My wife and I had a rare night without the kids. After working in the yard all afternoon we decided to see a movie at an old 1940’s theater near our house. Tickets are only $3 and the food is reasonable. The movie happened to be Knowing starring Nicolas Cage. It is an end of the world sci-fi thriller with many references from John’s accounts in Revelation, except Hollywood’s version has the rapture being conducted by aliens via spaceships.

Cage plays an MIT professor struggling with the “randomness” versus “determinism” question. Is it purely random that the Earth happens to be the exact distance from the Sun that it needs to be in order for life to grow and thrive here? Or is it a sign of some sort of deeper, grander design? Cage’s son gets a paper with numbers written 50 years earlier predicting all the major disasters in the world including the end of time. As marketers we conduct research to try and know what consumers want and will do. Except we want to predict success not disaster.

For my book report in IMC 612, I read Jonah Lehrer’s How We Decide, which analyzes the latest discoveries of neuroscience and psychology to help us understand how we make decisions. Many marketing decisions are based on Rational Choice Theory –people make decisions by multiplying the probability of getting what they want by the amount of pleasure (utility) that getting it will bring. But this theory isn’t accurate.

Magnetic imaging of the brain has revealed that what we “think” is driven by emotions. Every feeling is a summary of data – a visceral response to information we don’t have the cognitive capacity to access. While our conscious brain is focused outside, our unconscious is processing millions of pieces of data from all of our past experiences. Patterns are found and translated into vivid emotions giving us access to subliminal calculations our conscious brain could never handle. That is why even though we can’t think (conscious mind) fast enough to hit a baseball, we still do. In a split second, subconscious data from past experience is translated into a feeling that the pitch is good.

Not only do we have little understanding of what people know, but it gets worse when we ask them about it. Consumer Reports asked food experts to blindly sample jams. A University of Virginia psychologist recreated the test with students and their preferences closely match the experts. But when he repeated the experiment asking another group to explain why they preferred one brand over the other the second group preferred the worst tasting jam. The thinking warped their judgment.

A similar experiment asked students to choose between posters. Ninety-five percent of the non-thinking group chose fine art over a kitty poster and none regretted their decision. The second group was asked to explain their decision and half choose the kitty poster, but 75 percent regretted that decision. How many studies have been skewed asking people to explain their preferences as opposed to going with their guts or first thoughts? The way they would act/react in the real life situation.

Focus group results also can be skewed. TV network executives have learned that people tend to prefer the familiar. New shows that test best remind people of shows that are already popular (impulsive emotions). On the other hand, shows that are unique and different that may perform well in reality or over the long term don’t test well. Friends did not test well, nor did the famous Avis “We try harder” advertising campaign because they were different, yet their differences are what made them successful.

If there is one thing we all must know it is that a dollar is a dollar right? Wrong. MIT business professors organized a sealed-bid auction for Boston Celtics tickets. Half were told to pay cash; the others were told to use credit. The average credit card bid was twice as high as the average cash bid. Buying with cash makes your wallet literally lighter, but credit cards make loss abstract, so you don’t feel it.

“The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.” G.K. Chesterton. We are not rational beings. Emotions are a part of every decision we make. Can we ever truly know what consumers think? This may help explain why, despite marketers using research, only 10 percent of new products are successful.

As marketers we get numbers predicting the future, but do we really know what they are telling us? They are not perfect. Surveys and statistics and focus groups are just foggy, twisted views of reality. In the end we need to use our own brains and experiences and emotions to interpret what we see. At some point you need to step out and believe.

Keith