"Read Marcus Aurelius .... Clarice"

Unraveling Consumer Behavior with Geographic Information

In the opening chapter of Malcolm Gladwell's book titled "The Tipping Point", Gladwell discusses how an old and nearly defunct shoe brand called Hush Puppies received an unanticipated boost in sales and customer appeal in the mid-1990s.  Somehow without any direct or indirect marketing by the brand's owner, Wolverine, executives were baffled at resurgent interest in the shoes.  They were amazed at how Hush Puppy shoe sales were booming while prior to 1994 average sales per year had been as low as 30,000 pairs.  But resurgent interest in the brand caused sales to boom up to 430,000 in 1995 and rose to nearly 2 million in 1996 and beyond in following years.  Wolverine executives were being told that the shoes were considered 'Cool' and 'Hip' in the trendy bars and clubs of New York City.  People were buying up stock of the shoes in small stores and resale shops that stocked the shoe brand.  Before long orders were coming in from fashion designers in New York and Los Angeles who were promoting the brand as an accessory to their men's fashions.  By 1996 Hush Puppies won the prize for best accessory from the Council of Fashion Designers.  This was an award that the firm,Wolverine, had put little to no effort into achieving.  How did this happen? Evidently it happened organically as a handful of young men started a fad in New York City by wearing an inexpensive shoe that wasn't popular.  Like a viral epidemic the fad grew and grew in popularity to the point that fashion designers were using the shoes to promote their high-priced fashions.  The fad grew such that Gladwell says the brand's popularity "Tipped" - and in two years went from relative obscurity in small Mom & Pop stores to Malls all across the USA.

When I read this passage in Gladwell's book, I was reminded of a scene from the film The Silence of The Lambs -  where the character Hannibal Lecter explains to fledgling FBI agent, Clarice Starling, how to catch a serial killer she is after.  In the scene Lecter suggests that that agent Starling read Marcus Aurelius's writings on the Greek Philosophy of Stoicism - encouraging her to seek the elemental aspects of the killer's behavior to understand his motive.  In this case the killer's covetus nature.  "How do we (humans) covet?  We covet what we see around us every day".

To see video click this link ---; VIDEO

We see items promoted every day on television and billboard advertising, which is meant to provoke our human desire to possess (covet) and purchase goods.  But in the case of Hush Puppies, no advertising had been done to resurrect the brand.  Yet, people began to more frequently see the shoe being worn in 'hip' locations around them and the appeal grew and spread geographically - from New York to Los Angeles and into malls across the USA.

To analyze (breaking down the elements) the Hush Puppy shoe sales and marketing data, the trend could best have been visualized and quantified by using a Geographic Information System (GIS) to identify how the brand's appeal was spreading, where it seemed to initiate, where it sales seemed to be concentrated, and understanding the underlying demographics of the product's appeal.  Very much as an Epidemiologist might study a patterns of a viruses spreading across a geographic area, marketers can use GIS to visualize and understand how, who, and where their products appeal is growing.  And most importantly how to strategically increase the brand's appeal through smart advertising and marketing campaigns - and to efficiently satisfy the demand with supply delivered to the right places at the right time.

Geography and location data is a critical business component that must be strongly considered when analyzing data, performing trend analysis (breaking a problem down to its elements as espoused by Marcus Aurelius), developing forecasting models, developing production & distribution plans, etc.  Not only is this important in Marketing, but also in Operations, Shipping, and Distribution, location data is critically important.  So as your firm considers tools necessary for Business Intelligence and Decision Support, GIS should be among the tools in your firm's analytical tool box to provide better understanding of your data and to provide better strategic business support.