What should marketers do when the consumer doesn’t do the ‘right thing’?
But, ultimately, we are commercial creatures. We will be guided almost immediately by consumer choice and if consumers started to buy more environmentally sustainable, more healthy products that supported change in the food system – trust me, supermarkets would be the first people putting them on the shelves in greater numbers.”He went on to make the point that if you want to revolutionise the way consumers eat, you will have to persuade them to pay more. And of course the same goes for getting to net zero.Can brands really encourage people to make ‘good choices’? The Drum’s editor-in-chief Gordon Young, is of the belief that consumers have more power than we credit them.
This should not be a revelation but, sadly, to some, it is. The most powerful force in the marketing ecosystem remains the consumer. It is something that those mandating heat pumps and insisting we should move to electric cars immediately are finding out the hard way. Sales of electric cars in advanced economies continue to struggle. They are practical as local runabouts and for those who have access to off-street parking and a charging point. But they are not a practical option for most people.
If the US or UK were carpeted with fast chargers today, they would blow the grid. Potential buyers have worked this out.
Meanwhile, the UK government has set a target for 600,000 heat pumps to be installed every year by 2028. However, in 2022 only 55,000 were sold. The National Audit Office said the government targets are optimistic. The problem - heat pumps appear to be a more expensive and less efficient option for most households. Promotion alone cannot help if the product itself does not pass muster.
There is no shortage of clumsy efforts from marketers trying to implement social good. These are endlessly tiresome to consumers. Plus, time and time again, it’s been proven that consumers have to vote with their wallets before thinking about the bigger picture.
It is a theme James Bailey, executive director of Waitrose, touched on at the Oxford Literary Festival this weekend. He claimed that the retailer only sells unhealthy food because that is what consumers buy. “The most important people in this debate are not people like me; they are not necessarily politicians, although those politicians have an important part to play. The most important people are the customers, the consumers,” he was reported as saying via The Telegraph.
“I know there is a simple and comfortable caricature of supermarkets as mind-controlling Dr Evils who control everything you do, and point you down different parts of the store and try to get you to buy lots of chocolate. And that is true, we do sell all those products, and a lot of them are unhealthy.
“But, ultimately, we are commercial creatures. We will be guided almost immediately by consumer choice and if consumers started to buy more environmentally sustainable, more healthy products that supported change in the food system – trust me, supermarkets would be the first people putting them on the shelves in greater numbers.”
He was challenged on whether supermarkets had a responsibility to help educate customers on how food is produced. He responded: “Customers are not shopping in a library. One of my favorite facts about supermarket shopping is that, on average, from driving into the car park to leaving at the other end, someone looks at seven words on the entire journey.
"So if you think supermarkets can educate and inform about the pros and cons of different sorts of food systems – if we’ve got seven words per visit, we’ve got a lot of work to do.”
Here, 'Juncker Curse' springs to mind. Coined by Jean-Claude Juncker, former President of the European Commission, it highlighted the dilemma faced by politicians: "We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it."
But of course, the marketing industry is well placed to help.
It needs to remind policymakers that they have to get back to first principles. To paraphrase another former President, this time JFK, “ask not what my consumer can do for me, but what I can do for my consumer.”
As well as the big picture stuff, like dealing with climate change, that might include paying attention to how policies can help them in the here and now.. And, of course, in order to build trust they have to stop pressing products on consumers that are not fit for purpose.