Archive for the ‘Philosophic’ Category

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Schröders cat: true, false ánd somewhere in between

Wednesday, December 24th, 2008

In an early December blog I introduced the concept of the human mind being in several states at the same time. Often we implicitly assume that our mind should be in one state only, for instance either positive or negative about something. In reality it is quite clear that human mind is capable of containing many different and even opposing views at the same time. However our conscious mind really likes to pick out one of those and declare that one the ‘actual’  one, because it hates ambiguity. The idea of holding opposite ideas or being in several states at the same time has its famous counterpart in physics: Schröders cat.

Schröder as opposed to Boole, was very interested in duality: concepts needn’t be either or, could very easily be and and. This is very well expressed in his famous cat dilemma. Unfortunately I was’t able to find reference to Schröders cat dilemma on the internet. But I can describe it briefly: you are looking at a device with a cat in it. If you open the device, you could kill the cat by opening it. But it is also possible that the opening of the de device did not kill the cat, that it was already dead. You don’t know after opening: therefore the cat is in two states at the same time: dead and living. You think this is bullshit? Won’t blame you, if you think so, but actual this dilemma is a ‘macro’ description of a very normal phenomenon in quantum mechanics.

This is a parallel for research. The research itself interferes with reality. It is not possible to separate research and action. The outcome of the research is not revealing an ‘objective’ truth that is out there to be discovered (such as looking for a pebble in the ground). The outcome is not just there, it is formed by research. This concept is common knowledge in physics, but it is often ignored in social research. Look at the ‘Obama’ story. Asking questions about ‘whom will you vote for’ presuppose that you as a respondent sort of know that: you just have to look within your own mind to find the ‘Obama’ or the ‘MacCain’ pebble. As if it is a simple notion. In fact the respondents do not really know what they will be voting for when the ‘real decision’  has to be made. You could argue that all of the voters are in several states, and that the chances of the one state over the other can be bigger in one person than in the other. On top of that, the research results are absolutely influencing the endstate: if I can trust that Obama wins, the chances might increase for his opponent or the other way round. Research is part of the reality, can’t be separated from it. This is where quantum mechanics meet politics.

In quantum mechanics the concept of ’several states’ is quite normal, the system is forced to chose one state as a consequence of the research (the system being watched). No ‘true or false’  in quantum mechanics: true, false ánd something in between. Marketing directors have a big problem with this concept in their consumers. It is more comfortable and easy to understand opinions as ‘fixed state’ and ’simple’ items. So often the research can be viewed as opening the cats door, killing the cat as a consequence.

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Entanglement revisited

Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008

A few posts ago was about entanglement. I know that introducing quantum mechanics into marketing and research could be percieved as to much playing out the ‘mysterie card’. Entanglement in society can often be explained in a simple way.

Problems arise as external problems: from outside the system. External problems being for instance: consumer don’t buy the brand as much as they should (external: others not buying as they should). Or: competitors come up with an extremely competative offer (that’s why they are called competitors). Or: consumers are not as much interested anymore in whatever we would like them to be intersted in. All external problems. And the consequence is that we ask for external research: find out how and why these external factors show up and how they should be adressed. The underlying attitude is that we (the employees responsible for sales and for marketing and for research) take no real part in the problem and in the solution. Here the entanglement is obviously missed: brand and consumers are seen as seperate systems.

Reality is different. I think you could assume that with any given problem that is disguised as an external problem, part of the cause is within the company. If you hear a shop owner say ‘consumers are interested only in low prices’, this is not a fact. It is an assumption that is fueled by frustration: I don’t succeed in asking the prices I would like to. The problem is always occuring in the interface between company and world outside. Looking outside only, gives you only part of the solution. Idealy research should look both inside and outside. We should therefor look for entanglement between brand and consumer in stead of looking at consumer only. The foresaid shopowner should look inside as well as outside. We as marketing researchers are no good if we focus on the consumer only.

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Sign’ of the times

Friday, December 12th, 2008

One of the great things of the keynote speach of De Soto on the ESOMAR con-  gress in Montreal, november this year, was the way he boiled down the whole eco- nomy system as a sign system. The so called ‘dark economy’ – economic activity that is not accounted for in the official statistics is an economy system using another sign system, a sys- tem that doesn’t communi- cate with the official one.

I think that the best part of his speech was where he suggested to align those sign systems as a means to fight poverty: once the ‘poor class’ has an entrance in official economy there chances increase. I think this was a courageous point of view, given the reactions from the audience. Some of them held a more romantic view: please let these people have there own system, let us learn from them.

The wonderful concept of clashing sign system, or partly communicating signsystems is a concept we could build all marketing theories on.

I think the most important aspect that should be taken into account is the differences between intended signs (as in the picture) and unintended signs. The latter is a system that is always on the move in a complex process, not only the meaning of signs is constantly changing on top of that the choice of what aspect we ‘choose’ or what aspects ‘evolve’ as signs. Small changes can have huge impact. I think ’sign-thinking’ is too important to leave it in the ’semiotic’ cluster.

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To know is not to know

Sunday, December 7th, 2008

Another parallel between quantum mechanics and (marketing) research. The Heisenberg principle. This principle states  that the values of certain pairs of conjugate variables (position and momentum, for instance) cannot both be known with arbitrary precision. That is, the more precisely one variable is known, the less precisely the other is known. This is not a statement about the limitations of a researcher’s ability to measure particular quantities of a system, but rather about the nature of the system itself.

If I remember it well there was the problem of research intervention: by looking at the one value, you influenced the other. At the time I was taught this principle in highschool (half seventies af the previous century) my teacher had to spend quite some time to explain this counter intuitivie notion. We discussed the consequences lengthy. Expecially the notion that we had to forget the idea of particles as ‘matter’  with a defined place and velocity. We should – he claimed – see it otherwise: there is a certain chance that the particle is at a defined place, but the particle cannot be ‘forced’ to a precision of 1: so of you measure one of the variables more precise, the other variable will therefore be less precise. There is no way of forcing it to certaincy. In other words: uncertaincy, not certaincy is the base of our universe. I have never been able to look at ‘large matter’ again after this, without thinking: so this is not matter, it is probability. It is the clustering of many probabilities, the sum of chance, clustering of nothing tangible.

I see a clear comparison to research as we know it, and to marketing as we know it. Marketeers like to see consumer behaviour as a sum of individual actions that can be completely understood. Either you like the I-Phone, and you buy it, or you hate it and you don’t. Either you are ‘looking for certaincy’ and you buy a Volvo, or you are looking for kicks and you buy an Alpha Romeo. The big theme in marketing and marketing research is about ‘understanding consumers’, and the the notion of ‘understanding’ is a bit in the way we understand Newtonion phsysics: the path of the bullit is completely predictable, we understand all forces at stake and basically we know everything.

I state that this is a completely wrong understanding of consumer behaviour. I think that consumer behaviour is better understood if you describe it as a fundamental uncertain concept. The more you try to look at it, the more it will escape you. I haven’t got the time to dive into this deep, but I will give some basic thoughts:

  • in order to ‘understand’ consumers and behaviour we introduce concepts for measurement. Mostly questions. These concepts are simplifying reality in an extreme way;
  • the questions act as influencers. So the info you get is a reaction to the question, rather then insight in the behaviour;
  • concepts of understanding in all of the marketing models I know of, force the consumers to be in one state only: either safety seeking or not. Human mind is better explained as being in several states at the same time (and looking for safety and for fun, and optimising the combination for every situation, changing the combination for different contexts)

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Spread the news

Saturday, December 6th, 2008

I have always been interested in the ‘unlikely’ and ‘unaccounted for’ spread of information. One of the most well known example is from the quantum mechanics, the direction of spin. The gist of it is that within two related particles the spin sum cannot change, because of the pauli principle (that forbids two particles that carry spin, so called ‘fermions’, to have the same quantum position). If in one of the particles the spin is changed, then in the other particle the spin is changed accordingly and instantly, without delay. And this also happens if the two particles are separated over long distance. But how do the particles exchange information about their spin instantly when they are miles apart? It would mean that they communicate in a manner faster than the speed of light and since this cannot be possible, the concept of information spreading over long distance cannot be right. Quantum mechanics tell us that the states in which the particles exist are “entangled”, and not be disentangled even when miles and miles apart. This is a pure quantum effect that has no parallel in classical mechanics. I am not an expert in this matter, but I believe the phenomenon is not really understood, and because the consequences are so awkward, I feel it is just being ignored. However it is not a soft notion, it is hard fact.

There is a relation to marketing and marketing research that might be a little more than ‘artificial’. We have this concept of ideas that seem to travel quicker than the speed of light in society as well. If two particles are connected in a way transcending our common ideas about time and space, why wouldn’t it be possible for human beings? Sometimes it seems that changes and trends occur so suddenly and quickly that you would almost suspect that the ‘traditional spreading models’ do not apply. In the Dutch daily NRC, an interesting research is being quoted today. Nicholas Christakis form Harvard Medical School and James Fowler from the University of California (San Diego) published a study in the British Medical Journal (online edition, December 4th 2008). In this study they claim that happiness is contagious, it spreads within social networks. The interesting part of the research is the fact that the spreading model is not completely ‘rational’: if one person claims to be more happy, the chances of a friend living within a mile of happiness increases with 25%. Really interesting is the notion that the odds for indirect friends are also growing with 10% of increased happiness.

This indicates some entanglement in the system, a system that in some way connects the individuals that participate in the system. A bit as if two particles are connected in a more profound way than time and space as we know it can account for. I am sure that this idea can be laughed away, and I can think of quit a few explanations to counter the idea. Yet I do feel there is an interesting field of research here.

I have some personal experience related to this subject (a system change within my own thinking and feeling which had consequenses for behaviour of others that normal reactions could not account for in my opinion). I wonder if there are other examples as well. I am quite aware of the fact that looking for ‘positive’ examples is not the scientific way to prove a point. But actually I don’t want to prove it at all. I would like to get a clear picture of it.

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Interesting dilemma’s part 1

Thursday, December 4th, 2008

If you would ask any client or any research provider to choose between boring known information and exciting new, none of them would have to think about it, there seems to be no dilemma here:

And now for the real school board dilemma, lend from Poppers idea about formulating interested hypothesis. This is the research and marketing dilemma right away. Who dares to have the consequences of uncertain interpretation?


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A matrix of the truth

Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008

And now for something interestingly different: mathematics & truth. Always an interesting combination (even more so since Gödel). I remember as a child (first lessons on high school) I was fascinated by the logic rules we learned, especially the rule a leads to b, where the assumption a did not nead to be true and still could lead to b, being yet a true consequence. I could not buy that at all.

Now, I know it to be very true, and see the workings of it in marketing and research often: an idea or insight or finding that is not true, can lead to wonderful valid consequences. Or, otherwise put, bad ideas can (and often do) lead to good marketing.

Let me explain that at the hand of quantitative research, where reality is boiled down to a two axis system (the preferred language in marketing). I have seen this presented in boardrooms, where the board made decisions on the position of their brand in relation to other brands on the quadrant. Typically this is irrational behaviour if you understand the math of it. The brands are all taken from a multidimensional space, maybe more than a 100 dimensions. Calculations are made to adjust this to a two dimension space. If you understand how much information is lost if you translate the 3-dimensional space (the earth) to a map, you can understand what is lost in this excersice. There is an exact measure to express the amount of information loss: the ‘Eigenwaarde’  (I only know the dutch word for it, sorry). Each axis has its own ‘eigenwaarde’. For this kind of research 0,18 is a rather high value and beyond 0,25 is very difficult to go. This means that 25% of the original information is maintained on that axis. That means that 75% is lost.

This is how decisions are made in the boardroom. But …. as I explained, it can be very usefull to do. There are various reasons for that. I won’t dive in it right now, but I would like to highlight one rule: the rule of focus. No matter the value of the information, if it leads to a focus, and if this focus leads to action, often something goods comes out of it. The action leads to positive energy in the organisation, everybody is happy and this is an important aspect of good marketing.

I really do not mean this in a cynical way. I most certainly don’t want to argue that we don’t need good research anymore (we do), or that we shouldn’t fight bad research (we should). I only want to explain that there is some robustness in the research and marketing process. It is like disentangling a very difficult clotted piece of wool: you just start plucking somewhere as long as you do that with some attention you will get there.

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