only 2 out of 6 of us preferred our feline friends over our canine comrades. For more “concrete” evidence, I decided to review an epidemiological study conducted by the Department Of Veterinary Clinical Science in the University Of Liverpool (2007), which looked at 1,278 households in Cheshire (my local area!) to examine the different profiles of households who own dogs compared to those who don’t. The study indeed supported that dogs are the most popular household pet where 24% of those approached were confirmed as dog-owning out of a total of 52% who owned any type of pet (whilst cats came in at a close second with 22%). But did this yet tell me anything about their choices to own either one or the other? Could I yet attribute any of this to a particular personality trait?

Helping to answer this question, the study continued by asking these households what their main reason was for owning a dog, whereby 68% reported that it was for companionship (makes sense – dogs love to remain in the company of their owners versus the ever-wandering cat), whilst 42% reported that they’d always had a dog. The latter statistic brought into question then whether it is actually environmental factors which shape our decisions i.e. nurture, versus an inherent personality disposition i.e. nature. At this stage, my mind boggled more than before and so I eagerly read on……

The report then revealed a staggering statistic; 62% of households who did not own a dog when interviewed had actually owned one at some point previously in their lives! So does being raised with a dog make you less likely to own one? Actually, no. It would appear that social situations change over the lifespan, which is why certain households are more likely to own a dog. To back this up, some of the reasons people stated for not owning a dog included “working or being out all day” (26%) or “not having enough time for a dog” (15%), where evidently a large factor is lifestyle and the practicalities of looking after a pet which demands time rather than a dislike for dogs per se (which incidentally, was the reason reported by only a small 10% of households!)

By my reckoning, public opinions do appear to be rooted in everyday observations and conversations – very much like the one which instigated my Thursday Night Insight this week. However, I would argue that we should always be cautious about over-inflating the value we might attach to a standalone statistic without also taking into account some surrounding facts about the topic or area of interest itself. In today’s example, whilst labelling a person as a “Cat Personality” or a “Dog Personality” helps us to more easily (and mentally) pigeon-hole otherwise complex individuals into a certain segment of character traits, we should be able to accept that it is situations and environmental influences which play a significant part in driving behaviours…and that these can potentially change over time. This philosophy, of course, is one which stands true in all B2B markets where, similarly, you are certainly always better placed to make decisions after asking a sample of your target market the right questions, rather than simply second-guessing their thoughts, feelings and opinions based on secondary, or even dated research statistics.

In short, a poll conducted today, will not always stand true tomorrow……..and as for The Truth About Cats and Dogs……..I’d argue that your best bet is to ask the owners (the most complex breed of all!) themselves.

Posted in Segmentation, Simi Dhawan, Thursday Night Insight |
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The Real Picture

By giving us an insight into the creative and sometimes surreal world of advertising, Simi Dhawan rightly reminds us that it’s better to risk knowing about a failed plan than to risk implementing a plan which will fail…

As is routine within our so-called “modern world”, no week would follow the norm if a plurality of “forwarded emails” did not make their merry way into my personal inbox. Whilst I can appreciate the heartfelt sentiments that might go into a friendship chain mail, I’ve seldom the patience to pass these on and, frankly, I find them more than mildly irritating. (Having to manually delete each one wastes at least a few seconds of my life – possibly several hours spread over a lifetime!) However, one which didn’t follow this same ill-fate by instantly grabbing my attention included the artwork of a Mr. Julian Beever – a British artist now famous for his ability to create 3-D illusions using just chalk (and an eye for detail) on pavements all over the globe. By some, he has been bestowed the respectable title “Pavement Picasso”. I include one such example of his ingenious work below:
 

 
At first glance, it’s difficult to comprehend how a sketch could be made to look so real and far removed from a standard 2-D drawing. The answer can be found in the angle at which the photo is taken and only one perspective allows for the 3-D effect we are seeing, as the photographs below demonstrate:
 

 
Whilst this startlingly clever trick-of-the-eye might be considered no more than “art for art’s sake” by some – merely a momentary distraction from whatever we were doing before we caught sight of these images – I beg to differ. The talented efforts of our aforementioned “Pavement Picasso” are, in fact, modern-day examples of some very creative advertising, and it is certainly no accident that these have landed in my inbox – or that I now share them with you! To prove that this 3-D image technique has been used in practice more explicitly as an advertising medium, see the following example, courtesy of the German-owned company Bionade:
 

 
At the core of any project we are assigned, in one form or another, every client ultimately seeks to strengthen their brand. From market segmentation and product testing, through to customer satisfaction and value propositions, all of these research agendas allow an opportunity to communicate with customers/potential customers and raise awareness. Even if we do not explicitly ask questions about the brand itself, it’s part of our professional DNA as researchers to ensure that we meet our responsibility to positively represent our client when communicating with these respondents – so as to (at the very least) protect the reputation of our client’s brand.

An array of marketing mediums ensure that we meet the goals we set ourselves in getting our message across and reaching our target audience – ranging from branded products, literature and POS materials, through to posters, banners, newspapers, trade magazines, television adverts and internet websites (to further examine some creative design ideas, you can view images of multitudinous campaigns at www.toxel.com).

This week alone has seen my involvement in several projects centred on this ever-present theme of advertising and, whilst I’d like to conclude that research outcomes have offered me a foolproof insight into surefire campaign approaches, I’m afraid I can’t quite claim that to be the case. In practice, every company needs to assess their (often inter-related) unique target markets and end-goals thoroughly, to create a powerful and effective bespoke solution to the continual challenge of raising both brand awareness and perception. Unfortunately, ad-hoc choices based around a “gut feeling” of what might work, in short, might work – and that’s the point. It’s a time-consuming and expensive process to invest in any such campaign and, to avoid unnecessary risk-taking, we shouldn’t launch into these blindly – careful planning is imperative.

Led from research experiences thus far, as a starting point, my advice is to seek thorough answers to the following 3 questions (although possibly not at the same time):

• Who is my target market?
• How do I reach them?
• What do they want?

Most interestingly, it is the first question which is most understated in practice and actually, it is the pre-cursor to the others. Only too often, we see that it is sometimes a pre-agreed business plan or budget allocation which sets our creative minds spinning – and very like the 3-D drawings we saw earlier, our own preconceptions offer a sometimes misleading perspective. As a result, possibly in our understandable eagerness to reach our customers, our focus naturally tends to shift to the latter two questions which effectively cover off questions we want to know to set the ball in motion. Questions such as “What do they want?” “Which are their preferred advertising mediums?” “How can we improve these or better our competition?”

Whilst these are crucial questions, a fundamental backdrop to bettering our understanding is “Who is our audience?” “Do their needs differ based on different parts of this market or are they similar?” “Do we need to consider multiple avenues of communication to suitably engage with different parts of our market?”…and so forth.

Collectively, all questions we ask should strike the correct balance between what we would like to ask in relation to our preconceptions and what we need to know to make suitably informed decisions – even if the outcome directs us to completely review our current strategies and plans (better to risk knowing about a failed plan than to risk implementing a plan which will fail!).

In short, as our “Pavement Picasso” might commend – our chalk is any problem drawn-out or created by a business; the pavement is our canvas or research design to lay out the problem; the passers-by are our audience feeding us their thoughts and opinions……whilst we, the researchers, seek to ensure that our perspectives are not skewed by any illusions…so that we can help reveal the real picture.

Posted in Branding, Corporate Positioning, Customer Satisfaction, Segmentation, Simi Dhawan, Thursday Night Insight |
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Buying Into Love

With many of us celebrating Valentine’s Day over the weekend, Simi Dhawan explains how, like all successful marketing, this event tries to tap into people’s fundamental needs and desires.

Across the globe, February 14th marks a special unity between individuals on numerous levels. For some, cards, flowers, chocolates and various other adornments are offered to partners and spouses as a gesture signifying their unwavering love for one another. For others, this national ‘holiday’ (which isn’t actually a holiday, let’s be honest) unites a sub-culture of individuals who would gladly take up watching paint dry as sport over entertaining this commercial frippery. So where on Earth (let’s remain within familiar parameters) was this tradition born?

Legend has it that St. Valentine (our customarily crowned patron saint of love) reacted to Roman Emperor Claudius II ruling that soldiers were to remain unmarried in a bid to keep them better focused. Our now hailed St. Valentine nobly (and romantically) defied Claudius’ demands by marrying some of the aforementioned young soldiers in secret, only to be later discovered by the emperor and imprisoned as a consequence. Whilst in prison (and clearly without much else to think about in the way of daily activity), St. Valentine fell deeply in love with his jailor’s blind daughter who often visited him there and in doing so, helped soften the ill-fate which was soon to meet him – his tragic death sentence. Shortly before this ominous moment, history was forever-changed when he sent a letter to his secret love signed ‘from your Valentine’ – the letter which would thereon be remembered as the first ‘Valentine’ in history all the way back in….wait for it….. A.D. 270….!

Today, centuries later, greetings cards have now replaced the traditional love letter, with an estimated 1 billion cards being sent each year (ranking in at second place after Christmas). Valentine’s Day is a universal event which is certainly not exclusive to one part of the world. It transcends ages and cultures. It is global consumer populations who buy into this profit-making love affair year in and year out. Country masses of devoted followers (possibly deluded under Cupid’s spell) loosen their purse-strings/wallet-chains much to the delectation of multiple industry beneficiaries. We’re not simply talking about florists, card and confectionary shops, but also restaurants, bars, cinemas, jewellers, producers and sellers of romantic goods, love songs and movies, beauty salons who pamper and preen many hopefuls (both in love and looking for love), various hotel chains and airlines who benefit from increased bookings of romantic trips away and………….well ok, you get the idea. The point is, there’s money in this and as much as the cynics (erm..us singletons) try to bury our heads in the sand and talk about ANYTHING BUT our ‘Valentine’s Plans’ (thank you colleagues, friends and family – oh and my hairdresser), it is nothing short of remarkable that love helps keep the economy going (at least momentarily)….or put another way, we ‘buy into love’.

Love it or hate it (and the theory is that there is a thin line between the two for those claiming the latter), Valentine’s Day is every marketer’s playpen. Its success is founded upon the very fact that it sells to the ultimate in people’s needs and vulnerabilities….the need for love and all the security it brings. Aptly described as a ‘Humanistic Psychologist’, Abraham Maslow knew only too well the multi-faceted emotional and physical desires that collectively make up the human condition. He clearly defined these within his ‘Hierarchy of Needs’ as shown below:

For Maslow, our basic (or intrinsic) needs at the bottom of the pyramid are the physical needs we require for survival from birth, whilst rising up his model, our needs become more emotional and sophisticated where we must successfully meet all of those listed at each level to ultimately progress to the top and reach an eventual state of happiness and fulfillment known as ‘self-actualization’.

In the same way, businesses everywhere (in fundamentally appreciating the fact that they are selling to humans not robots) do vigorously attempt to tap into the needs of both their market and the individuals which make up that market. In fact, just thinking about the nature of any business or personal relationship, there is always a rudimentary transaction which takes place – financial or emotional, and each is reliant on understanding your recipients’ needs. Taken further, we could even argue that in introducing and thus ‘selling’ us his theory, Maslow himself was a chief marketer!

Following this lesson, there is rarely a week that passes in our UK office when a colleague does not openly share a new marketing item or ‘gimmick’ that they have received from a company which seeks to promote its products or services – be it the white chocolate plaques with elegantly printed company images marked on the front (they did make for a divine mid-morning snack!) or a kick-off-2010 diary book planner (that was wasted on me – I’m personally a bigger fan of my ‘Office Outlook’, thanks very much), companies will try every which angle – the quirkier the better, to grab people’s attention. If there was a surefire way to increase profits through such ploys, then we would all be doing it. However, quite like Maslow’s slightly ambiguous pyramid journey, people’s needs and consequently market needs are always changing, and so this is a game where precise rules do not exist and cannot be learned, but one where you throw the dice and then make calculated, strategic moves based on the options available to you at any given time, in any given place (of work).

Pleasingly, this year was no exception, and whilst February 14th is usually solely ‘owned’ by the madness that is ‘Valentine’s Day’, for the first time since 1900, as many of you may have already experienced, it also shared its place with Chinese New Year (‘Kung Hei Fat Choi’ and ‘Xin Nian Kuai Le’ to all by the way!). This I learned of, much to my delight, as I strolled through Manchester city centre last Sunday morning trying frantically to avoid the endless parade of loved-up couples drifting smugly along the sun-filled streets. The sound of Chinese drums and oddly placed fairground rides – including the ‘teacups’ (how quaint) – offered some welcome respite from heart-shaped foil balloons and red rose street sellers (who smiled sympathetically), and whilst this year, Valentine’s Day – as always – ‘sold’ to the masses successfully, I was one very happy customer drawn in by an alternative market route, found ogling instead over the beautiful handcrafted Chinese lanterns which stood stationary whilst I floated away happily into my own world……………………….waiting for the postman to deliver my lost Valentine’s Day card…!

Posted in Marketing, Marketing Strategy, Needs, Promotion, Sales, Simi Dhawan, Strategic Marketing, Thursday Night Insight |
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Unclouding Judgment with Market Research

Simi Dhawan, in her first Thursday Night Insight, puts forward an impassioned explanation as to why our passion for a subject may, on occasion, cloud our judgment.

“Dispassionate objectivity is itself a passion, for the real and for the truth.”
– Abraham Maslow

To feel strongly or passionately about any given object is potentially either a wonderful advantage or a huge risk. Whilst ‘passion’ can act as the most powerful catalyst in driving something forward, the subjectivity or ‘clouded’ judgment it can bring may also enable it to disallow progress by holding that very same thing back. An easy example would be the ‘mollycoddling’ of a mother over her precious child who now grown up and equipped with the knowledge and skills to embark on life independently, is eager to do so, but meets emotional resistance by the mother that nurtured their ability to progress into adulthood in the first place.

By the same token, the relationship of any business owner with his or her business is one which inevitably meets the bias rooted in their subjective responsibility to run that business. That responsibility carries with it many ‘attachments’, from a desire to succeed to a hunger for both the professional kudos and financial gain that such success carries with it. Naturally, with such demands we place on ourselves alongside time being of the essence (decision-makers often work to tight deadlines and seldom have enough hours in the day), there is born an almost irrational urgency to seek an answer to the quandary of business decisions that need to be made…..or that needed to be made yesterday! Regrettably, the very fact that we are human and so are restricted in our ability to answer every question gets temporarily omitted from our minds and in therefore drawing inferences based on previous experiences or just sheer logic, inaccurate assumptions are sometimes concluded. For instance, a business owner may develop skewed perceptions of a particular market because of their subjective desire to penetrate that market or because of previous experiences within that market. By inadvertently allowing this to happen, they might also fail to wholly acknowledge the fact that it is always changing and growing.

The latter example is one I draw from a recent client meeting. Whilst at the early stages of designing a questionnaire for a pricing research project, our client wanted to exclude the option of ‘competitive price’ when asking prospective customers what they would want from their supplier. This suggestion was founded upon their assumption that a majority of respondents would be drawn to price as a primary factor thus diluting the importance of other possible factors such as ‘reliable delivery’ and ‘product quality’. Whilst there is undoubted logic and valid reasoning behind this request, our experience of previous research projects during the year actually suggested the opposite. Although price is one of a number of factors for consideration, ultimately, the nature of any business and their specific – even unique – business needs determine what is important and in what order. For example, the large-scale engineering company who need consistent, reliable and fast turnaround from their welding gas supplier whilst situated in an awkward geographical location may not be too primarily concerned with price. On the contrary, for a clothing retail chain wanting to sell their items at the highest profit margins, the best price at which they can buy textiles and produce those items may be essential.

For our aforementioned client, the importance of price factors was understandably magnified due to their own objectives in conducting research in the first place, namely, to determine optimum pricing levels for their product within their chosen market. Whilst we know this was their principal concern, the subsequent issue raised is whether this internal goal was one then overgeneralised as being equally of concern to the external market environment they were seeking to infiltrate. In theory, an undisputable fact is that this could have been the case, but the intervening lesson to be drawn from this is that since the contrary could also have been true here, in research we should always be mindful of making premature assumptions, ahead of the more substantive findings we seek to unveil in practice.

As a researcher, you are often in a position whereby you attempt to make sense of the data you have in front of you by looking through a window of trends or patterns in the context of what they actually reveal about any given sector. Whilst you are not completely void of the usual shortcomings of being human (sadly, none of us has infinite knowledge), you hold a valuable position in that whilst you can professionally empathise or understand any business goal residing at the hub of any research project, you can both implement and review the findings within a more ‘objective’ framework, and the power which this very objectivity brings should not be understated.

Whilst you work collaboratively with the client to remuneratively fulfill these objectives when commissioning research, the very stance of working from the outside ‘looking in’ at any issue, offers you the theoretical autonomy necessary to abstain from pulling out or interpreting such findings as would satisfy your business goals in the next few years or even the underpinning value system upon which any business framework is built. This, in turn, increases the preferable likelihood to piece together the ‘real picture’ so to speak, from which your client can base pragmatic decisions. Add to that the fact that you have the invaluable resource of up-to-date knowledge and information collated from constantly researching various markets, products and services to assist in your interpretation of these findings and you start to realise that your role has enviable advantages suited to any specific business marketing dilemma. In keeping momentum with this holding our industry on a pedestal (!), in essence, the role we play could be likened to that of a High Court Judge who, on weighing up various pieces of information, is able to objectively reach a plausible conclusion based on the subjective views and opinions of those they gather the information from.

I may be at risk of digression. Whilst I, of course, draw upon the above comparison loosely (and do in no way imply that any of our existing or potential sponsors are hypothetical convicts!), as our slogan – market research with intelligence – suggests, within B2B International we do pride ourselves on having the professional astuteness to convert data into intelligence. Whilst the foundation of good research is balanced between strong interviewing techniques and accurate reporting, it is ultimately about interpreting and communicating the findings of this research to our clients effectively so that they can achieve their goals and better meet the needs of their market. By elimination of adverse factors such as bias (of which there are many other examples open to discussion) and by maximising on the resources and skills available to us, the potential to meet any such objective is consequently better realised………..

………unless my ‘opinion’ on this subject is itself open to bias? I will, of course, allow you, my objective audience, to conclude this since you are – as implied here, better placed to do so.

Posted in Simi Dhawan, Thursday Night Insight |
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New Researchers as B2B International Continues to Grow

Market research specialist B2B International appoints three new research executives globally, a positive indicator in light of the current economy, according to director Nick Hague

B2B International appoints three new research executives, two in the UK and another in America: Afshan Bhatti, who previously worked with the Prison Service as a forensic psychologist and member of their research team; Simi Dhawan who gained experience as an interviewer within both the Business and Medical divisions of B2B International in the UK; and Eve Lenkowsky in the New York office, a qualitative research specialist formerly with Maritz.

Posted in Afshan Bhatti, Eve Lenkowsky, Nick Hague, Simi Dhawan |
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