You brand is defined by the consumer, not by you – I think everyone can agree with that. In the same breath, most marketing pundits will add the fact that you can no longer control your brand – an assertion I am not sure goes hand in hand with the first one.

You brand gets defined by the UI (User Interface) of your company, the interface through which your customers and prospects interact with your company. That interface gets determined by pre-sale activities – i.e., advertising, retail layout, retail personnel attitude, telemarketing, sales people’s knowledge of the industry, etc -, as well as immediate post-sale activities – i.e., packaging, ease of use to set up the products, available help options, etc. -, and the long term post sale activities – i.e., telephone support, return policies, warranty policies, on-site support, etc.

Francois at Emergence Marketing totally nails what I was getting at in my earlier post about how the lines are blurring between marketing, product development, and user experience (UX)!

I’ve heard that a flock of geese always has one member with its head up, “standing guard”, while the others eat.

It’s “crunch time” at your organization. You’re a few days (read: two weeks) away from launching a new web app. Who’s got their head up?

Who’s prepping contacts to sign up on launch? Who sees that there’s a new beta opportunity? When your competitors blog that they’re launching early, or release that new killer new simplification, who alerts the group?

I’ve heard that a flock of geese always has one member with its head up, “standing guard”, while the others eat.

It’s “crunch time” at your organization. You’re a few days (read: two weeks) away from launching a new web app. Who’s got their head up?

Who’s prepping contacts to sign up on launch? Who sees that there’s a new beta opportunity? When your competitors blog that they’re launching early, or release that new killer new simplification, who alerts the group?

Following up to my last post: If it’s true that traditional market research has a bias towards answers given in the convention form, what’s that mean for your business?

Are conventions the ideal type of answer for those seeking insight into their customers’ behavior?

I think no. As the insightful commenter mentioned on Gladwell’s blog, conventions such as “It’s a good value” and “It tastes good” don’t really convey the complex set of factors that go into how we choose a brand—at least not anymore.

Conventions may have been adequate during the broadcast era, perhaps because large companies had been the first to identify and promote several of the “classic” forms of conventions in the way we know them today. It was easier for consumer products companies to fend off smaller niche competitors in this model.

You and I make modern brand choices under different circumstances. Froogle and similar services are drastically changing how can compare prices. Today’s buying decisions occur in an environment completely saturated with marketing messages. We’re processing much more information than during the peak of the broadcast area.

In today’s “narrowcast” market space, stories provide the richer information we need to stay competitive. In particular:

• Unexpected ways and reasons your customers are using your product/service
• Which factors are most persuasive to a particular market segment: perhaps a market segment you weren’t aware of
• What customizations users need to make in order to integrate your product/service into their existing frameworks

In many market spaces, stories are extremely useful for the front end of marketing. Stories relay well. They are compelling sales tools, especially when they demonstrate your understanding of a prospect’s problem. A good story will always beat a vague testimonial by the semi-anonymous John Doe of Long Island, C-level executive.

The downside is that stories seem more difficult to process. How will we put them into SPSS? How will we turn them into measurable goals? How do we rank these “complex” reasons?

The good news for the nimble venture: stories let you simplify, not complicate, your market research.

There are few situations where focus groups provide a good return on investment for small or medium-sized businesses. In the past I’ve held this was due to some combination of the Hawthorne, Pygmalion, and placebo effect — people tend to give the sort of answers that they believe are expected, especially in formal settings, where their beliefs about what answers are expected often change.

Malcolm Gladwell recently reviewed Charles Tilly’s book “Why” in the New Yorker. “Why” provides some interesting ideas about how we present reasons and why we present the ones we do. This review sparked a great comment from one of Gladwell’s readers on the how Tilly’s ideas in “Why” may apply to market research.

Read the review here and the comment here.

The essence is this: There are four categories of reasons that we give: Conventions, which are “conventionally accepted explanations” (Accidents happen), Stories, a re-telling of the cause and effect from your unique perspective, Codes, or high-level institutionalized conventions & procedural rules, and Technical Accounts, or expertise-driven explanations.

The insightful commenter notices that the nature of market research compels people to move answers that sound like conventions, and doesn’t encourage the telling of stories.

Which kind of reason do you prefer to hear in feedback given to you? Why?