I have always felt that numbers need to be read like a book.
As you flip through data the plot thickens and a story is built.
At the end of the day you gain an understanding of how it is like to be in that story, and you take away learnings that are felt so deep in the heart that you do not need to pen them down to remember them.
Don’t present…
Be the presentation.
Behaviour of people is often instinctive and part of a habit. But when it is observed and written down, opportunities may be uncovered.
“I used to think those people who sat alone at Starbucks writing on their laptops were pretentious poseurs. Now, I know. They’re people who have recently moved in with someone. As I Looked around I wondered how many of them were mid-fight like myself.” – Carrie Bradshaw, The Good Fight, Sex and the City.
Real life moment #1:
2 teenage girls in their fbt shorts are flipping through their lecture notes of powerpoint slides, printed 6 slides handout style. One of them have their laptop opened, but she kept her undiverted attention on her notes. Both of them have each brought a huge roomy bag, and they have indeed brought a lot of belongings – pencil cases, files of notes, water bottles, lots of chargers and wires… they sure have planned to make themselves comfy here for a while. Both of them have their earphones plugged in. They took a corner in the cafe and haven’t ordered anything in the last hour.
Real life moment #2:
A guy in his 20s is sitting alone, back against the glass wall. He is well dressed, in white loafers, tailored bermudas and a black polo tee. His choice of seat allows him to have a full view of the cafe. He ordered a large sized coffee and opened his bag, revealing at least 7 books, a thick file of notes, a water bottle and some wires. He took out a calculator and began working on his homework. He kept his mobile out of sight, but he is easily distracted. Within half hour, he got up to order some bites.
Real life moment #3:
I am 2 episodes behind watching the latest episode of Mad Men, but today is not the day to catch up on my TV. I had to leave the house to get anything done. I packed my laptop, screen filter, adaptor and all the paper docs I might possibly need. I brought along name cards, you know, just in case. I like to hear to the soft conversations and that occasional mobile ring across the cafe as I type along. It is very comforting to feel like I am still connected to the outside, even though I am deeply engaged to the virtual social world loading on my laptop. And then I felt the need to do a blog post.
I can only continue learning, doing, and coaching… and face everything with patience and with steady confidence.
Why work towards something when you can work ON something now?
If cross-tabulations and correlations mean causation…
… then anyone can be a market researcher.
I have been thinking a lot on the concept of business.
“You must remember, this is a business.”
It seems that ‘business’, to many, is a one-word paraphrase of “Getting money in is the top priority”. Coming from a business school, I really really do understand a organisation’s paranoia over money. Without customers, we have no money. With no money, none of us would be employed. It makes a lot of logical sense.
But why do I feel that it is not sustainable?
As we work collectively to fulfill the adage “the customer is always right”, we might realise that these efforts are at the expense of other equally important things – time resources, human resources, how meaningful our work is and lastly, morale.
Behaviour of people is often instinctive and part of a habit. But when it is observed and written down, opportunities may be uncovered.
Real life moment #1:
My brother is sitting in front of the TV, playing a virtual game of Monopoly on my iPhone. He is focused on his Monopoly game, and only listening to the commentaries from the TV about the soccer match. He is facing downwards most of the time, and only looks up when the commentator’s voice get excited.
Real life moment #2:
My boyfriend comes back home from work and goes straight into his room. He puts his laptop bag (with Macbook inside) down and rests his iPad on the table. He plugs in his iPhone to get it charged for the next day. He turns on his 27″ monitor, which is plugged to his 15″ HP laptop. He proceeds to catch up on his online game so that his avatar can level up, then scans through his feeds, and lastly checks on his social media contacts. An hour later, he grabs the towel to go for a shower.
Real life moment #3:
My mom’s phone was ringing (and it was such a horrible ringtone) and she was displeased. “This is not the ringtone I set!” she said and she was so distraught that she missed the call. I checked the settings for her and set it to her desired ringtone. She then responded “I will never touch any other buttons on my phone again, other than this one (the call answer button)”.
I was asked recently “what is your current relationship with consumer electronics?” While I have worked on several categories ranging from snacks, travel, beer etc… when it comes to white goods, I am very much like the typical mandarin-speaking moms in Singapore – All I want to know is what it IS called, what it DOES, how much do I need to PAY and what I need to do to MAKE IT WORK.
In other words, I need products to GTTP – Get to the Point, with a price that I can emotionally accept.
This makes more sense to me and is closely related to how people make decisions – quickly and irrationally. It is only after experiencing the product that I will be quick to form a judgment on the brand. And my repeat purchase will depend heavily on my post-rationalisation of my first-time purchase.
That is the main reason why branding (even for a value brand) is important for a sustainable long term growth.
Is it possible to set up a program to run correlations with all time-series data available online, and thereafter I’m allowed to rank them according to the strength of their association with my variable of interest (perhaps my own sales data)?
At the moment researchers are only correlating measures which they have to first hypothesize a reasonable relationship. What about measures which we have never considered?
