Thompson Morrison

During the 90’s I was running around Asia listening to business executives about their needs for IT systems and support services. There were two main methodologies that I used, focus groups and face-to-face interviews. In the first, I sat behind one-way mirrors and observed executives, in the other I would engage them in a one-on-one conversation. Both were valuable, but the latter approach would always yield far greater insight.

The reason was simple. By being able to engage an executive in a conversational experience allowed me to adjust the questions based on their needs and their aspirations. As such, I could delve into both to understand what the pains were behind their needs and what the passions were behind their aspirations.

This is strategic insight.

It is very hard, if not impossible, to gain this strategic insight in a group setting because it is hard to have the laser-like focus you need and people feel far more guarded when they...

April 27, 2012 at 2:42 PM Leave a comment

Over the past two years I have been working to build a community in East Portland. This area is now called Rosewood. When we started two years ago, it was a place of strangers, people living together in a place forgotten and ignored.

In the software world, we know the power of a connected...

Satisfied customers are loyal.

Says who? Not hoteliers. According to a new study, satisfaction across the hospitality industry is rising, but sales aren’t. That’s because customer loyalty is sliding.

How can satisfaction be up and loyalty down? Because the pickings are too good. Hotels have been promoting low-price deals. Instead of choosing their favorite hotel, consumers know they can always search for something cheaper. So yes, they’re satisfied. At those prices, who can complain? The study’s author calls this “Price-induced satisfaction.”

Hoteliers have...

I read a fine post on Only Dead Fish the other day. It dealt with the question of how we find community in our fragmented world. Another question occurred to me: what does the fundamental human desire for community have to do with marketing?

Belonging is in our DNA. The instinct to congeal into tribes and villages is powerful. But it’s not unconquerable: post-war American society did a great job quashing it. For generations we were told that happiness equals stuff rather than happiness equals belonging. We moved to suburbs where we could set ourselves apart, with lots of room for our possessions. It didn’t really work out.

Now belonging is back. Open source aligns programmers and users in a shared purpose. The Internet and social media allow disparate people to form communities despite boundaries that would have kept them in different universes a couple of decades ago. People...