Companies are Copycats; Customers crave Novelty

Source: Glenn Francis
(via Wikimedia) 

In Unlocking Creativity, I described how benchmarking practices tend to lead to copycat behavior.  Firms imitate, rather than innovate, after studying their rivals closely.   Many reasons exist for this phenomenon.  I focused on the considerable body of research in psychology regarding fixation.  Specifically, we know that human beings "become attached to a specific mental set – a way of thinking about a problem based on solutions that have worked in the past... Mental sets can facilitate problem-solving at times, but becoming fixated on an inappropriate solution from past experience can inhibit creativity."    One glaring example of herd behavior within a prominent industry:  broadcast network television's approach to primetime programming.   Time and again, after a new genre gained popularity, copying became rampant.  The original Hawaii Five-O, for instance, spurred a wave of imitation that vaulted police dramas from 1% of the primetime schedule in the mid-1960s to nearly a third of the programming by the mid-1970s.  In the late 1970s, the sudden popularity of the CBS drama Dallas spawned a wave of copycats in the primetime soap opera category.  

Interestingly, we have mounting evidence that consumers prefer novelty over imitation.  A new neuroscience study has examined consumer preferences in music.  This research demonstrates that customers love novelty.   Robert Hackett and Declan Harty reported on this work in Fortune:    

A new study in the scientific journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience finds that, over the decades, people tend to prefer newness and variety in music. In an analysis of Billboard top hits spanning from 1958 to 2019, researchers determined that the trend holds true not just for individuals over a lifetime, but population-wide over generations. People crave constant novelty, in other words. Chart-topping tracks tend to demonstrate more “harmonic surprise” over time, the authors say.

Robert Kennedy's research regarding the television networks demonstrates a similar result. While the networks love to copy one another, ratings tend to be higher for novel programs.  Of course, novelty brings with it increased variability.  Perhaps copycat behavior is the safer choice:  low risk, low return.  Managers in many industries have strong reasons to prefer the safer choice; career concerns may compel them to avoid high variability strategies.  

Still, we have to take these findings seriously as we consider our decisions about new products and services.  Doing what's best for our managerial careers may not be what's best for our customers.  How can companies help managers get more comfortable pursuing strategies of novelty rather than herd behavior?  

Which Music Do We Prefer? Interesting New Research

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We know that Spotify, Apple, and others have developed sophisticated algorithms to recommend music to listeners. While many customers know precisely what they would like to listen to, others are open to discovery. Spotify distinguishes between those listeners with a "closed" vs. "open" mindset. The algorithms are especially important for those with an open mindset. 

Now we have a new academic study that suggests an interesting way to predict the music we will enjoy. David Greenberg, Sandra Matz, Andrew Schwartz, and Kai Fricke have published a paper titled, "The Self-Congruity Effect of Music" in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.  They write: 

Across three studies we show that people prefer the music of artists who have publicly observable personalities (“personas”) similar to their own personality traits (the “self-congruity effect of music”)... Our findings are largely consistent across two methodological approaches to operationalizing an artist’s public personality: (a) the public personality as reported by the artist’s fans, and (b) the public personality as predicted by machine learning on the basis of the artist’s lyrics.

The scholars also show powerful evidence of a gender effect in music preferences.  They write:

The present article also provides the first evidence that listeners tend to prefer music from artists of the same sex, which had been previously theorized but not studied empirically (Hagen & Bryant, 2003). That is, the gender-fit between the listener and artist was found to be a significant predictor of musical preferences.

So, the next time you say yourself, "I love that artist's music."  Ask yourself, what do you know about that performer?  Why do you like that artist?   For companies, of course, the implications are profound.  Can they use this finding to refine their algorithms, without intruding on our personal privacy?  What if listeners were willing to disclose more about their personality in order to discover more music they would enjoy?   

Does Certain Music Make Us Feel Powerful and Act Differently as a Result?

Dennis Hsu, Li Huang, Loran Nordgren, Derek D. Rucker and Adam D. Galinskyhave conducted some interesting new research regarding the impact that music has on our behavior.  According to Kellogg Insights, the key research question that these scholars asked was: "Could listening to the right kind of music—even in the background—make us feel more powerful and in control?"  The scholars conducted several experimental studies to try to answer this question.  The researchers first had a set of subjects rate different songs with regard to how powerful, dominant, and determined they felt when listening to that particular music.  For instance, the famous Queen song, We Will Rock You, was rated very highly... it made most subjects feel powerful.   Then they conducted studies using the music that subjects had rated as either high-power or low-power songs. 

For instance, Professor Derek Rucker noted, “One thing we know from prior research is that people who feel powerful tend to make the first offer in negotiations. Essentially, power is a propensity to act, to take charge of the situation."   One of these experimental studies indeed showed that people listening to a "high-power playlist" indicated that they would prefer to go first in a debate more often than those who listened to a "low-power playlist."  

In sum, music - even in the background - does affect how we feel, and it may affect how we behave in crucial situations.   It can have a significant effect on our feelings of psychological empowerment.  So, what song do you want to play next time you have to enter a crucial meeting or negotiation at work?  

Amazon Apologizes for Lady Gaga Error

Amazon moved quickly this week to rectify the problem that hindered customers from taking advantage of a terrific deal on the new Lady Gaga album.   On Monday, when Amazon offered Lady Gaga's new album for only 99 cents, customers rushed to download it.  The incredible demand overwhelmed Amazon's systems.  To their credit, Amazon apologized for the error, fixed the problem, and then brought the offer back to its customers on Thursday.   The company deserves credit for learning from its less effective response to its cloud service difficulties just a few weeks ago, when it was slow to acknowledge the problem and apologize to customers.  

The story offers a few key lessons for managers. First, learning from your stumbles and translating that learning into immediate improvement can have a powerful positive effect.  In addition, when you do make a mistake, you have to do three things.  First, you have to acknowledge your error publicly.  Second, you have to fix the problem.  Finally, you have to remedy the situation with your customers when you are sure that you are able to serve them effectively.    Too many companies either are too slow to admit their mistakes, or they rush to make it up to customers when they still aren't ready to offer an exceptional service experience.  Amazon took a couple days to get the problem ironed out before coming back to its customers with the deal on Thursday.