Socially Relevant Marketing.
I've expressed my reasons for mistrusting consumer research before. This most misunderstood and thus counterproductive aspect of modern marketing is revisited by David Wolfe.
"most conventional consumer research that is aimed at determining what consumers want and will do is seriously flawed because it presumes consumers will provide accurate answers to questions the researcher asks. However, outside of a “real life context,” people tend to use different brain sites and mental processes to answer hypothetical questions. That is why consumers so often act differently than research predicted."
It elicited the following comment:
"The day marketers let consumers control their own purchase behaviors is the day marketing as a discipline becomes irrelevant."
I think that is totally wrong because it assumes that marketers control purchase behaviours today. They may try to influence them, but they can never control them. Thus, if marketers focus on having a conversation with potential consumers they will achieve a greater level of influence than they do today because the consumer will be allowing them to have that informed influence. In fact, marketing will then become more important because it will be properly practised and more (not less) relevant than ever before.