The culture of participatory social media is having some surprisingly significant effects on both the way satisfied customers play a role in contributing to the marketing message development of products and services. And it is also playing an increasingly important role in defining the key touchpoints that customers use in the deciding factors one what to purchase. What makes this all the more noteworthy is that much of this is rooted in offline purchases. I’m putting this together from two recent studies…

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Polling and focus groups are like observing the behavior of the chimpanzee in captivity — you have a living, breathing, chimpanzee, but you have one that is under stress, duress, and has been partially acclimatized to appeasing its handlers — it wants to keep safe, it wants to be fed, and it wants to get out — so observing chimpanzee behavior in captivity is like observing consumer or market behavior in focus groups — you have real-live response, but you have the response of something that is beholden to you, that is wondering what’s in it for me — you have corrupted behavioral data.

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