Why are some many things less good than they could be? Because consumers want them that way!

I love reading Seth Godin’s blog because he takes such strong and clear positions. I find I am either appalled at his ignorance (IMHO) or amazed at his brilliance, there is very little mediocrity about Godin.
Today’s blog is spot on the money (euphemism for very good, or agrees with what I would have said, if I had articulated my thoughts and if I could have put it as well as him).

His blog today is all about complicity, and the way consumers create poor service and poor products. Read the whole post, but here is a snippet “Why does spam exist? Because (some) people respond to it. Why are ineffective pharmaceuticals so heavily marketed? Because (some) people demand that doctors prescribe them. Why are so many local stores struggling? Because so many customers cross the street to the big box stores.”.

From a researcher’s point of view, what Godin is talking about is the difference between stated and revealed importance. Ask any mother how important the safety of her toddler is and she will say it is her number one concern, then watch her push the pushchair (stroller in some parts of the world) out into the road between parked cars, and you can see that the safety of the toddler may be important, but it ranks lower in her true importance scale than the inconvenience of walking a few metres (yards in some parts of the world) down to a safer crossing point.

Researchers are often quite good when they are dealing with consumers’ stated and revealed importances, and techniques such as Discrete Choice Modelling can be powerful at revealing the true underlying importance values.

However, researchers are very bad at realising the difference between these two structures when it comes to their own clients. Clients say they prefer quality and insight to price, and they say they prefer small agencies the big multinational factories – and many of us appear to believe them. However, most projects end up being largely driven by price (it may not always be the cheapest of the three offers that is selected, but it is only occasionally the most expensive), and something like 70% of all work goes to the handful of large, multinational agencies.

So, taking Godin’s initial premise, clients get the sort of agencies they want/deserve. Client choices have created the large multinationals, the tendency to select the low hanging fruit, the pattern of spreading key directors as thin as the gold that gilds the chairs in Versailles, and the move to online panels is almost entirely the result of client choices – most agencies are happy to sell any modality, but they will tend to sell the options that clients buy.

Of course, I exempt all of my clients from the description they show great taste and perspicuity!