Can marketing make better researchers?

I'm glad to share with you a marketing research project I've been working on with Dr. Deborah Cowles of the VCU Marketing Department. The project evolved from a research paper I wrote for a Buyer Behavior class I took with Dr. Cowles. The topic of my paper was self-efficacy. Self-efficacy, as defined by Albert Bandura, is

the certainty one possesses that he can successfully execute a behavior that will result in a desired outcome.

Unlike self-confidence which is a more general feeling of mastery, self-efficacy is task-specific. Moreover, the more self-efficacy one possesses, the more likely a person is to persist in the task and be more successful at it. Therefore, high self-efficacy is linked to improved performance.

Many academics and practitioners are interested in self-efficacy. Marketers are interested in it as a means of encouraging people to use self-service options. Librarians and teachers have studied self-efficacy as a factor in achieving improved learning outcomes.

Why did I choose to write about this topic? And what does it have to do with libraries? There's been a lot of talk in library circles about the need to promote electronic resources (i.e. databases). I thought, perhaps, that boosting students' self-efficacy as it relates to electronic library resources would encourage them to utilize them more often and more effectively. According to Bandura, there are 4 main ways of fostering self-efficacy: (In order of effectiveness) past performance, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion, and physiological states. The problem is that it's difficult to give students the benefit of past performance because, at least at my library, it's impossible to reach every student through library instruction. However, it's possible to use promotional methods to model behavior (vicarious experience) and persuade students that they are up to the challenge of using e-resources (verbal persuasion). Our study will test our hypothesis that promotional treatments can be used to beef up students' library e-resource self-efficacy, which in turn will encourage them to use those resources more frequently and effectively.

Our initial study, in a nutshell, found that library e-resource self-efficacy is positively related to students' intention to use those resources, their attitude toward them, and the amount of time they spend using them. Also, we found that instructors' encouragement and expectations played a significant role in shaping students' self-efficacy.

So far, this research has been well-received. Our first report of the findings won the O.C. Ferrell Marketing Award/best paper on the track for the 2007 Association of Collegiate Marketing Educators Conference. To top it off, we received a grant from the VCU School of Business to continue work this summer on testing our promotional treatments that could foster self-efficacy among students. I'm grateful to Dr. Cowles for introducing me to marketing research design and analysis. It's been quite a learning experience!

I hope this project demonstrates that marketing can be used to achieve positive ends, like more sophisticated researchers. Granted, there is some self-interest at work here (I'd like for students to use our stuff), but the ultimate aim is to equip students to participate in the research taking place on campus in an informed way. Ultimately, by being knowledgeable about the possibilities available to them through online databases, students will become savvy about how the find, use, and evaluate information - a skill that will help them further their goals throughout life.

What's in a question? (Or, how to get better answers).

"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers." - Pablo Picasso

I sometimes find myself in a situation where I want to know more about X, but can't think of the right questions to ask to get me to the kind of answer I want. For example, when trying to learn about about patrons' needs, what questions do I ask and how do I ask them to get an honest answer that gets beneath the surface? I wish it were as easy a saying, "Hey, Patron! What do you need?" but alas, it's not. Some of the best marketing breakthroughs come from questioning assumptions and the way things have always been, which is why good questioning skills are also good marketing skills. What are the best questions to ask to get to the best answers?

In my quest for questions, I came across a Web site, ChangingMinds.org which has a page on the art of questioning. It lists 19 types of questions (Did you know there are types other than open and closed?!). My favorite for marketing purposes, particularly when looking for new insights and innovations, is Socratic questioning. Socratic questions prompt people to reevaluate assumptions with inquiries like, "How could you look at this differently?", "Why is __ important?" and "What are you assuming?"

Personally, there are a few questions I'm partial to for generating ideas:

• Why?
• Why not?
• What else is like this?
• What's the opposite of this?
• What's the point?

Questioning truly is an art that can yield amazing insights. Please share your favorite questions!

The good, the bad, and the ugly of customer service

Today: The bad UGLY!

In the past couple of weeks I have experienced the absolute best customer service I've ever received and the absolute most horrible. Each example teaches us something value about how to treat and not treat our patrons. I'm starting this discussion today with the bad so that I can end on a positive note. Plus, it'll be cathartic because I'm still in shock about how poorly I was treated by the company in question! Without further ado, here's the story from my viewpoint:

Last week, I traveled to San Diego for a conference without incident, that is, until the return trip. The first leg of the trip, a red-eye Delta flight to Atlanta went off without a hitch. We were not so lucky on the second leg. We boarded the flight from Atlanta to Richmond promptly and on time Sunday morning. After being seated, the pilot informed us that the maintenance crew was investigating a mechanical problem and he would update us shortly. After about 15 minutes, the pilot declared that there was a fuel leak that was outside of established tolerances and that we'd have to de-board. He assured us that Delta would try to find us another plane and that we could even retain our same seat assignments. However, no sooner did we all step off the plane then we heard that our flight had been canceled and that we were to proceed to the nearest service desk for assistance. This is where all the fun began. We formed a seemingly-endless line at the Delta service counter. Behind that counter was not a friendly service staff member, but a telephone. My understanding is that we were to use the phone to call for help, though some passengers in line used their cell phones to do so only to be greeted with a recording that stated their call would be answered in about 8 hours. My perception is that the line never actually moved forward, but that people simply left the line to find an alternative means of transportation, which gave the illusion of progress. In addition, there were no available one-way rental cars and we heard through the grapevine that the next available flight would be Tuesday. We were fortunate in that we were able to get a ride to Richmond with two generous strangers ahead of us in line who happened to be able to obtain a one-way car rental through their special membership. Were this not the case, I would have been stranded in Atlanta with no help from Delta whatsoever. The icing on this cake of mishaps was that my fiancé spent 3 hours on the phone with Delta and Continental (a Delta partner, apparently) trying to obtain a refund, only to be bounced back and forth between the two companies, each denying responsibility. (My ticket, by the way, stated, "Delta flight.")

To be fair, we were not the only passengers with travel trouble last weekend, and we were lucky, relatively speaking. There were some passengers in line who had been trying to get home since the previous Friday! I'm sure Delta had trouble locating a plane with all of its tie-ups in the Northeast. However, these circumstances do not excuse the terrible lapses in customer service that resulted after the flight was canceled.

In order to understand what went wrong here from a marketing perspective, it's useful to analyze this experience using a customer service model referred to as RATER. RATER stands for:

• Reliability – Doing it right each and every time
• Assurance – Making the customer believe you can do it right each and every time
• Tangibles – What the physical evidence suggests about the quality of your service
• Empathy – Caring about customers
• Responsiveness – Taking the initiative to help customers and anticipate needs

(Note: If these sound familiar, the LibQual survey attempts to measure service quality in each of these areas).

In reviewing each piece of the model, it's clear to me that Delta failed in each and every aspect. Individual customer will weight the importance of these components differently, but for me, I was most shocked by Delta's lack of empathy. Most of us were exhausted, under time pressures, and without any means or assistance to get to our destinations and no one cared! In my next post, I will go into more detail about customer service principles as they apply to this case and how Delta got it wrong. I'll also offer suggestions for how the company could have done a better job, which I hope will provide a useful example for evaluating our own services. I'll conclude with my experiences with a company that got it 100% right and the inspirations I took away from the experience.

A marketing metrics primer

Since I'll continue to address marketing metrics here on LM, it's important to have an understanding of when and how to use metrics, generally speaking. To that end, there is a concise summary of the characteristics of helpful metrics in the MarketingProfs article, Five Fundamentals for Useful Marketing Metrics (free registration required). The author argues that metrics should focus on these 5 areas:

1. Essential metrics criteria
2. Customer-acquisition metrics
3. Product "wow" metrics
4. Customer-retention metrics
5. Strategic accountability

It's important (and a bit of a relief!) to acknowledge that you can't and shouldn't measure everything. We need to be selective about what we measure in the context of our goals and go from there. This article helps focus metrics on only the most significant aspects of our work. We should keep this in mind as we continue discussing marketing metrics. Happy measuring!

More on metrics

Many thanks to Judith Siess of Information Bridges International for sharing with me a previous issue of her One-Person Library newsletter on the subject of metrics. The issue called, Statistics and Library Advocacy is a useful one as it addresses not only those statistics we should collect for assessment purposes, but also those numbers we should collect for marketing purposes. Judith advises,

"Statistics can serve a valuable purpose—proving your worth to your parent organization. When presenting your case to management, you must use techniques and terms that they understand: cost-benefit analysis, unit-cost analysis, value added, and the like. Use spreadsheets to illustrate your points. By using statistics and relatively simple calculations you can show that the value of what you do easily meets or exceeds the amount your institution spends on the library (including salary and benefits, the collection, subscriptions, online services, floor space, air conditioning, water/sewer, and telephone). But you must be specific and have the data to back up your case."

Also, Judith suggests (and I agree), that you should back up stats with stories whenever you can. Doing so makes the numbers more meaningful. Ultimately, it's necessary to figure out why you're collecting statistics before you start considering how to go about it. Otherwise, you could get buried in numbers that serve no purpose and don't help your case, whatever it may be.

Judith kindly allowed me to post her articles in full (PDF), so enjoy!

A matter of metrics

Earlier this week, a colleague at a school library contacted me asking about marketing metrics - what's out there, how to select them, etc. It occurred to me that this might be a common question among librarians, so I'm throwing out this offer:

E-mail me or add a comment to this post about your marketing assessment challenges and questions. I'll do some digging into your inquiries and see what relevant marketing metrics could be of use to you and how you can employ them.

I'm just getting my feet wet in this area, but I'm very interested about learning more and have some experience, both practical and academic, that I can offer. Hopefully, it'll be useful for you too! If I don't hear from anyone within a week or two, I'll go ahead and start a series of posts featuring different marketing metrics.

Customers and customer service

Sybil of the Quality Service Marketin blog writes about her take on a Maritz white paper called "Delight or Defection: The Pivotal Role of People Inside the Customer Experience" (PDF). In it, Maritz argues that companies need a better way of understanding "people issues" to properly motivate people on the front lines, which in turn increases customer retention and differentiates the service. As the executive summary states,

"By putting "people problems" at the strategic forefront, companies can turn customer experience initiatives from frustrating flops into manageable and scalable programs – programs that, if executed correctly, create a major competitive advantage in today’s less differentiated reality."

Sybil will offer more analysis of this approach in a later post, but give the piece a read in the meantime.

To round out your weekend reading, stop by the MarketingProfs Book Club Group Review. (You can learn more about Group Reviews here and the Book Club here). The book of choice this time around is Citizen Marketers. You can join in on the conversation by signing up, or you can just browse through the discussions on social media and related topics. Either way, it's pretty interesting. I have to admit, I didn't get around to reading the book in time to participate in the Book Club, but I do want to give it a try at least once. The next book will announced mid-February. MarketingProfs is being secretive about the title for now, but promise that it will be about branding and innovation (two of my favorite topics!).