Knowledgeistics

In this economy, it’s become popular to criticize economists and their favored principle of economic rationality. Commentators lament the shortsightedness of smart people who assume others think the way they do. It’s important to recognize that good problem-solving ability and general edification can sometimes hinder efforts to understand how “regular people” think and make decisions.

This trap can ensnare anyone, but it’s particularly pernicious for market researchers, and those of us in SMMR are certainly not immune. It’s important to do your homework when trying to understand a brand, product or company in an on-line context. In other words, hitting up facebook, twitter and technorati aren’t going to give you a good picture of that context and presence unless the target market concentrates their activity there. Those might be your favorite haunts, they might even have a broad user base, but that doesn’t mean they’re representative of the target customer or consumer. Sometimes the target is going to behave in ways that are unintuitive to you.

Here’s a small example. The much-beloved er, towel, Shamwow, has a website at Shamwow.com. A simple Google search for “shamwow” returns the official site first, with several review sites, news links about the spokesman’s legal misadventures, and a link containing the word “ripoff” not appearing until 9th place. If you run a search for “shamwow.com”, however, the 3rd link down, visible without scrolling, has a pretty harsh description:

Shamwow is a sham!! Do not buy this junk. These towels do nothing!! I take that back they DO push water around all over you counters but they don’t pick …

Well, that would certainly make me think twice if I’d run the search with the intention of buying. One might assume that a search for “shamwow.com” would furnish a high conversion rate, given that the user is presumably looking for the official site. Unfortunately, most of those potential sales are probably lost once the user encounters the above screed. If they had anticipated that search string and built it into their SEO strategy, they might have held onto them.

This example is truthfully pretty silly, but it does illustrate the point. You’re not the customer. Just because you would never search for something as dumb as “shamwow.com” doesn’t mean the customer wouldn’t (no offense, customer!) Never dismiss the behavior of real customers unless you can afford to do business without them.

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