Recently, in a presentation run by our VP of Customer Insights, Lianne Wade, I spoke to a Babson College undergrad class about my experience as an Account Coordinator Co-op for Wilde Agency. Thought I’d share some of the great questions that were asked by the young audience, and try to provide my own answers.
So here are my French (and still undergrad) views on these matters. If you have other insights, feel free to share and disagree!
“Do you think customer behavior changes over time, based on personal experience?”
Totally! I think customer behavior totally changes over time and experience, and frankly generations. I think it’s in our nature to adapt our behavior and attitude to our environment and our past experiences. We try things and we learn from our mistakes (at some point), and when we find something that works, we stick with it. Until it doesn’t work anymore.
Customer behavior also really varies across generations, I feel like the findings from traditional social experiments such as human conformity with the unequal length of lines are outdated; people would have the courage to speak up now. They wouldn’t care about being seen as socially different anymore. I’m speaking for my generation at least, which I think is glad to be original and differentiate themselves from their peers. That’s what the whole hipster thing is all about.
“Aren’t you creating the need you claim to cure? Is it morally good?”
This is a tougher question – the eternal fight of morality vs. marketing. There’s no exact and universal definition of what’s good and what’s bad. There are several. There’s Utilitarianism, and there’s Kant. And so on. But that’s another discussion.
I think, in some cases, marketing is indeed wrongly creating problems in order to solve them. But not all marketing, and not in all cases. Marketing toys to children can’t be compared to marketing life insurance for grown-up adults. Also, marketing is only so responsible in the grand wheel of consumerism. People need to eat and drink and dress and have a shelter. And they have a ton of options. Marketing is just a means to an end: a shortcut for helping humans make a choice.
And what of good-behavior campaigns? Marketing helps in saving lives, whether it’s advertising for safe driving or anti-smoking initiatives. It’s like, it’s not black and white. It’s grey. And it depends heavily on the circumstances.
“Would you say using behavioral marketing tricks consumers?”
I don’t think it’s so much tricking people, as it is successfully retaining their attention through the clutter. The science of human behavior is all about finding the right words to affect the target. It’s not a deception, so I don’t think the work “trick” is accurate. It’s more about crafting a message that will resonate with the target. It’s about influencing the customer, which is the very point of marketing. It’s simply a very successful method for doing so.
Marguerite Darcy is a Co-op intern from Northeastern University, originally from France. Also, she’s pretty funny, and her favorite color is yellow. In case you’re wondering.
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