The Hindu Business Line : Customers rarely retrieve a store name first

If you want to spend some time to think about how we think, here is help from Arch G. Woodside. Contrary to common thinking, not all thinking is mindful. "Most thinking occurs unconsciously," writes Woodside in Market-Driven Thinking, from Elsevier (www.books.elsevier.com) .

"Automatic or unconscious-based thinking builds from cultural and early-experience imprinting," finds research. Another key finding about thinking is that overconfidence is the biggest cause of poor decisions and actions, says Woodside. "Overconfidence{+2} (overconfidence squared) is the problem of believing that you do not suffer from the overconfidence bias." Wonder if it could be cubed, too, for some of us!

The author draws upon valuable insights from academic and field studies about thinking, and adapts the same for businesses. For instance, H.A. Simon's principle of `satisficing' rather than maximising applies frequently in decision-making by executives and consumers, points out Woodside. How so? Both apply "very limited (low-cognitive-effort) search strategies to frame decision contexts, to find solutions, and to create rules for deciding."

What happens when `a customer's conscious thinking declares war on his/her unconscious thinking'? Or, `how do you convince yourself to do what your heart tells you is wrong?' To handle this quandary, the customer is likely to exercise `some mental and physical effort,' explains Woodside. "Unbalanced situations stimulate us to further thinking; they have the character of interesting puzzles, problems which make us suspect a depth," reads a snatch from F. Heider's work, cited in the book.

That people think `narratively rather than argumentatively or paradigmatically' is another observation, finding mention in a section on storytelling. Stories can help resolve paradoxes, one learns. "For a person doing the (un)conscious thinking, stories serve as `guides to conduct' by facilitating the interpretation of cues turned up by that conduct." Peripheral advertising persuasion is another strategy to `affect attitude and brand choice.'

J.A. Bargh is quoted for his view that attention, awareness, intention, and control do not necessarily occur together in an all-or-none fashion. "They are to some extent independent qualities that may appear in various combinations."

MEC or means-end chain theory finds elaboration in a separate chapter. According to MEC, "knowledge held in consumers' memory is organised in a hierarchy with concrete thoughts linked to more abstract thoughts in a sequence progressing from means (i.e. brands and product features) to psychological and social consequences and finally to ends (i.e. fulfilment of personal values)."

Read about concepts such as the cohort auditor, FMET or forced metaphor elicitation technique, cognitive sculpting and so forth in a chapter on `advancing personal introspection.' Sense-making is a social process, "a constant substrate that shapes interpretations," reminds Woodside. "Conduct is contingent on the conduct of others, whether those others are imagined or physically present."

Customers select brands and shop at stores that they are familiar with, explains a chapter on `automatic thinking and store choice.' Therefore, asking what customers think of a given store may be a mistake! "Many customers may rarely retrieve the name of a given marketer's store (or brand) when thinking about a shopping problem," reasons the author. "For many customers, a marketer's store may not have an image."

For an in-depth study.

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D. Murali