“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.”
William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1-2)
When Juliet whispers these words to Romeo, she is telling him that his last name is irrelevant to his being, and that she would love him regardless of what family he comes from and what his last name is. However, while love may have been blind for these star-cross’d lovers, it was their names that ultimately decided their fate, and it is the names we give ourselves and each other which continue to describe and define us, for better or worse, today.
The problem is when a name is wrong, and marketing and market research is harboring a dangerous linguistic relic that threatens to limit the course of true innovation by limiting the expected potential of the very people who decide the fate of the business itself... those who purchase.
At issue is the term “consumers.” (You can substitute “diners,” “drinkers,” “users,” “guests,” “drivers,” for your industry as appropriate... I’m using “consumers” as the term I run into most commonly in my market research work). The term shows up in everything from our businesses (“Consumer Village” / “Consumer Dynamics”) to our objectives (“seek consumer understanding”) to our conferences (“Consumer Knowledge Roundup”) to our reports (“Consumer Impulse Purchase Drivers”) to our very job titles (“Consumer Insight Manager” / “Consumer Understanding Researcher”). It is a staple of my every day work, and I use it as freely as I use the word “woman” or the word “restaurant,” as an ostensibly objective taxonomical delineation between ‘our side’ (marketing/market research/brand-building) and ‘their side’ (those who pay/purchase/buy/use).
The problem is, it’s a lie. Or, at the very least, it’s a misleading limitation. Our names are our identities; the way we refer to each other not only reflects our position and function, it defines and creates it. (There’s a reason the difference between buying coffee from a “cashier” costs two dollars less than buying it from a “Barista,” and why we pay “administrative professionals” a lot more than we paid “secretaries”). When we refer to a “consumer,” we are referring to a momentary function, and betraying a marketer/producer-centric industry mindset versus an end-user-centric mindset while short-selling the bigger picture of the person behind the purchase.
The reality is, nobody buys anything in a vacuum. Regardless of your industry or category, your product or service exists as a momentary morsel of reward or function in the tremendously rich and complex life of each person who buys and uses it. Understanding how to create and market to that person requires understanding the whole person, which requires understanding the infinitely-faceted web of motivations, histories, and rewards-systems that drives that person through all of his/her choices in a given day, not just the one he/she makes when “consuming.” To continue to think of real people who sometimes purchase as “consumers” only limits our ability to truly understand what moves them; and by doing so, limits our ability to create for and reach them.
Am I a consumer? I am. I am also a father, a husband, a guitar player, an asthmatic, a caucasian, a bourbon drinker, a dreamer, a people-pleaser, a leader, an Ohioan, a heterosexual, an insomniac, an idealist, a coward, a follower, a writer, and a wandering Catholic to highlight only a few of my names. Undoubtedly your list of names and those of your “consumers” is just as long and varied, and profoundly reaching them will require understanding all of these names. We can’t reverse the system overnight, but perhaps we can start changing the way we think about “consumers” by changing the way we talk about them first, and letting the real people behind the purchase smell as sweet as they deserve to.
Justin Masterson
justin@seekresearch.com
