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Reinventing the Marketing Scientist

By: Dwayne W. Waite Jr.

When it comes to collecting data to find out what the consumer wants, and where they might be, the marketing scientist or researcher is not new. However, with the advent of technology, there has been a shift in data collecting; it has moved from finding out what the consumer believes and wants to what the consumer is actually consuming. On the online front, data tracking and behavioral targeting have taken AdLand by storm, but there is still that nagging pain in our side that makes us want to refocus on compiling beliefs and values versus actual consumption.

The marketing scientist, in the real world, is not an easy position. How can you evaluate choice? What value do consumers assign to a certain attribute? An old professor of ours, who was a marketing scientist for BBDO in his heyday, joked about how they were locked in the agency's basement and weren't allowed to see the sun until they finished concept mapping and algorithms using the Fishbein-Ajzen's Theory of Reasoned Action model.

Based on his eccentricity, the class didn't think he was joking.

There is so much to consider when looking at attitudes and consumer choice, it is no wonder that he was a little on the crazy side. What makes consumer one pick up Product A could be completely different from consumer two, and figuring out how to leverage Product A's attributes over Product B's to get both consumers' preferences over their switching costs threshold is daunting and far from exact. But as advertising is figuring out why messages are more salient than another, such research is necessary.

Online makes tracking easy. It can see what the consumer is looking at, how long they look at it, and what the last thing they see is before they ultimately make a purchase or bounce to a different site. The only downside from that "behavioral targeting" is that it is not actually tracking behavior; it's tracking action. So in this day and age, we need to decide that online, are we choosing to measure what the consumer is doing (action) versus what the consumer thinks and what stimulates them to act (attitude)? This decision, though it reads like an easy one in words, will have a ripple effect on the kind of talent AdLand attempts to recruit.

Exit researchers, enter programmers. If online advertising becomes solely a method to track consumers actions online, it will eradicate the creative and social aspect that attracted us to advertising. There are no "passion point" activities when an agency can hire a programmer to develop a formula where consumers will see ads based on what they are clicking on. There is more to research and data collecting than simple code.

There has been significant research done as well about the way people behave online versus offline. With people becoming less inhibited, and the fact that being behind a computer screen (or tablet or mobile screen) erases any kind of social proof, behavior is going to be different.

The marketing scientist is leaving marketing and advertising only to rise into the world of behavioral economics. The shift is slow, but apparent. In order for advertising and marketing to continue to be effective, we need to stop reinventing the marketing scientist and apply the principles of predictive modeling, choice preference, and reason to online advertising.

David Ogilvy said that doing too much research could ruin an advertisment; however, not doing enough has an equally tragic ending.

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About the Author

Dwayne W. Waite Jr. is partner and principal at JDW: The Charlotte Agency, a marketing and advertising shop in Charlotte, NC. He enjoys consumer behavior, economics, and football.

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