Your table (or salesman or colonoscopy) is ready for you now

I’ve spent much of the past few weeks on the road, and I’m catching up on a few of the trend newsletters I subscribe to. I found a pretty cool story in Springwise, for example.

You know that little plastic buzzer thingy a restaurant gives you to hold while you’re waiting? The one that lights-up and vibrates when a table is available and it’s your turn to be seated. Turns out that almost all of us own one of those things… in the form of a mobile phone.
Using a tool most of their customers already have—a mobile phone—a clinic in Quebec has made a very simple innovation. If it looks like your wait will be longer than anticipated, they encourage you to wander away (for shopping, refreshments, whatever). When your appointment time is known to be imminent, they give you a call, email or text message. (No more frustrated patients losing their patience.) Click here to read more.

Implications: I can think of many ways to use this concept. If a customer leaves their car with you to be serviced, why not give them a call on their cell phone about the time the car is ready to be picked up? If a customer must wait for your staff to grab their goods in a warehouse after paying... why not invite them to wander a while longer in your store, and let them know you'll call when it's ready. Same thing for you, Target Pharmacy: Why should I have to check-back five times after placing my prescription order? You should just call me once it has been filled!

If you're already doing this, are you promoting it?

Mike Anderson

Don't just watch the votes. Watch the voters.

I have waited a while before submitting this particular entry, for one reason: Remarks in either direction could have been seen as political. But I offer this posting as a matter of simple observation in the way elections are evolving. Note that both matters come to us from California.

First, in case you missed, Carly Fiorina won her primary in the race for the senate. And Meg Whitman won her primary in the race for governor. (For more information, see this primary coverage from the LA Times.) Worth noting, in my opinion not because these were both GOP races, or because they are both highly successful women from the technology field (Fiorina is the former CEO of Compaq/Hewlett Packard, and Whitman is the former leader at eBay). These candidates are important for what they both are not: Life-long politicians.

Secondly, with the passage of Proposition 14, voters in California have signaled a fundamental change in their state’s primary process. Instead of having two parties pick candidates that voters must then choose from, the top two vote-getters of any kind (party or no) will be placed on the ballot for fall elections. Political pundits don’t know whether this is a change for the better or a change for the worse: But everyone agrees this measure represents a fundamental change to politics. Read more on the matter in this story from The New York Times.

Implications: In advance of recent primaries, much commentary focused on the challenges facing incumbents at a time when the voting public is growing tired of the status quo.

Perhaps this frustration will not only impact longtime office-holders… but the system itself.
Think about consumers who have been frustrated buying in your category. Are they likely to change providers… or could they go so far as to change categories, completely?

Mike Anderson

Comparison shopping, coming soon (with greater clarity) to Health Care

The Internet has made it easy to comparison shop… for everything from books to cars to real estate. Well, that same kind of competitive consideration is arriving soon… at a health care facility near you. According a recent story in the New York Times, there are a couple of companies who are eager to make it easy to compare everything from colonoscopies to stents. Click here to read the story.

Implications: There is an old saying that I will paraphrase: “No army can defeat an idea whose time has come.” Once upon a time, the sheer complexity of a medical procedure made gaining a second opinion confusing and time-consuming. Today, confusion is given clarity by the information resource of the web, and that same web has accelerated the comparison shopping process.

Even if your product or service has been too complex to compare in the past… are you ready for an age when comparison is commonplace?

It is in your very near future.

Costs, quality, features, follow-up services, satisfied customers. Which of these (or other) attributes will consumers use to compare you by? With whom will you be compared?

Mike Anderson

When asked to choose between substance and style, consumers choose substance

According to a survey by Chadwick Martin Bailey that was covered in this morning’s Media Post Marketing Daily, great content is far more important than the device that content might be delivered on. Click here to read the story.

Implications: Some of the assertions in this story would be easy to argue. One cannot enjoy “access to great content” without a user interface (device, app or web page) that makes it easy to find and use. But the more important implication from this story is this: Having the most sophisticated home page or landing page on the web is not as important as delivering the kind of content the consumer came to you for.

Mike Anderson

If forced to choose between texting and driving, which will today's young adults pick?

Boomers are widely considered to be the driving force behind the auto industry in the U.S. It’s the generation that had an insatiable appetite for things like muscle cars, convertibles and minivans. But does Gen Y feel the same way?

A while back, a colleague sent me this link to an Advertising Age article suggesting that in an age when digital tools are so popular, it only makes sense that mass transit could be popular, too.

Implications: “I can’t text and drive? Fine… here are my keys.” If forced to choose, that seems to be the choice many young adults are making. Maybe this is due entirely to their love of technology or social networking. Maybe it hints at the assumption that eventually, we’re going to run out of (affordable) oil anyway… so I might as well not get too involved with cars at all. Or maybe it has something to do with a sense of environmental responsibility.

But for whatever reasons might be driving it, this could be a trend to watch. Do you deliver? In the future, if the product or service you sell is inconvient to take home on a bus or train... maybe you should.

Mike Anderson

Taking advantage of discontent: Some credit unions make their move

Last weekend, a story in the New York Times made public a trend you may already have noticed: Credit unions are starting to encourage new customers from the pool of people who might be discontent with traditional banks. To read the story, just click here.

Implications: Any negative publicity or incident can spark churn in a company or category. And whether or not they were involved in causing the meltdown that led to the great recession, many conventional banks are paying a PR penalty right now.

I interviewed a banker, recently, who expressed frustration that while it was the risky behavior of select investment banks and mortgage lenders that largely fueled the great recession, all banks are public relations victims of the mess.

Interesting. If something negative happens in your category (think automotive recall or oil spill), is the damage limited to the companies involved, or should you step into the mix to state your role or innocence in the event… or why your company is an exception within the category?

Mike Anderson

Are shoppers "trading-up" to their old ways?

A recent issue of Media Post Marketing Daily suggests that some consumers are going back to their old favorites; stores or products they abandoned in the name of frugality with the onset of the great recession.

Implications: While it is dangerous to make sweeping statements about consumer habits, there are signs that some folks are going back to their old ways… a trend that would be fortified through continued improvement in the job market and our collective sense of job security, among other things.

Remember, though, the pack mentality can only take you so far. Your customers might feel or behave differently than the customers who are loyal to a competitor. Indeed, your customers might feel differently when shopping for a restaurant than when they’re shopping for a car.
“The Recovery” will be a very individual thing, decided by the individuals involved. Are you listening to your customers?

Mike Anderson

Happy Days: More companies look back to help customers look forward

On several occasions, I have written about the power of nostalgia in courting consumers during difficult times (see “Looking back as a means of coping” from 4/2010, for example).

A recent story from the New York Times added some fresh insight into the idea. Click here to read it.

Mike Anderson

UPDATE: A shortage of doctors

Back in September, I wrote a piece about the emerging shortage of doctors and other healthcare professionals [see “Generally speaking, not enough doctors,” September, 2009.]

This morning, I received my Chart Focus newsletter from McKinsey, which offered further insight into the matter. Click here to read it.

Mike Anderson

Far more than an eyesore: Potential outcomes of the BP spill

The Deepwater Horizon tragedy cost eleven lives on the day it began (April 20, 2010). To state the obvious, the impact of this incident on the wildlife, the waterway and adjacent communities will be far-reaching. (The catastrophe is now recognized as the biggest environmental disaster in U.S. history.) But considered from the context of consumer trends, what are some of the plausible outcomes of the BP oil spill?

There is a fine line between being a trend watcher and being a futurist. And while I usually avoid crossing that line, I decided to give this question a little thought over the weekend. So, as we look out over the next months or years, what kinds of things might we see that could impact consumer behavior? (I encourage you to think about this, too, in terms of the way these issues could impact consumers in your category. If you come up with anything you’d like to share, just send me a note by email.) What I offer here are not predictions, but a range of possibilities.

Regional frustration. In a post-Katrina world, everyone seems more sensitive to the lapse that occurs between a catastrophe and an effective response. One form of regional friction will likely come from the delay, again, that the Gulf region has endured in terms of response time. But that is not the only form of regional friction to watch for.

In Florida, the temptation to generate revenue through off-shore drilling has long been resisted; one reason is the threat a possible spill might pose to the immense tourism industry. Now, Florida residents and public officials are increasingly upset that they stand to suffer environmental consequences regardless of their disciplined approach to offshore oil. For more on this angle, see this story from the New York Times.

Accelerating the pursuit of alternatives. There’s a good chance that the BP oil spill could speed-up the move toward more environmentally responsible energy choices. As the intense barrage of media coverage continues, consumers are more likely to realize that the cost of energy is greater than the price we pay at the pump. Also, consumers are more likely to make the connection between their personal energy consumption habits and consideration of how that energy is created and where it comes from. Another story in the New York Times offers thoughts on this topic, as does this op-ed piece from Thomas Friedman.

Increased scrutiny and regulation of the petroleum industry. It will be politically popular to write legislation that provides for greater protections and more strict performance expectations within the petroleum industry. On a flight to Denver last week, I sat next to a gentleman from the nuclear energy industry. During out chat, he said, “This is the oil industry’s Three Mile Island” (get background on that disaster by clicking here). The implication, of course, was that the accident at Three Mile Island served as a wake-up call for the nuclear industry, which saw a plethora of new rules and protocols after that 1979 incident. (The gentleman also offered that the entire nuclear industry became safer as a result of that accident.)

After a delay, increased prices. The oil industry (and I mean beyond BP) certainly doesn’t need any more ill-will these days. For a time, I would anticipate most producers will make every effort to avoid price increases. But when clean-up costs are tallied by BP, when new preventive measures can be expressed in terms of their expense to the petroleum industry (see previous paragraph), and if the moratorium on deep-water drilling should affect supplies, those price increases are inevitable. Of course, those prices will hit drivers at the gas pump… but they could also be felt in the cost of goods that are shipped from anywhere to anywhere.

Supply & demand implications. From tourism to seafood, prices are likely to mirror demand, whether that demand is high or low. And even in cases where spilled crude has not tainted the tourism or seafood industry, much of the press coverage has. Watch for more marketing campaigns to support industries which are not as bad off as the consumer might assume.

Implications: I apologize if the thoughts I have expressed here seem, in any way, impersonal or removed. The BP oil spill has been a terrible tragedy that has touched—and will touch—many people deeply. But my goal for this conversation was to place the effects of this environmental disaster into the context of consumer trends.

Don’t think of the list above as a set of answers. Think of it as a set of questions… or a simple range of possibilities.

In what ways might higher oil prices, if they happen, impact your company or your consumers? Are there things your organization could do, in particular, to serve people in the affected regions? If jobs are seriously impacted in the region, what new industries might sprout, tapping an eager workforce whose lifestyle and livelihood has been altered, perhaps long-term? If your company strives to practice sustainable energy and operating policies, will consumers give you more credit in the future than they have in the past?

Mike Anderson

Economically optimistic, but consumers remain tuned-in to future factors

This morning’s Research Brief from Media Post cites research by Deloitte when suggesting that consumers are feeling pretty good about things right now. But at the same time, the study shows that consumers are still watching for things like rising energy costs, tax increases and stability/instability of the job market… and could quickly change their mindset and purchasing behaviors.

Implications: If this recovery had a theme song, it might be “Won’t Get Fooled Again.” Consumers have been surprised by a lot of major events since the beginning of this century… and those surprises came with great frequency during the past three years.

Caution is a caveat that seems to be a new part of many peoples’ current optimism. Is there anything you can do to bolster confidence—if not in the overall economy—at least in your category or company?

Mike Anderson

Automotive Orphans: Where will Mercury buyers go now?

According to Edmunds.com data cited in today’s Media Post Marketing Daily, there’s a good chance that Merc owners will stick with Ford or Lincoln when it’s time to move away from the line that Ford Motor Company is planning to close.

Implications: Sometimes, the reason given for brand closure is simple profit efficiency, as was the case in Saturn and Hummer. Other times, the reasons for ending a brand include ending unnecessary redundancy, as in the case of Pontiac and Plymouth. Mercury seems to be among the latter, with similar models found throughout the Ford and/or Lincoln lines. Automakers have long used one body style as the framework for multiple car brands.

But anytime a habit is altered forcibly, it puts the buyers who had that habit “up for grabs.” Count on seeing “Mercury Alumni” groups pop up on Facebook, as nostalgia amplifies any loyalty people might have had for the Mercury brand. And count on hearing plenty of advertising from dealerships and manufacturers about why their line should be the alternate choice for those folks formerly known as Mercury buyers.

Mike Anderson