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.