Editorial: Motivating highvoltage teenagers

Ironically, this issue doesn’t actually

contain any papers that tell us how to

motivate high-energy teenagers - but it

does include papers on motivation,

teenagers and consumer behaviour in

the energy sector.

In their paper, Florian Wangenheim

and Tomas Bayon analyse a large

dataset of customers to a German

energy provider. The analysis explores

how the highly topical and important

areas of satisfaction and loyalty can be

linked. The research identifies

differences between customers who

switch and those who are longer term

‘stayers’. Such differences are based on

a variety of factors and they provide

managers with actionable implications.

The research of Gillian Sullivan Mort

and Trista Rose is concerned with

extending motivation research, via

means end chain analysis, to uncovering

consumer values. They find that

different product types (utilitarian and

more hedonic) display quite different

roles in manifesting consumer values,

especially in terms of the nature of the

motivation involved. The research also

adds to what we know about the role

and use of means end chain analysis.

The paper by Pirjo Honkanen, Sven

Ottar Olsen and Øystein Myrland

explores more teenage behaviour – this

time toward their meal preferences. The

various (cluster) segments that they

identify were explained more by

‘affective’ lifestyle and attitudinal

dimensions than by demographic

profiles. Apart from reinforcing the

important trends away from using

demographics to explain behaviour,

they provide useful and practical

managerial implications for targeting

such teenage segments.

We all remember buying clothes as

teenagers. Maria Piacentini and Greig

Mailer take us back to that ‘mixed up,

muddled up, shook up world’ (Davies,

1970). They provide a recognisable

picture of the importance of clothing in

terms of its symbolism, reflection and

projection of self (difficult and

confused) images. There are many

nuances of clothing symbolism for

teenagers in this paper – can you spot

those of your teenage (or even current)

years?

The practice papers in this issue also

provide food for thought. We know that

an increasing number of consumers

exhibit cynicism toward companies (eg

Evans et al., 2001). It is becoming clearer

that companies are in danger of

damaging themselves if they either

claim too much or neglect public

opinion. Rob Gueterbock shows this

very clearly in his case study of how

Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and

some well known celebrities took on

what they saw as ExxonMobil’s

successful lobbying against the USA

signing the Kyoto Protocol. The

campaign damaged the Esso brand and

led to consumer boycotts of Esso and

also to shareholder resolutions

questioning the company’s position on

environmentalism. It seems likely that

we will see more of this sort of

consumer behaviour in similar energy

and other markets.

Ian Rowlands, Paul Parker and Daniel

Scott provide a practitioner’s view of

consumer behaviour in the energy

context. They explore switching

behaviour and reasons for this. In an era

in which many utility companies are

encouraging switching on the basis on

price advantage, it is interesting to note

that this research identifies reliability

and service as being more important to

some consumer segments. Switching

behaviour appears to be related, for

Journal of Consumer Behaviour Vol. 3, 3, 207–208 #Henry Stewart Publications 1479-1838 207

many, to their characteristics and

values.

In today’s multi-tasking (mixed up,

shook up. . .) world we are exposed to

messages from different sources at the

same point in time, such as when we are

online while writing journal Editorials

with the television on in the

background. The study by Joseph J.

Pilotta, Don E. Schultz, Gary Drenik and

Philip Rist is based on a whopping

12,000 respondents and suggests that

over half of us expose ourselves to

different media simultaneously. The

implications are that marketers need to

move from ‘silo research’ – ie measuring

the effectiveness of TV or internet

advertisements in isolation – to

measuring, and planning for, more of a

gestalt of simultaneous multi-tasking

message receipt.

Martin Evans

Managing Editor

January 2004

REFERENCESDavies, R. (1970) ‘Lola’, Calvin Music Corp.

Evans, M., Patterson, M. and O’Malley, L. (2001)

‘Bridging the direct marketing-direct consumer gap:

Some solutions from qualitative research’, Qualitative

Market Research: An International Journal, 4(1), 17–24.

208 Journal of Consumer Behaviour Vol. 3, 3, 207–208 #Henry Stewart Publications 1479-1838

Editorial