Kenna's Dilemma

After reading Kenna’s Dilemma, from Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink, I found myself questioning the reasons behind my purchasing behavior. The problem with this is that from Gladwell’s perspective, the majority of the decisions that consumers make and the opinions that they form stem from the unconscious, a place that is not easily explored. Thus, these reasons and opinions cannot be accurately verbalized. I can slave for hours over why it is I don’t like Pepsi and much prefer Coke, but chances are slim that I’ll ever come to an accurate conclusion given my limited knowledge of product attributes that go beyond the superficial.

Although Gladwell brings up several valid points, there were two that I found most interesting and useful for marketers trying to gain insight from current or potential customers. The first was a theme that I felt permeated the majority of the chapter, and that is the realization that asking customers how they feel about something directly will not yield accurate results. My initial attention to this point came from our in-class discussions on gaining insights from members of our segments. As marketing students, I sometimes feel as though our initial solution when faced with the task of obtaining information from others is to create and distribute a survey. Gladwell describes that to yield more accurate results, subjects must be in natural settings, interacting with the products as they would in their everyday lives. This concept will have a notable impact on the methods my team and I choose to gain insight from our segment.

I feel that a large part of the problem with surveys is that test subjects often hesitate to admit things. For example, consumers chose E&J whiskey because of a more ornate bottle. As consumers, many would refrain from outwardly admitting to a researcher that they chose something because it was pretty or portrayed an image of status, mainly because we are taught to go beyond the superficial when choosing products. However, whether we are aware of it or not, such attributes do play a role and cannot be overlooked.

I agree that methods such as blind taste tests and surveys do not capture the affect of the complete product offering, as the 4 P’s of marketing tell us that there is more to a company’s offering than just the product itself. Vast resources and human effort are placed into creating a complete package that goes beyond the base composition and the attributes of the product. These efforts might include branding, promotions or packaging the product in an eye-catching way. This idea leads to the concept of sensation transference, which is a transferring of sensation or impression about the packaging of the product to the product itself. My interpretation of this is that all of the internal attributes, external attributes and prominent associations with the product (i.e. spokespeople) are lumped together in the brain, and are not dissected when a purchasing decision is being made. Our inability to separate such stimuli makes it even more difficult to accurately portray how we feel about a product.

I can think of a frequent example from my personal life where packaging plays a significant role, and that is in perfume selection. I like to wear more flowery scents, as opposed to perfumes that are fruitier or on the verge of smelling like cologne. Once I narrow down my options based on this criterion, I am still faced with a number of options that suit my preferences. When faced with the following two bottles, both equal when judged based on my limited scent criteria, can you guess which one I’d choose? (Answer: Daisy).


The second lesson that I took away from this chapter is the need for marketers to persevere in order to get past or disprove the preconceived notions that consumers hold toward a given product a category. In the Herman Miller chair example, Bill Stumpf, an industrial designer for the brand, describes the American idea of comfort as a La-Z-Boy recliner and soft cushions. The Herman Miller Aeron chair fell far from this description and therefore was not initially well-received in the marketplace. Despite this negativity, the product was not abandoned because of the realization that consumers are not in touch with what it is they really want. The chair was not something that consumers were used to seeing, which made them nervous. Gladwell points out that these feelings of nervousness or fear might be interpreted by a consumer as dislike for the product, when in actuality, the two are very different from one another.

In the example of the Mary Tyler Moore show, market research led CBS to nearly pull the show off the air. It depicted a woman who was more interested in her career than in starting a family. Outward disagreement toward the show probably came from women who were raised to believe that a woman should get married, raise a family and take care of the house while the husband financially supports the family. Internally, I imagine that the concept of the show was exciting to most women, even though it may have taken some time for them to get used to.

For revolutionary products like the Aeron chair, or concepts like the Mary Tyler Moore show, I believe that marketers could find a great deal of value in unconventional forms of marketing. In my Consumer Behavior class, we watched a video about a glove video game controller. When you wore the glove, the computer would sense the movement of your fingers, and the game on the screen would respond accordingly (this video was obviously outdated, because now we have the Wii). An employee of the company that created this device would sit in coffee shops with a laptop and would use the glove, waiting for onlookers to question the device and eventually give the product a try. This supports the idea of utilizing a more natural setting in order to gain true insights from customers, and at the same presents a useful method of getting customers over the initial fear of adopting a new product.