Thursday 29 December 2011

Familiarity Really Does Breed Contempt


Based on an article -  http://www.spring.org.uk/2008/05/why-familiarity-really-does-breed.php

People's intuition is that learning more about a new acquaintance will lead to greater liking. In fact, on average, we like other people less the more we know about them.

Given how irritating other people sometimes are, it's surprising how many of us are eternal optimists about forming new relationships. Indeed people seem primed to like others: the 'mere exposure effect' is a robust social psychological finding demonstrating that just being exposed to someone causes us to like them more.
A good example of the 'mere exposure' effect is a study by Moreland and Beach (1992) who introduced four fake students to a large college course. Each of the fake students - chosen to be of similar appearance - attended the course to varying degrees, some going to many classes, others to few; but none interacted with the other students.

At the end of the course the one student most people preferred, despite never having talked to her, was the one who had attended the most classes.

If the mere exposure effect holds for developing social relationships then, as we come to know more about others, we should come to like them more. It seems familiarity should breed liking. A recent study by Michael I. Norton from the Harvard Business School and colleagues certainly suggests that this is most people's intuitive understanding (Norton, Frost & Ariely, 2007).

Norton and colleagues first surveyed members of an online dating site, asking them whether they generally preferred someone they knew little about, or who they knew more about. 81% said they would prefer the person they knew more about. In a second survey of undergraduate students fully 88% said they would prefer someone they knew more about.

Monday 12 December 2011

More than one Target Market = More than one Brand Promise. Agree?

Most views/definitions of branding take the position that it is the customer who actually determines what the brand means (to them).  Organisations try to influence them.  Hopefully by understanding what their target market wants from a brand.

Thus I have always supposed that any Brand is relative to a particular target market.  Many brands have more than one target market.  This does not become a problem when the TM's are grouped fairly close together of is the brand promise is fairly generic - but what about when two (or more) diverse Target Markets are involved?  It is going to be difficult to offer exactly the same promise/message to them.

So do you have more than one Brand message? What do you think?