Marketing Arrogance and Assumptions

A common problem among sales and marketing professionals is that they assume that they have accurate knowledge about what their prospects want and need.   This assumption becomes arrogance when taken to the level that they assume that they know what their prospects need better than the prospects themselves.  

Consider this: many husbands have great difficulty in choosing a gift that their wives will appreciate.   That is to say that they struggle, and quite often fail, to identify the wants and needs of a person with whom they have been in close and constant contact for many years or decades.   How, then, can such a husband go to work and presume to have adequate knowledge of the wants and needs of thousands of people whom he has never met?

Assuming: The Worst Solution

It should not require much in the way of explanation to establish that assumption is the absolute worst thing that you can do when attempting to serve the needs of another person.   Your assumptions are only as good as your knowledge of the other person.   For the people closest to you, you may have some knowledge, but it is never perfect.  For those whom you have never met, your knowledge is largely nil.

Even when you have information about another person, it tends to be incomplete, and gaps are filled in with presumptions that are often more reflective of your own behavior, or stereotypes that you have come to accept about the behavior of other people.   In this sense, a little knowledge can be dangerous in that it instills you with a sense of certainty and a boldness to take action without further consideration.

Typical demographics often lead marketers in the wrong direction: a fifty-year-old white male tasked with marketing to Asian teenage girls is likely to make many mistakes.   Even if the task is assigned to a fifty-year-old Asian female, her thoughts are likely based on memories of her how experience as a teenager, which is likely to be significantly different to that of a teenager today ... but because she can identify with the market, she is more comfortable in the assumption that she knows what they want and need - and fails to recognize that she is still acting on assumptions.

Asking: The Second Worst Solution

The traditional approach to marketing is in research that finds a group of people who match the demographic qualities of a desired target market and asking them what they need and desire.   This is obviously a better approach, but it should be regarded as "the second worst" approach to gathering information.

Even when a focus group or questionnaire is expertly designed to gather objective information, peoples' stated "facts" about their needs and desires are always subjective.   When speaking of past experiences, their memory may be hazy and they may provide inaccurate information by confabulating to fill the gaps, or they may feel uncomfortable disclosing their actual behavior, even when there is no logical reason they should feel the need to conceal the truth.

When speaking of the future, the problems are even worse, as they engage in speculation about what they think they would like, but which they may not like at all when actually presented with it.   In effect, they are making assumptions about their own preferences, which may be no more reliable than another person's assumptions.   And there is likewise the Hawthorne effect of describing what they think is logical, or providing what they presume the research would be pleased to hear.

In all, most methods of marketing research do not dispense with assumptions, but merely ask someone else to assume rather than doing it yourself.   It may be slightly more accurate, but is still based on speculation that may not prove out in reality.

Observing: The Best Solution

Likely the best cure for arrogance and assumption is observation.   Studies of consumer behavior, when designed well, reflect actual consumer behavior without assumption or speculation, and capture data that can support a highly accurate conclusion.

Those words are chosen carefully, as observational studies capture raw data that "can support" rather than "lead to" an accurate conclusion - as there is much that can be skewed in the analysis and interpretation of the data.   By necessity, a conclusion is drawn by formulating a hypothesis and testing it against the data - but they hypothesis is formed based on assumptions, and the "testing" may involve selective attention and skewed analysis to support that assumption.

In all, there is likely no way to entirely eliminate assumption from sales and marketing - developing promotional plans and procedures will always be based on some degree of speculation about the needs and desires of the target market.   And perhaps the best we can do is to recognize that assumptions are assumptive, attempt to be aware of biases and mitigate them, and to accept that no plan is perfect or flawless - and the degree to which it turns out to be flawed is attributable to the biases inherent in assumption.