Marketers are in a hunch business…making decisions whose effects will occur in the unknowable future.  These hunches come from beliefs so when they are wrong, the results can be disastrous. Nothing is more important than solidly grounding these beliefs in evidence but sadly, they are too often grounded in mythology from stories that pundits tell built on faulty research, reinforcing each other, and giving the air of confirmation.
Please take the 10 question Rubinson Partners “hit or myth” quiz! (answers about the US market in the section below this)
Hit or myth…

1. With over 30 million “likes” and only 2MM or so monthly visitors to Starbucks.com, people collectively spend more time with Starbucks content on Facebook than on the Starbucks website.
2. Over 20% of purchases in stores now come via showrooming, where people use apps to get the best price elsewhere while standing in the store.
3. By 2015, people will spend more time on the internet via their mobile devices than via their computers
4. Over 30% of time spent watching TV is timeshifted
5. There are over 1 Billion searches every month via Google for meal recipes
6. 90% of grocery shopping is on auto-pilot
7. TV advertising revenue is still growing despite the rise of digital advertising
8. Over 75% of those loyal to a brand in one year are loyal to the same brand the next year
9. People spend over $1 billion on virtual goods annually
10. Tablets take more usage time away from TV than from laptops

See the next section for answers and record in the poll how you did!

1. Myth. People spend minutes per visit to owned media while very few fans revisit the fan page in a month and only seconds with updates on Facebook in their newsfeed.

2. Myth. 35% claim to do this but only a few percent actually showroom in a given month.

3. Hit. Smart phones will become the primary way we access the internet over the next few years. Are your brands mobile optimized?

4. Myth. 30% of people timeshift but it only accounts for less than 10% of TV viewing.

5. Hit. Google claims there are nearly 8 billion recipe related searches in a month. That is quite a role in the CPG path to purchase; are you aware and incorporating this?

6. Myth. As Kahneman says, people use System 1 (autopilot) until they encounter surprises. About 50% of purchase decisions are made in the store, so it is hard to say 90% are habitual auto-pilot purchases.

7. Hit. Yes, TV ad revenues continue to grow. Print is losing ad revenues, not TV.

8. Myth. 50% of those loyal to a CPG brand in one year are not loyal to that same brand in the subsequent year. My research while at NPD (contact me for a copy of the JAR article) and Catalina came to the same conclusion. I defined loyalty as buying the same brand 50%+ of the time and they defined loyalty as 75% share of requirements.

9. Hit. Amazingly, the market for virtual goods is huge. People give virtual gifts and use virtual currency to advance through game levels faster.

10. Myth. In surveys, people say that use of tablets is replacing use of laptops first and foremost. Tablets are a multitasking buddy to TV.

Please let me know how I can help you design properly grounded and anticipatory research so you can equip your organization to make the right calls today about the future.