Vain, deluded, indecisive, biased: this is the ‘average’ consumer
In this cross posting from The Conversation Paul Harrison of Deakin University looks at the problems posed by trying to define what the average consumer is.
Who is the “typical” or “average” consumer? Is there such a thing? What do they look like? How do they make decisions? Am I an average (or perhaps a below average) consumer?
It’s something that comes up a lot in discussions around consumer protection, consumer advocacy, and regulation. Judges in consumer cases, for example, often ask whether the average person would understand their obligations in relation to a particular contract to which they have agreed. Similarly, cases related to the advertising of over-the-counter medicines, often rely on a judgment as to whether a typical consumer would understand the intentions of a particular advertisement.
And when you take into consideration American comedian George Carlin’s famous, and correct, assessment of the situation, “Think of how stupid the average person is, and realise half of them are stupider than that,” you do start to worry a little.
You are a unique individual. Just like everybody else.
A true statistician never uses the average in a bimodal population (e.g. gender). Nice try though.
Good subject to bring up. Problem is that if we, as marketers, are explicit about exactly what we want to gain from understanding behavioural patterns and biases then we run into accusations of manipulation and worse. This sort of stuff is really akin to actuarial analysis which cannot afford to delude itself and cannot really reveal itself to the public.
We are sort of torn between presenting an acceptable image of the ‘average’ consumer to the public and the pragmatic realities of finding commonalities that we can exploit.