Byron Sharp and twaddle talk

Professor Byron Sharp might be less prone to talking twaddle if he were to conduct some qualitative research.

I make this suggestion based upon Professor Byron Sharp’s insistence in his blog post of 14 August 2018, that “perceptions…are largely, if not totally, due to behaviour causing the perception”.

Sharp’s assertion has raised the hackles of various folk, including Adjunct Professor Mark Ritson of Melbourne Business School and distinguished Professor Koen Pauwels of Northeastern University, Boston, MA.

And now me, Emeritus Professor of Nowheresville City Arizona, John Lowery, from which exalted chair, I put it to you, Professor Sharp, that you are talking absolute twaddle.

Or, as the more eloquent, Alan Hedges put it in the seminal ‘Testing to Destruction‘, “Sometimes changed attitudes lead to changed behaviour, sometimes changed behaviour leads to changed attitudes, sometimes attitudes change but behaviour does not, sometimes behaviour changes but attitudes do not. I am sorry if this complicates matters, but it has the unfortunate merit of being true.”

Hedges added that this is a “simple fact observable to anyone not blinkered by his own technique”.

Professor Sharp’s twaddle talk may be a function of his failure to see beyond his own blinkers. Those blinkers being his reliance on single-source data – drawn from tracking studies – to prove his point.

Sometime ago he challenged Pauwels to provide one example of brand perception driving sales. As far as I’m aware Pauwels rose to the challenge; the response to which suggested that Sharp is wearing earplugs as well as blinkers.

So, Professor Sharp, I offer you another example. It’s based upon the period I worked with Lidl, from 2012 to 2016.

During that time, Lidl utilised several tools for measuring performance and developing strategy:

– Till-roll data were available on tap. Within 18 hours of the shops shutting their doors, Lidl knew everything from total sales to, for example, how many lamb loin chops the Cricklewood store had sold. It was useful stuff but insight as to the whys and wherefores was obviously lacking.

– Behavioural data, in the form of Kantar’s Worldpanel, shed considerably more light on what was going on, albeit a few weeks after the fact.

– And a Hall & Partners tracking study gave clues as to how the advertising was performing in particular.
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Frustratingly, the image data reported by the tracker moved at a glacial pace.

Fortunately, however, Lidl had a fourth source at its disposal that added another perspective – qualitative research.

During my time working with the business I conducted scores of focus groups (to add to the hundreds that I’ve conducted for other clients).

Of course, a great deal of twaddle is spoken by respondents in focus groups; the nature of the research means that they inevitably feel that they’re required to offer up opinions as if they were marketing professionals (Professors?).

Notwithstanding, if you listen hard enough the comments people make about brand image, as it exists in the here and now, can sometimes be very insightful.

Quite often we deliberately recruited respondents who had never shopped at Lidl. The research was conducted in parts of the country where Sainsbury’s, Waitrose and M&S were the pre-eminent sources of groceries. The ambition was to establish the potential to capture a slice of their market share.

In the early days, we encountered a good deal of snobbery with respect to Lidl. (If you want to get a feel for that, watch this).

But then, at the beginning of 2014, things started to change.

That change was epitomised by a remark made by a Waitrose loyalist. It went as follows: “I’ve heard so much about Lidl. They’re opening a store in the town. I can’t wait to give it a try.”

To be clear, the respondent concerned had never shopped in Lidl, so her perceptions could not be following her behaviour.

On further probing, it was apparent that her perceptions had been shaped by a whole gamut of influences, from PR (an article in Times that was headlined ‘We’re all Lidl class now’) to advertising (#LidlSurpises) to word of mouth (“My sister says she saves a fortune”.)

We heard this kind of thing again and again during the groups we conducted over the following months and then we saw, via our various research sources, that every time Lidl opened a store the tills were ringing and Waitrose and Sainsbury’s and M&S and the rest began losing sales.

Perception change had preceded behavioural change.

Professor Sharp, inconvenient though it may be, I recommend you take out the earplugs, remove the blinkers and conduct a bit of qualitative research yourself. You’ll hear a lot of twaddle but one or two remarks might help you stop talking it.

John Lowery is a marketing consultant who has worked both agency and client side