Speaking on 'The Human Condition - Do we neglect it?', Higgs said that any marketing or communication strategy, as well as any research design, rests on assumptions about "consumer" behaviour, whether explicitly stated or not.
Do we know what those assumptions are? Do we know what the use of these terms implies about our assumptions? How does this colour how we view results, interpret what they mean for our markets and take action?
Higgs' paper puts forward the view that these terms serve to de-humanise the most important component of our society - people.
"My premise is that it leads to limited insight and suggests that, if we look at people as, well... people, this more holistic knowledge will lead to a better understanding of why people do what they do: the central issue for every marketer, advertiser, researcher, communicator and policy-maker," Higgs explains.
All the current terminology in use in research to explain the human subject, Higgs says, are totally unidimensional. "They simply say what activity is being undertaken and nothing about the underlying person doing the activity. This is convenient, of course, as it helps us to forget that what we do affects real people and not just our bottom line. e may pay lip service to wanting to know more about 'drivers' and 'motivators' in a market but the reality is, we don't really want to get too close to people's real lives."
Higgs explains as follows: segmentation is a key tool in the armoury of today's policy-makers, breaking down populations into groups that are smaller, more homogenous and easier to target more specifically. Every segmentation has an underlying set of assumptions about what differentiates people in the particular arena of interest. These assumptions are called the "basis" of the segmentation. So, for example, one might segment people on the basis of life-stage, or on the basis of a set of needs that a product type is thought to satisfy. This is a very useful tool: it acknowledges that people are not all the same in their needs and desires, whilst, at the same time, enabling marketers and communicators to handle these disparities in a practical way.
There is an unintended side-effect, though, Higgs says. "It is a gross simplification. Most decision-makers can conceptualise up to 10 to 12 discrete segments in a target population (although the preferred number is usually five to eight!). This, essentially, says that there are, practically, just five or eight or 10 types of people. So... you could fall head over heels in love and marry 20% or 13% or 10% of the population. No? Perhaps you are a little more discerning than that?
"The opposite end of the spectrum says that we all sit in unique segments of size one. With today's computing technology, this concept is not so impossible to enact, but it may be wasteful, potentially time and cost intensive, and, probably, unnecessary."
Is there a happy medium? Higgs says yes. "We need to acknowledge explicitly that we are dealing with people, even when, of necessity, we must classify people into groups for convenience."
Even when using the SAARF Living Standards Measure (LSM) instruments, by saying that one's 'target market' is, say, LSM 6, 7 and 8, is to miss the point completely, he says. "This merely defines that part of the population whom we feel can afford the brand - nothing else. Affordability does not translate into the "likelihood" of purchase, merely the "possibility" of purchase.
Higgs says there is a growing awareness that people in all "consumer" segments worldwide are exhibiting some common trends:
"This means that we need to understand people from standpoints that go beyond our particular category of interest," Higgs emphasizes, stating that we need to ask questions such as:
1. What is the baggage people bring to when they are deciding on a brand? For example, are they happy or sad?; what worries them?; will that affect what they decide to buy?; what are their goals and plans?; have they given up or do they still have hope for their future?; what has happened to them recently?
2. How healthy are they? For example, what does that do to their state of mind?; What is their health orientation?; How does your brand help or hinder their quality of life?
3. How easy are you making the decision for them? For example, is your message aiding the decision or is it making it more agonizing?
All these have effects of varying degrees on how people decide what to do in their lives, Higgs explains.
"People do not think cognitively about every ad and brand they see. They do not generally rationally assess a brand's attributes, score the brand on each attribute, and then pick the brand with the highest score. They usually make a quick overall assessment of a brand based on their instinct and decide what to do with, often, little conscious thought. This process makes use of their own internal shortcuts - termed 'fast and frugal heuristics'. They do not look deeply at an ad and assess its likeability - it creates a quick impression and is gone. So, how we advertise to people, how we package brands, how we interact with people with our brand at any level should take this into account.
"But, of course, we are not all the same. Some people take longer to decide; some use more information about the brand than others; some pay more attention to an ad than others. What drives these differences? There are the usual suspects: ad style and medium, category relevance, relationship with the brand we all know about. But there are two other influences: the nature, size and role of one's myriad networks and one's own personal feeling of general well-being and optimism. It turns out that, in general, happier people with higher levels of well-being make more use of these fast and frugal heuristics, making decisions faster and more confidently, than do less happy people who make greater use of cognition, weigh the facts more and take longer to make a decision. So, do you know the state of mind of your brand's users? Did you know that as many as 30% of South Africans are in the 'less happy' category - but 42% are very much in the 'fast and frugal' domain?"
For example, did you know that:
Maybe you did know some of this. What are you doing to incorporate this into your understanding of your 'consumers'? asks Higgs. "How do these realities of life affect how people see your brand? Does your brand tap into what is really important in people's real lives? Not knowing more about the human condition and its effect on your brand is to render marketing and research strategies much less efficient, at best. It is not to know how people see your marketing activities and to understand the context of their take-out of these activities."
