The Dilemma of the Red Shoes; How Well Do You Know Your Customers?, By Sally El Akkad
“Consumers use the meaning of consumer goods to express cultural categories and principles, cultivate ideas and sustain lifestyles, construct notions of self, and create (and survive) social change… ” (McCracken 1990: xi)… keep that in mind and jump in with me in the below
For those who know me, I love red high heels shoes, these classical stiletto’s are my vehicles to self-transformation, somehow I found myself attracted to their beauty and energized by their power “basis my perception, I have more than 12 pairs, and across the years I cannot even recall how many I have owned! So recalling the girl in the wizard of Ozz or the gypsy lady in the film “chocolate”, the filmmakers knew what they were doing by giving their movie heroine red shoes that gave them powerful personas. A persona that inspired me unconsciously to choose it as part of my identity. It is my extended formal self that helps me reflect who I want to be “Bold, sharp, confident, and cannot be ignored” in formal settings. Appearance coherence relates to the sense of beauty or to personal expression. This dimension is very subjective and idiosyncratic; Solomon claims that consumers select products which correspond to the selves they play. And honestly, I can relate as a consumer with that!
Thus, we cannot ignore the consumer’s self-perception and self-imaging when making a buying decision. Marketers realize that it is not just red shoes when they draw the persona of who will be buying them, understand the triggers of this purchase, they will even build a purchase predictive model to understand the occasions of purchasing, when to wear it, when is it needed, and how to sustain and increase its consumption.
Studies have confirmed that characteristics of self-image are congruent with characteristics of brand image (Dolich 1969; Green et al 1969; Landon 1974; Ross 1971; Sirgy 1982; Snyder and de Bono 1985).
Let us talk about “Consumption constellation”, a set of similar brands that consumers buy horizontally and usually they defines an era or a generation, Solomon and Assael (1987) and Solomon (1988) developed role-related consumption constellations: “a cluster of complementary products, specific brands, and/or consumption activities associated with a social role”
So, do not think vertically when consumers think horizontally!
Horizontal thinking opens a door that may reveal strategic opportunities. These include potential partnerships, brand extensions or promotional tactics with other organizations that belong to the same constellation, think about unlimited potential of occasions in which you can build a strategic alliances and partnership ecosystem to increase your brand relevance, penetration, and enhance your brand storytelling. For example, the music service Spotify now allows music lovers to “shop the look” of their favorite artists by buying their makeup straight off the streaming platform.
In consumption settings where multiple products are needed, the constellation of products forms a “consumption system” (Boyd and Levy 1963). When considering buying one or several items for that system, the buyers may apply choice strategies (Wright 1975) developed from the complementary interrelationships of the commodities. For selecting among the acceptable product constellations remaining in the choice set, the consumer then shifts the criteria of decision to the evaluation of costs-and-benefits “Consumption Schemata: Their Effects on Consumer Decision Making research”. Frankly, if you cannot identify a relevant constellation for your brand, this may be a sign that you are not resonating with your customer base as well as you should.
Now let me tackle this point even further… Everything you know belongs to a category basis what our parents, media, cultures, occasions… etc. taught us, and marketing systems use this classification to give us what we think we need or what we need. It is a logical taxonomy that makes sense, for example we will go to work with smart casual or formal attire, or we will go to the beach with resort/ beach wear, we will get our mums a gift on mother’s day … The problem is that with the different generations ; This taxonomy of categories does not necessarily mirror how consumers currently think, we see younger generations refuse or debate why we shouldn’t go to the office with a jeans or T-shirt, or why we need to go to work physically rather than connecting from anywhere.
let me give you a story; I come from a generation where clubbing means usually a black dress and high heels “comfort is not served with these choices”, I can see younger generation go clubbing now with comfy sneakers, jeans and nice shirts, and if the place is super it will be a fancy shirt. We used to wear heavy perfumes, now I can smell a mix of light and heavy ones which give a space for light/ fresh perfume makers to penetrate a different occasion rather than morning usage only, measure on this so many differences in shopping or consumption behavior between generations, the rise of sustainability and environmental responsibility is higher in younger Z generation than the millennials, the extent of digital integration and mobile applications used is unprecedented – my little niece was just mocking her mum because she still uses sound-cloud rather than Spotify or Anghamy. The irony is that it was a mega move for her mum to move from listening to CDs in the car to sound cloud streaming. So, the question now is how much in our planning do we consider a generation’s different taste and views, to what extent we are mapping brand messages with the generation’s different consumption behavior and preference.
I am quite a fan of folksonomy, also known as social tagging. Folksonomies are collections of collectively created “anything with URL” and managed metadata about digital content by a process called collaborative Tagging (Golder & Huberman, 2005), and (Golder & Huberman, 2006) In simple terms, one clear example is hashtag usage over social media networks to connect with others with similar views over social media platforms and to show others what they believe in and what they like. This type of grass-roots community classification is a fine example of collective intelligence. It is opposed to taxonomy which uses well defined classification schemes and categories. Whereas folksonomy is informal and voluntary, taxonomy is formal and comprehensively structured. You need to think how you will be building on such a gold mine of information/interests to create context and establish the value of information.
With that, I will leave you to think about how much you really know about your consumer…