Special report
Market research
The silver lining in complaints
Thanks to the Net, disgruntled consumers have many forums on which to vent their spleens about unsatisfactory products. Hovi/ever, these also provide opportunities for researchers. By Alicia Clegg
T
here is a school of thought that says a complaint i.s a gift. In which case, the personal computer maker Dell has generous customers, In fact, when it comes to complaints, Dell's customers couldn't be more open handed. The story of the mass consumer protest that engulfed the PC giant reads like a digital mortality tale. In June 2005 Deli sold a PC to JetT Jarvis, author of a popular US technology weblog. The machine did not work and the promised in-home service proved no better.
care about more. To get away from this perverse, if convenient, practice of researching what the company, not the customer, thinks is important. Martin urges marketers to ^I'our websites and blogs for references to their brands. The beltPC worfd: At the height and-braces approach of consumer criticism, is to invest in software that continuously scans the Web but even manual moral of the Dell saga. According searches can dredge up problems. to the study, which ran in five Thus intbrmed, businesses can countries, over a third of offer to put things right for Europeans have decided not to individuals who have manifestly make a purchase after reading suffered a raw deal and, where a unfavourable comments placed pattern emerges, organise follow-on online by customers of a brand or Disiliusioned and irate. Jarvis research to discover the full extent other private individuals. What is began blogging about Dell's and source of the problem. more, the peopie most influenced failings. Other malcontents by blogs are the very people whom dubbed "Dell Hellers" - pitched in brands most want to influence: RESEARCH OPPORTUNITIES and the originai splenetic outburst snowballed into an online eruption those who regularly spend over £100 Enthusiasm for recovering per month on internet purchases. of consumer disgruntlement. customers through Web-based Such fmdings raise sharp issues In August Jarvis wrote an article detective work is encouraging for The Guai-dian which catapulted for large corporations. Among them businesses to look at how is whether businesses really need the fomenting PR crisis across the traditional channels might also focus groups and satisfaction Atlantic. At the height of the be harnessed for research purposes. surveys to guide strategy when rumpus, whether coincidentally Customer contact centres are unhappy customers are letting or as a result of the bad publicity. ideally placed to act as listening rip with their opinions, for free, Dell's US customer satisfaction posts. All too often, however, in cyberspace. ratings, market share and share businesses let the opportunity to price began to slip. Market Clai-ity director Stephen pick up on tensions between them Martin sees uninvited comment as and their customers slip. a wake-up call for firms that run David Williams, chief executive NETWORKS OF COMPLAINTS of consultancy H2X, lays the blame. Tlie tradition of consumers naming surveys more from habit than a desire to learn. "There's a huge in part, on the prevalence of and shaming corporations that tendency in firms to only pay codified surveys. Routinely offered backslide on their promises at the end of a call to a contact predates blogging. But the Dell saga heed to stuff that's got numbers associated with it. when a small centre, these typically require makes plain how much easier the number of qualitative interviews customers to force-fit their gripes Web has made it for aggrieved can yield real insight." Added to into pre-coded boxes that invariably citizens to band together. Put which, companies have a habit of miss the point. To overcome this another way. in the networked developing metrics for things that limitation, Williams recommends economy the bad opinion of are easy to measure, whilst simply attaching a verbal comment consumers travels fast. ignoring issues that are difficult to box to automated surveys allowing Research published by Ipsos i; but which customers may cailers to describe, in their own MORI late last year confirms the
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words, where the company's service has fallen short. Customers who suffer substandard service can complain or simply take their cheque-books elsewhere. The traditional wisdom is that the customer who leaves quietly is more to be feared than the one who kicks up a stink, but at least makes their displeasure known. Now. with the growth of loyalty cards and online shopping, companies increasingly know when a customer has stopped buying. This opens the way for research to find out why defectors who left the brand did so and, more importantly, how to win them back. Amanda Scott, head of technology, media and telecoms research at Fresh Minds, sees customer research tai*geted at lapsed customers as the way ahead. As an example she cites telephonebased research which FreshMinds conducted for a business client whose sales had plummeted, "in all cases, we found that people were really impressed that a supplier cared enough to find out why they had stopped purchasing," she says. As a follow-up the company initiated a programme of service improvements and recontacted clients to let tbem know when the problems had been solved. CULTURAL JAMMING Creating brand advocates out of disaffected, or lapsed, customers is time-consuming, but doable given the right motivation. More difficult to tackle are criticisms dii'ectod not at how brands perform, but what they stand for. Rachel Lawes. founder of I-^wes Consulting, has made a study of this phenomenon, which she will present at the Market Research Society's annual conference in March. In her paper Lawes ^
01.02.07 Marketing Week : 29
Special report Market research
looks at the rise of a form of anticonsumerism known as "culture jamming". Typified by grass-roots movements, such as Adbusters Media Foundation, culture jammers employ the tactics of the political satirist, punk activist and urban graffiti artist to subvert marketing communications and wake people up to the "polluting" effects of brand-obsessed culture. Examples include; posting spoof ads on the Web - such as a stickthin model retching over a toilet bowl in a take off of a commercial for Obsession, the Calvin Klein ft-agrance; pasting stickers saying "GREASE" on tables and trays in McDonald's restaurants; and even orsanising people to walk aroimd Wal-Mart stores, in an apparent daze, buying nothing. In an earlier age. such stunts might have been dismissed as the posturings of an UJirepresentative fringe. Not any more, says Lawes, who sees mistrust of large corporations as a characteristic that defines consumer culture as much as its appetite for consuming. A consequence of this, she argues. is that many consumers share the sentiments of brand saboteurs. "While only a tiny percentage of consumers are culture jammers, many others are very receptive to what they have to say"
THE BRANDS' RESPONSE
So where does this leave brandowners? One response to culture jammers is to let them do their worst, on the not uni'easonable assumption that sophisticated consumers will relish the joke, but go on buying the brand regardless. This is most likely when an attack is low-key or. like many of the spoofs on the Web. more parody than biting critique. "It's important to know the difference between spoofs that oppose brands and those that actually celebrate consumer culture," says Alex Gordon, head of semiotics at research consultancy Flamingo International. Sometimes, however, companies bite back. In her paper, Lawes outlines a form of retaliation, known as "recuperation", in which brands use irony to turn the tables
Jamming: A spoof CK internet ad
on their detractors. A case in point is the US beauty brand. Philosophy which sells "hope in a jar", an ironic appropriation of a phrase first coined by critics of the beauty business. But do retaliatory tactics achieve their goal? Using ironic humour to wrongfoot an assailant can work well, or backfire badly. The safest ground is when consumers, deep down, don't want to be put off the brand by its
critics. Philosophy's tongue-in(.-heek appeal to brand-savvy women who, however aware they may be, still dream of wiping 15 years off their crows feet is a perfect example. More risky, says semiotics Lonsultant Greg Rowland, are markets that target a varied mix of |)eople. An example might be fastitiod chains patronised by everyone. fiom feisty opponents of "food fascism" to harassed mums who easily recoil from brands that thumb their nose at concerns over obesity Says Rowland: "If you make nn advertisement that's adored by the 30% of the public who make up your target market that's fine, even if everyone else hates it." But. he adds, "you have to get your numbers right." With the eruption of usergenerated comment on the Web, corporations used to dealing with customers at an arm's length now find themselves confronting a cynical public ready to believe the worst about their brands. Now, more than ever, brands need cultural insight to fathom the complicated world of consumers. •
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