Jeffrey Grau has an interesting idea that people don't completely know themselves, or prefer to put out one public impression while actually having another.
Friday, January 18, 2008
Is Market Research a Crystal Ball or an Alchemist's Delusion?
Ever wonder if our research really helps companies make the right decision? A recent real world experiment of sorts played out in New Hampshire when every pollster predicted a thumping Obama-rama victory only to be surprised when Hillary won. What went wrong? http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?id=1005816&src=article1_newsltr
Jeffrey Grau has an interesting idea that people don't completely know themselves, or prefer to put out one public impression while actually having another.
Jeffrey Grau has an interesting idea that people don't completely know themselves, or prefer to put out one public impression while actually having another.
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2 comments:
It is surprising one inaccurate prediction, about what happens to be an extremely close race, sends people home to re-examine the value of collecting data and using data to make decisions. There certainly have been bigger shake-ups in research hypotheses, prior to the Obama-Clinton New Hampshire Primary-Gate of 2008.
For examples of research that required reevaluation of hypotheses and theories, look to the classic psychology experiments by Milgram (on obedience) or Festinger (on cognitive dissonance). There is also the case study of the Kitty Genovese murder, which demonstrated the bystander effect (Darley also demonstrated the effect in the lab). Each of these studies illustrate that people don’t act in the ways that common sense and rationale hypothesize. Individuals may think they know how they will react in a given situation, but when the situation arises, they may do something completely different. Similarly, people usually can’t explain why they did something or their reason for doing something may change over time as their memory of the situation changes.
This unpredictability and lack of rationale in behavior can be harnessed and tamed, to an extent, by collecting and analyzing data.
Awesome comment by Robyn - I'm going to look up these experiments and case studies. This is a great example of how we can learn a lot from each other.
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