Beware the "Pseudo-Science"- it Might Be Putting Your Business Under!

There is an awesome Ted Talk available that features Sarah Kurnick, she is a renowned archaeologist and she shares some great points regarding Pseudo-Science and its dangers for her profession, and by extension, she highlights so many other aspects of life that have been affected by "Pseudo" doctrines as well. For example, we now live in a world where non-medical professionals offer an alternative narrative to that offered by the experts, based on the theories of a few very vocal extremists. Alternative realities might be here to stay! I am fond of multiple opinions and even of opinions that conflict with each other. However, in many cases, there is only one reality.

Is it possible that this same thing is happening in the business world?

Well, we are slowly emerging from twenty-plus months of lockdown, panic, stagnation, layoffs, and global political unrest. For many companies, this represents an opportunity for a fresh start of sorts. However, a fresh start can only happen with fresh thinking and I am not so sure we are seeing a lot of that.

In October McKinsey released this study on some of the ways consumers' behavior is changing as a result of being isolated for almost two years. They had also released this one earlier in the year. It sounds obvious that behavior would change, it is normal after any crisis to see tweaks in shopping and buying patterns. I predicted that some of these things would happen in a series of articles I co-authored with Sandra Thomas-Comonole for Travel Pulse back in March of 2021.

So what does real science say compared to pseudoscience on this subject. Interestingly the McKinsey research predicts that new consumers will change loyalties to brands more readily, are keen on omnichannel offerings including traditional brick and mortar locations, there will be disparities in spending patterns across all groups and optimism is not consistent across all demographics. Most of these shifts, when put together, present most of us with a different market condition than what we had prior to COVID. Why then are so many discussions and conversations around business not addressing these? Why is so much of what I see conversations that would appear to indicate that COVID has had no effect on the outlook of the customer? Here are a few possibilities:

• We have not asked our customers the questions.
• We are so excited by early signs of recovery that all we can focus on are the immediate returns.
• We are in love with the idea of launching something that we developed and worked on during the crisis (without customer input) that we cannot think of anything else.

The bottom line to me is that we all answer to one boss - the customer yet (especially in the travel and tourism sector where I am focused) we are not talking about them. It is so easy to find a conversation focusing on website performance, booking technology, keyword relevancy, price parity, and dilution, dynamic pricing, bundling and packaging, google analytics and so much more, and yet if you search for something that involves a deep consideration of the customer, it is sorely lacking. ALL of these other topics are of course important but only if we have the lens of the customer as we consider the topic. Anything else is pseudoscience and will be proven as such in the months and years to come. Yet it persists, the tech wizards continue to hit us with so-called facts that are only based on something they find exciting, something they hope is real.

Here is an example: If you find a discussion on "the customer journey", notice how it never references anything that the customers have said, no focus group feedback, no allowance for other channels - it is really just an analysis of an anonymous user, using one particular website or a collection of similar sites. That is not a customer journey! It might represent part of the trip, but in no way is it complete. Look for a discussion on buyer's personas and now try to find the section that covers actual people using actual expressions to describe who they are, doesn't exist. My point here is that simply adding the word customer or persona to make something sound human can be anything but. Worse than that the so-called data that you will now use is not likely to be accurate.

We all have an opportunity to refresh our approach and give more attention to the individual needs of the customer. That is what people want the most. But unless we stop enjoying the sound of our own voice so much and start really listening to the customer we will actually find ourselves taking several steps backward.