VOC to EOC: Stop missing growth opportunities.

Companies that rely on the voice of the consumer to make business decisions are missing real growth opportunities.

Marketing investments are made with incomplete information about consumer decisions. All consumer knowledge is based on interviews, whether you talk to people in ethnographies or surveys. These methods do not paint a complete picture of consumer decisions as they collect a fraction everyday behavior. Academic research has shown 95% of all behavior and thoughts are unconscious. Even if you believe that number should be much lower, it’s still a large number!

How can brands gain a competitive advantage and successfully grow with a limited understanding of their consumer? Start becoming the eyes of consumers over time, rather than the voice of consumers at one point in time.

Through extended observation of product usage events via cameras and on-going dialogue about motivations and rationalizations for behavior, companies can understand the systems and processes consumers have developed to manage their everyday lives. By collecting thousands of observations of actual consumer behavior and language over an extended period of time, the illusive gap between perception and reality is revealed.

When you think about your own everyday routines, how many decisions are on autopilot? How many are influenced by your surrounding environment at the time you make decisions? These are the behaviors that are commonly forgotten during voice of consumer approaches. These habitual behaviors are so powerful companies need to tap into them to improve brand relevance and ultimately, sales.