Ultimately, personas are a step along the path to identifying the knowledge systems of various customers, which drive their decisions and precipitating behaviors. A knowledge system consists of three key components: history, stance, and tools.
History
A person's history includes the things he has encountered from actions in real life as well as those that have been absorbed second-hand from the accounts of others. In general, people are drawn to repeat the actions that had been successful in the past and to avoid those that have failed or caused harm. In that sense, the knowledge that is gained from history tends to be the strongest, as it has been "proven" by first-hand experience or the testimony of a reliable source.
A perfectly rational person analyzes their own history, and accurately interprets the sequence of events and their causal relation to the results that were achieved - but few individuals are perfectly rational, and their analysis is skewed by superficial interpretation or misinterpretations. In that sense, history is a fictional account that justifies the present - but simply because it is not entirely true does not discredit it in the mind of the historian: it is his truth, which he maintains as reliable.
In terms of consumer behavior, history benefits a brand when there are positive events in an prospect's past - or sometimes, when there are negative experience with other brands. The worst treatment of history is to simply ignore it: to treat each encounter as a fresh start, pretending that unfortunate events (a negative service experience or exposure to an offensive commercial message) had not occurred. Not all prospect are green fields, and history must be considered in each interaction.
Stance
A stance is a belief about something, which results in an attitude when that thing is encountered. A stance drives behavior in real time, as the premise upon which decisions are made and actions are taken. This can be profoundly influential, even when the stance is founded in raw emotion or flawed reasoning - nothing can be done to change behavior unless a contradictory stance is first addressed.
A person's stance is expressed in two specific ways: sensitivity and distinction. Sensitivity is the inclination to ignore something and to give it attention. Distinction is the ability to evaluate those things to which a person is sensitive: there is the binary consideration of whether it is good or bad, as well as the evaluative comparison as to whether it is better or worse than something else.
A positive stance to a brand causes a prospect to become highly motivated: they are interested in the brand and consider it to be not only good, but better than alternatives. But in most instances the prospect's stance is either lacking (they see no benefit in the brand) or uncertain (their evaluation is mixed), in which case their stance must be addressed in order to secure them as a customer.
Tools
Tools are the cognitive processes by which experiences are evaluated: they include theories, procedures, decision rules, and other instruments of assessment that enable an individual to consider the present situation to the possible future state that may be achieved by undertaking an action.
And of course, tools are imperfect: a person may be utterly lacking in the tools necessary to make a sound decision, which leads them to refrain from taking action - or they may misapply the tools that they have and take an inefficient, ineffective, or damaging action. The most serious mistakes are made when the wrong tools are confidently misapplied.
The "hot prospect" is an individual whose toolset has already led them to the conclusion that a given product and brand is the right choice for them - though this comes at the danger of creating dissonance if their tools were applied incorrectly. Addressing the needs of a prospect who lacks the proper tools to make a decision can be difficult - there is the matter of trustworthiness to consider, in that it's expected that a vendor will provide information and tools that are skewed to favor their own brand, so considerable trust-building must be done before providing tools to a prospect.
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A final word of caution: these qualities of a knowledge system should not be taken as innate and immutable, though it is very often a tendency to assume that people "are what they are" and cannot change. A person can choose to adopt a stance or to change it. He can choose to rely on the tools he has or acquire new ones and discontinue ones that are not productive. He can in some instances choose the experiences to which he exposes himself. The ability to do so gives him control over our knowledge system, and the ability to adapt and evolve over time.
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