The right and wrong way to ask people what they want

Kenna's Dilemma chapter talks about a customer's decision-making process- the context in which a judgment is made. Gladwell employs many examples and case studies, most of which are drawn from the world of marketing and focus groups. His main point is that in many situations, people will make the wrong quick judgment if they are being asked to decide something that is outside of their range of knowledge. Also, he shows that taking a problem from its normal context makes it difficult for people to make accurate decisions.

This is the first lesson from this article. For example, in the Pepsi Challenge, it was demonstrated that 57% of the subjects preferred Pepsi over Coke. What was later found was that samples consumed of this drink had a different effect than if you were to drink the entire can of Pepsi. So in the sip that subjects took of Pepsi- they tasted a sweeter and more citrusy taste. But when tasting the Coke- they tasted a raisiny vanilla taste. This is why home tests give the most accurate information. This is the first learning for a marketer trying to gain insight from current or potential customers- if they are interested in knowing how their product will TRULY compare with competitors or on it's own, then let them take it home. For example, marketers can give larger samples out to the public- so that customers will get an accurate picture of what the product does or how it tastes. And as for the company, even though a larger sample will mean more costs for them- it will give the most accurate information of how their product will compete in the long.

Another learning from this article that a marketer could use if they are trying to gain insight from current or potential customers is an idea stemming from Cheskin- he believed that most of us don't make a distinction- on an unconscious level- between the package and the product. The product is the package and product combined. For example, in the margarine test- he found that consumers don't really know what they want, but they can pick the "best" one- or the one that they would rather use. You ask a consumer which butter they like- and it's the one that looks more yellow, has the foil, etc. The ideas behind this are that consumers like the color yellow for margarine because that's the normal color- any color beyond this is weird and won't seem like they're eating margarine. As for the foil- it was found that the foil made the product seem more expensive and better quality, and so hands down each time a consumer was presented with margarine with and without foil- they would choose the one with foil. So an important learning for marketers is to research what aspects of the product are crucial to the consumer (aspects that they need and view as "normal" for the product) and then also be creative to think of other things that you can bring to their attention that they would desire as well but never even knew about- this will get them places.

To sum up, Gladwell tells that focus groups often fail to return accurate assessments because they both stretch the limits of the participants’ expertise and remove the product assessment decision from the normal context in which it would be made. In two instances that Gladwell cites, evaluations of musician Kenna’s potential for Top 40 radio success and the infamous blind taste tests between Coke and Pepsi, focus groups and experts reached very different conclusions in different settings. He says that if you want to be effective, market research must match as closely as possible the environment in which the consumption of a product, whether it is rock music or soda, will actually occur.