4 ms·

It is 2018 and companies still don’t know why most customers buy specific stuff. One interpretation, which is Qualtrics’/SAP’s persuasively written here, is th

It is 2018 and companies still don’t know why most customers buy specific stuff. One interpretation, which is Qualtrics’/SAP’s persuasively written here, is that you need extremely fine grained transaction data matched to surveys. But people have been collecting transactional information correlated to experiences for a while now. Did it occur to anyone that the right interpretation of the data is that people don’t need most of the shit they buy? And I don’t even mean some kind of microeconomic / utilitarian / mathy / psychological thing. Just that we are in boom times, and people are stupid and buy things in boom times.

sarcasmic 8y ago
> It is 2018 and companies still don't know why most customers buy specific stuff. This is not altogether surprising: between perfectly boring options like "it was on sale", "I tried it [somewhere else] and liked it", and "my parents always used to buy it", there's not a lot of room for novel paths of discovery. But if you're a company who makes stuff, the differences may influence spending on one type of advertising vs. coupons or rebates. The process is messy and not rigorous: future quarters' sales will be used to point to some strategy working, despite dozens of variables they can't control. The whole system toes a fine line between trying something, and looking like you're trying something, while building up an elaborate apparatus to cover your ass. Tooling like this generates data, and works to justify the effort being spent. This extrapolates well to all complex bureaucracies. In the face of mounting competition, efforts like this are to gain an edge over competitors who may also do the same.
- darkerside 8y ago
  Anecdotally, it seems like the strongest driver for buying things is personal experience outside of marketing. Something happens to you at work, at school, or in a relationship, that makes you think "I'm not good enough", and you try to solve it by buying something. But BI isn't going to be able to divine that... at least not without some kind of always-on listening device.
davidivadavid 8y ago
People don't need most of the shit they buy in general. We don't need literature, music, cinema, fine tasting food, or any of that stuff. Not sure what that's supposed to mean, though. Certainly humans have crossed the boundary where they can care about things that go beyond their needs and satisfy other desires.
- heisenbit 8y ago
  I suspect this is equally true of companies. Looking back not all what they bought was really needed.
- shanghaiaway 8y ago
  I'd argue that we do need all of those things. Their persistence throughout human history suggests so.
anongraddebt 8y ago
Thompson's piece is relatively sub-par compared to the typical high-quality pieces he puts out. The first part is solid, and he's one of the few people around that can provide a succinct, well-framed story around both SAP and Qualtrics. However, his evaluation of the acquisition is weak. As you noted, there is a problem with the potential uselessness in interpreting customer intent from data in the current environment. An even bigger issue is the justification of purchasing a survey-based set of assets (Qualtrics) to increase SAP's capabilities in providing worthwhile interpretation of customer intent. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but the Qualtrics set of product lines - at the end of the day - are still just surveys. You can dress surveys up with toolkits, dashboards, etc. but they're still surveys. News of the acquisition reminded me of a GSB talk Bezos gave back in 2005 (I believe), which you can find on YouTube. He showed a room full of MBA students how Amazon had been using A/B testing of the site to drive interpretation of customer intent (among other things). Fast forward ~15 years and it seems like you'd be hard pressed to make a case for the lasting value of driving insights about brand/intent/loyalty/employee experience/etc. through the use of surveys. Lasting, actionable insights with value are found in the 'wild' now, where specific access to real-time customer behavior is had. SAP could do a major reconfiguration of the human and technology assets at Qualtrics in a way that moves beyond the glorified survey method, but simply tacking on Qualtrics as-is doesn't seem forward-thinking in the least (not that SAP won't reconfigure Qualtrics in some way(s)). ----------- Someone might counter, "The synergy here is an offering that provides the ability to better triangulate intent/etc. by using tracking data + surveys + whatever else." My claim is that even under a triangulation strategy surveys are not forward-thinking.
- njarboe 8y ago
  People at SAP might know that these surveys are not that useful for understanding customers, but instead see using the acquisition to get a beach head into companies that use Qualtrics software, but not SAP's.
  - simonebrunozzi 8y ago
    Not a credible hypothesis - if that were the main reason, the price tag would just be way too high.

sarcasmic 8y ago

> It is 2018 and companies still don't know why most customers buy specific stuff. This is not altogether surprising: between perfectly boring options like "it was on sale", "I tried it [somewhere else] and liked it", and "my parents always used to buy it", there's not a lot of room for novel paths of discovery. But if you're a company who makes stuff, the differences may influence spending on one type of advertising vs. coupons or rebates. The process is messy and not rigorous: future quarters' sales will be used to point to some strategy working, despite dozens of variables they can't control. The whole system toes a fine line between trying something, and looking like you're trying something, while building up an elaborate apparatus to cover your ass. Tooling like this generates data, and works to justify the effort being spent. This extrapolates well to all complex bureaucracies. In the face of mounting competition, efforts like this are to gain an edge over competitors who may also do the same.

darkerside 8y ago
Anecdotally, it seems like the strongest driver for buying things is personal experience outside of marketing. Something happens to you at work, at school, or in a relationship, that makes you think "I'm not good enough", and you try to solve it by buying something. But BI isn't going to be able to divine that... at least not without some kind of always-on listening device.

davidivadavid 8y ago

People don't need most of the shit they buy in general. We don't need literature, music, cinema, fine tasting food, or any of that stuff. Not sure what that's supposed to mean, though. Certainly humans have crossed the boundary where they can care about things that go beyond their needs and satisfy other desires.

heisenbit 8y ago
I suspect this is equally true of companies. Looking back not all what they bought was really needed.
shanghaiaway 8y ago
I'd argue that we do need all of those things. Their persistence throughout human history suggests so.

anongraddebt 8y ago

Thompson's piece is relatively sub-par compared to the typical high-quality pieces he puts out. The first part is solid, and he's one of the few people around that can provide a succinct, well-framed story around both SAP and Qualtrics. However, his evaluation of the acquisition is weak. As you noted, there is a problem with the potential uselessness in interpreting customer intent from data in the current environment. An even bigger issue is the justification of purchasing a survey-based set of assets (Qualtrics) to increase SAP's capabilities in providing worthwhile interpretation of customer intent. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but the Qualtrics set of product lines - at the end of the day - are still just surveys. You can dress surveys up with toolkits, dashboards, etc. but they're still surveys. News of the acquisition reminded me of a GSB talk Bezos gave back in 2005 (I believe), which you can find on YouTube. He showed a room full of MBA students how Amazon had been using A/B testing of the site to drive interpretation of customer intent (among other things). Fast forward ~15 years and it seems like you'd be hard pressed to make a case for the lasting value of driving insights about brand/intent/loyalty/employee experience/etc. through the use of surveys. Lasting, actionable insights with value are found in the 'wild' now, where specific access to real-time customer behavior is had. SAP could do a major reconfiguration of the human and technology assets at Qualtrics in a way that moves beyond the glorified survey method, but simply tacking on Qualtrics as-is doesn't seem forward-thinking in the least (not that SAP won't reconfigure Qualtrics in some way(s)). ----------- Someone might counter, "The synergy here is an offering that provides the ability to better triangulate intent/etc. by using tracking data + surveys + whatever else." My claim is that even under a triangulation strategy surveys are not forward-thinking.

njarboe 8y ago
People at SAP might know that these surveys are not that useful for understanding customers, but instead see using the acquisition to get a beach head into companies that use Qualtrics software, but not SAP's.
- simonebrunozzi 8y ago
  Not a credible hypothesis - if that were the main reason, the price tag would just be way too high.