Lawrence Williams

Companies are increasingly focused on building meaningful relationships with their customers, and often they do so by emphasizing their purpose. But is purpose what customers want? In this presentation, we will walk through research suggesting that consumers are less willing to pay for meaning than we might expect, but when they do find meaning in the marketplace, it is tied to connection. Together, we'll explore implications of these patterns for the better business movement.

We tend to ascribe magical powers to conscious thoughts (and by extension self reports). This is driven by our natural affinity for storytelling. Businesses have been at the forefront of using new methods to learn about customer preferences, not the least of which is big data analytics, which often entails the study of behaviors (not thoughts). Nevertheless in various phases of business research we rely on customers’ self reports to make consequential decisions (where to invest, who to reward). We sometimes even use these self reports as KPIs. We think that thoughts drive behavior, but it is important to recognize the disconnect between what people think and what they do. Thankfully, emerging research and practice provides us with tools to understand what customers want without relying on their unreliable reporting of their thoughts.