Diversity and similarity: when marketing turns creative

USI - Faculty of Communication Sciencesfoc

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Faculty of Communication Sciences - USIInstitute for Marketing and Corporate Communication (IMCA)

The Institute for Marketing and Corporate Communication runs research

and teaching activities on issues of communication related to economic

organisation. Its disciplinary areas range from marketing to corporate

communication, from organisational communication to knowledge

management. Besides providing teaching in its special fields, the

Institute coordinates two Master’s degree programmes, in Corporate

Communication and in Marketing, and jointly coordinates the Executive

Master of Science in Communications Management (MScom). It is also

responsible for USI’s participation in the International Master in

Management, Law and Humanities of Sport, a FIFA initiative. The

Institute is headed by Professor Ivan Snehota.

web:www.imca.com.usi.ch

podcast:

www.ideatorio.usi.ch

“Show a child under the age of six – Michael Gibbert, professor of Marketing USI, explains – the picture of a woman watering her plants with a coffee pot; ask this child what object the woman is holding in her hands: the immediate answer will probably be ‘a watering can’. Ask an adult, and you would get quite a different answer: they would say that the woman is simply using a coffee pot for the wrong purpose”. We struggle to get rid of a mental image that we have built around an object and its use and purpose; and this considerably impoverishes our creativity in our search for new functions for existing products. Behind all this there hides a broader problem: how do we classify products? Based on which characteristics? Deciding in which depart-ment a simple pair of trainers should be displayed is a no-brainer: it is much harder, on the other hand, to decide where a new model of jogging shoes with an mp3 reader incorporated should go: “Where do we put it? In the sports department – Gibbert wonders – or in the electronics department, between the computers and the Hi-Fi? It is a matter of understanding in what way we detect the similarity behind the apparent dissimilarity of given prod-ucts”. This is what Professor Gibbert is seeking to explore in one of his latest projects, “When do different category formats influence mass customization decisions?”, a two-year project funded by the Swiss National Science Founda-tion (SNSF), and carried out in collaboration with the Center for Customer Insight of St Gallen University, directed by Professor Andreas Herrmann.

How do we classify products, especially when these are hybrid, innovative, and modified for apparently unusual purposes? In more general terms, the moment we puzzle out how man categorises reality we can develop marketing strategies that help us place a product correctly and make it a success. Categorisation is the focal issue of a project funded by the SNSF and conducted by the Marketing Institute of Università della Svizzera italiana.

«What is more similar: a sofa and a Starbucks coffee or an energy drink and a Starbucks coffee?

In my research I show new products to potential consumers; I manipulate those products and

observe people’s reaction.»

Prof. Michael Gibbert, IMCA, USI

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What do apples and oranges have in common? Both are fruits, they

may be eaten for dessert at the end of a meal, although, if we look at other

characteristics, apples, for instance, unlike oranges, may also be seen as a

snack, easy to eat at any moment of the day, also while driving. The ‘apples

and oranges’ example is one of many that Professor Gibbert uses in order

explain in simple and intuitive terms the nature of the problem of catego-

rising all sorts of products, from snacks to web services. “Let’s take another

example; tired of spam mail, users have recently begun to use Facebook as a

means of communication across the board, and not only as a social network;

so much so that its email services are so similar to those provided by Google

that Facebook has become a competitor of the well-known search engine.

This conversion has in turn driven Google to add new services, and so to join

the world of social networking and occupy a market niche which had been

foreign to it until very recently”. This is one example (and there are many)

which illustrates how the difficulties of categorisation and consumer choice

contribute to a re-collocation of a product, thus influencing its evolution and,

ultimately, its success.

“In our experimental work – Michael Gibbert continues – we have

also looked into how the public tends to react to a so-called ‘brand extension’.

Starting, among famous trademarks, with Starbucks, in which many recog-

nise for its association of coffee and relaxation, we speculated how a con-

sumer might react when faced with an armchair or an energy drink bearing

the Starbucks logo, both being unusual products for that brand. So, we put

the question to two samples, which of the two products they might choose

and which of the two they expected to succeed”. Contrary to expectations,

the armchair, the most dissimilar to any of the products sold by Starbucks,

turned out to be more appreciated than the energy drink, the more con-

servative extension. When, however, the same sample of consumers were

asked what elements the two products had in common, and which of the

two might prove more popular, most people were unable to come up with

any characteristics linking the armchair and any typical Starbucks products,

while they did detect some continuity between the latter and the energy

drink. “This is an interesting finding – Gibbert comments – because it shows

that we can, intuitively, identify the connection between Starbucks and the

armchair (the notion of ‘relaxation’ is the link, ndr), but as soon as we try to

think it over, the product with a very dissimilar brand extension strikes us as

a loser”. The reason for it can be found in the way we categorise a product,

especially a new product, resulting from a brand extension or from combin-

ing products that are taxonomically different, in other words belonging to dif-

ferent categories.

In this regard, it is worth getting to the bottom of the two types of

classification we use. Professor Gibbert proposes this further illustration:

“Let’s ask whether there exist more similarities between a dog and a bone,

or between a dog and a cat; those who answer that a dog and a cat are more

similar tend to classify according to taxonomic schemes – indeed cats and

dogs belong to the ‘domestic animals’ category – whereas those who an-

swer that there are more similarities between a dog and a bone will tend to

apply a thematic classification scheme”. “Oddly enough – Michael Gibbert

continues – the sample surveyed was split down the middle: according to

50% of them there are more similarities between a cat and a dog, while the

other 50% tends to choose the dog and bone pair. This tells us a lot about

the way people steer their choices while also providing some guidance for

marketing specialists: people who select the dog and bone pair are likely to

appreciate an even more curious brand extension, say an armchair bearing

the Starbucks trademark, where the link is thematic”. This kind of analysis

also gives us an insight into why some marketing strategies work better than

others: “In its previous incarnation, the iPhone was the iPod touch – Profes-

sor Gibbert comments – an object which on the outside looked remarkably

like the iPhone. So, from a taxonomic point of view they may be classified in

the same category, with the one difference that the iPod cannot be used to

make phone calls. And that’s the extraordinary thing: Apple has managed to

sell a product identical to the iPhone, but for the fact that it does not have a

telephone function. Should I ask my students, is there such a thing as a tel-

ephone that cannot make phone calls, they would answer that no such thing

exists … and yet this example shows how, by removing or adding features,

one can re-categorise, re-collocate a product and, lo and behold, a totally

new market springs to life”. The clever move was to have placed the iPhone

and iPod touch in separate categories, one under smartphones and the other

under mp3 readers.“A stroke of genius in marketing – concludes Gibbert –

whereby, if you are familiar with the dynamics of categorisations, you will

be able to sell to the same customer two iPhones, one that functions as a

telephone and the other with no such function”.

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Thematic or taxonomic classifications: a consumer-oriented world

Referente:

«I think that marketing is one of the most creative disciplines in business economics.»

Prof

. Mic

hael

Gib

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Michael GibbertFull professorFaculty of Communication SciencesUniversità della Svizzera italiana

phone: +41 (0)58 666 4727 e-mail: michael.gibbert@usi.ch

Graphic design, pictures and text by fabio.meliciani@usi.chEnglish version by Prof. Simona Cain Polli

Focus on research can be downloaded from: www.ideatorio.usi.ch