Cait Lamberton: Dignity always comes
in second. It comes in second to the objective value that you get
from your interaction with a firm. But what falls way down
the list are the things that we talk about all the time, like
whether the firm is sustainable, whether the firm aligns with my
political values. Dan Loney: Welcome to The Ripple Effect, the podcast that takes you on a journey through the minds of
Wharton faculty. I'm your host, Dan Loney. And in each episode,
we'll be diving deep into the inspiration behind the
groundbreaking research that Wharton professors have
conducted, and exploring how their findings resonate with the
world today. Well, it seems like brands are in a bit of a unique
time right now, where they're being called on by their
consumers, and in many cases the public at large, to make a
positive impact on society. Not that they haven't done it
before, but maybe even more so now here in this time and age.
But according to a new book, co-authored by our next guest,
companies may not truly understand about how to go about
in that process. Great to be joined here by Cait Lamberton,
who's a Professor of Marketing here at the Wharton School. The
book, by the way, is titled <i>Marketplace Dignity:
Transforming How We Engage With</i> <i>Customers Across Their Journey</i>,
which by the way, is published by Wharton School Press. Cait,
great to talk to you. Thanks very much for joining us today. So happy to be here. I guess let's start out with
what is happening, and why it's happening, and why this issue of
marketplace dignity is so important right now. There are a lot of large-scale
factors that make this particularly salient to people.
So we know that when people, for example, feel that their choice
is constrained in the marketplace, they're going to do
everything they can to get it back. If they feel that they are
not treated fairly compared to others, they're going to do
everything they can to restore that. And because the
marketplace is so transparent right now, it's easy to know
whether somebody is getting something better than you. And
the likelihood is they're gonna brag about it on social media.
So people become very sensitive to disparate treatment, to a loss
of agency, and perhaps even to a loss of voice, because we live in
a marketplace where now everyone has a megaphone. If everyone has
a megaphone, you're just shouting with everyone else.
And so I'm sure we'll talk about this later. But when those three
things are threatened, when your agency and your voice and your
sense of fairness are threatened, it's absolutely
reasonable to want to restore them.
- And so how much— - Yeah, go ahead. How much of a challenge is it
for companies right now to be able to kind of be in this mix?
Because I would think there are elements of this that they've
probably dealt with in the past. But having all of them together
kind of adds to the— adds to the pressure that they have to
deal with. Yeah. I think it is a uniquely
challenging time in some senses, but they also have new tools to
address them, if they want to do it. And I think— you know, it's
interesting. If you— if you Google something like "Which
companies treat— treat their employees or the customers with
dignity," you'll find a lot of reports about single issues. So
they'll say, "Okay, this is a company that supports people in
the LGBTQ community." "This is a company that is, you know, a
strong ally for another group." "This is a company that affirms
older employees." But as a systematic approach, I don't
think— I don't think we actually see that very often. So they
have— you have multi-level threats to dignity, but then
they tend to have these sort of ad hoc responses. And I think
that they do have— yes, it's a unique challenge. But there's
also a unique set of opportunities that they can take
advantage of. You talked about that megaphone
that— that a lot of consumers have. I'm guessing part of that
takes shape in the form of social media, but obviously
other platforms that are out there as well. Yeah, I mean, I think social
media is the dominant platform right now. But that doesn't mean
that consumers don't sometimes at least feel empowered to grab
the megaphone in person, to— to take the attention that they
want to. And it's— again, it's a fundamental human need to feel
heard and seen. And the more frustrated people become, the
more they're going to find a way to— to force you to see them and
force you to hear them. Is this becoming kind of a "must-
have" more so than a "potentially- have" for a lot of companies? That
you have to have this thought process, this kind of formula in
your mix? I think that if they don't, they—
they're in danger. And I think they're missing out on a
differentiator. And to the extent that any differentiator is a
"must have", then yes. And I— I actually think it's far more
important than, for example, being in the right place on
social issues. Those things are going to move around. That's
going to continually change. And a company that is chasing
whatever's popular socially is gonna have a hard time. But what
we argue in the book is that this is a matter of how you
structure the experience. And it's not just about being nice,
and it's not just about being liberal or conservative or
somewhere in the middle. It's just about the decisions you
make in the architecture of your experience. And those are— those
are— you know, you're gonna make the decisions anyway. It's a
matter of whether you make them taking dignity into account or
not. What we found in some data is that we asked consumers to
rank the importance of different things that they can experience
in their interactions with a firm. Dignity always comes in
second. It comes in second to the objective value that you get
from your interaction with a firm. But what falls way down
the list are the things that we talk about all the time, like
whether the firm is sustainable, whether the firm aligns with my
political values. What's second is whether I'm treated with
respect, and that comes up in the data over and over and over
again. And so for the company, I guess,
because the mindset of each individual consumer can be
different, a lot of the companies have to be prepared
for a variety of options along the way, don't they, as well? Well, there's more uniformity on some
of this than you might think. I think that— that idiosyncratic
individual preferences take us back to things like political
ideology, or social issues. And that's— that is— that's a whole
different topic that's quite challenging to handle in and of
itself. But what we find in our data is that those three things,
everybody values them. In different contexts, to a different
extent. But people want to feel some control over what's
happening to them. And that's pretty universal. They like to
make choices. Now, of course, you have to think about how to
craft that so that people make choices that are helpful. But
everybody likes— nobody likes to feel trapped. No one likes
feeling trapped. It's just not— it doesn't happen. People like
to feel seen and heard, or the converse of that is they like to
choose when to be seen and heard. - Right.
That's a universal preference. And— and we learn— one of the earliest things we
learned developmentally is that we like things to be fair. You
know, "That kid has a toy, and I don't have a toy. And that's not
fair. And I'm not okay with it." So, in a way, I think we would
argue that designing for dignity is a much safer approach than,
"Let's give everyone exactly what they want, and try to be all
things to all people." You're not going to get that right. But I
think you can get this right at a scalable level. But off of what you mentioned a
moment ago, that's why the component of this being the
entire journey of a consumer plays so much into the process
here, doesn't it? It does. Because if you only do it in
one part, you look very inauthentic. Right? So, "Oh,
congratulations, you're— you're gonna allow a lot of dignity
before the consumer makes a decision." So they come into your
store and you do something really respectful, like give
them decompression space, don't overload them with pushy sales
tactics. They purchase, everyone's happy, they feel
recognized. And that after the fact, you bombard them with with
information, and you don't let them disengage from you. You
know, we all know these stories of these subscriptions you can't
get out of without 50 clicks. Okay, so you respected dignity
before. And then afterwards, you want to retain them so badly
that you take away agency, you know, and you— and you don't
listen to them anymore, as far as what their preferences are.
And if you do that, you kind of— you're not telling the whole
story. And consumers will anchor on that part where you blew it.
So it has— ideally, you think about it all the way through the
process. And this is also coming at a
time where it seems like the component of performance in a
company is even more heightened, more focused on by firms so that
it feels like there's a little bit of a balancing act, kind of
off of what you said there, that you don't want to overdo it with
the consumer. You want to hit that— that right level of
connection and dignity so that you can have a great
relationship back and forth. Yeah, and I think it's— it's not—
not as hard as people might think it is. What we find is
even little small amounts of choice are— they mean something
to consumers. They notice even a change in the language that you
use. It doesn't necessarily have to cost a lot more. So one of
the companies that I worked with on this topic a few years ago,
who shall remain nameless, was very concerned that this was
just expensive. This was, you know, "Okay, we've got to retrain
all of our employees to be nicer." And that's not really the
case. It's really about setting up structures that allow choice
and give people voice or allow them privacy along the way. When
that structure exists, the consumer can navigate it. But
they're pretty sensitive, again, to small changes. You don't need
to rebuild your entire business necessarily. You just need to be
thoughtful about each piece of it. I was gonna ask you whether or
not there's a permanence to this concept that they have, or
whether or not there's a fluidity to it. And it almost
seems like maybe there's a little bit of both that
companies have to have in this mix. Yeah, it's funny. If you look at a lot
of company websites, they'll— you konw, especially in healthcare,
pharmaceuticals, to a lesser extent some other industries,
you're gonna see the word "dignity". It's gonna come up.
They built it into their stated purpose. I think that— and so
they— they've taken it on as something that they permanently
want to pursue. But then this— the next step, which is
systematically building it into everything the patient, the
physician, the caregiver experiences, that— that is the
connection that's only partially made. Another thing that's fluid
about it is that it may have to change across cultures. So we've
done some work where we've looked at, for example, what
dignity means for people who are in Nigeria, as opposed to people
who are in India, as opposed to people who are in
the United States. And in India and
the US, it's fairly similar. It has a lot to do with being seen
and heard. And having agency. You see those things come up over
and over again. Our Nigerian respondents, though, talked a
lot more about being treated fairly as part of a group,
because their group identity was extremely important. We also
found that Indian— or, I'm sorry, consumers in the US were, of the
three groups, least sensitive to the affirmation of dignity. And
if you affirm their dignity, in some cases, they actually think—
they actually feel like, "Okay, if you— if you respect me, I'm
going to ask for even more from you." Which, you know, could be
an opportunity for firms to grow too. But our consumers from
other regions sometimes said, "If you respect me, I might give you
some grace, if I don't get everything I want." So there's a
substitute and a complement relationship that may be fluid
across different kinds of markets.
- And so there's probably also kind of
multiple reactions that you will get from the consumer. In
certain cases, if you don't deliver, there are going to be
some consumers that are going to be mad. They'll go away from the
company. You know, they'll have a big negative impact. But as
you said, some may have a little bit of anger or angst towards
the firm. - Yeah. There can definitely be heterogeneity.
What I'll say is, on average, I don't think you make anything
worse. Especially if you— if you incorporate agency. So if you,
early on in the process, say to consumers, "Listen, we can allow
you a lot of choice and a lot of control. Or we can— we can, you
know, help you out more along the way? Which would you prefer?"
"Oh, look." Now, you know, somebody can say, "Listen, I
don't want to think about everything, I don't want all the
choice." And you just simply send them down one pathway, another.
Now we may get to a point where AI will actually be able to tell
who are the people who value agency at every step, and who
are the people that are happier to have a more supported
experience. But right now, it's also not a hard thing to do to ask.
And people tend to be able to self report this kind of thing. So you talk about the next step
in the process and potentially being around AI. And obviously,
we're learning so much about how AI is going to be impacting what
we do on a daily, weekly, monthly basis. I guess most
companies are already starting to think about so many things
about AI, including this component as well.
- Yeah, there's a big movement that has—
that is focused on data dignity. And these folks are pointing out
again that representation, which is one of these three
pieces of dignity, also means not being seen when you don't want
to be seen. Which would mean I don't want to be included in
that data set that's used to predict everyone's preferences.
Or certainly, we would want our data to be used in ways that we
feel good about. You know, otherwise, what's basically
happening is our voice is being co-opted by a firm. And people
do not like that experience. So I think, too, there— there'll be
regulations about that, that will be— that will slowly work their
way through the courts. But we do need to be sensitive to the
way that consumers are seen and heard. And the extent to which
they begin to feel that their control is— is being eroded by
the way that artificial intelligence is used to connect
with them. You know, when we connect with a person, I think
we're all very aware that at the end of the day, we get to walk
away. But if everywhere we go in the environment, there's some
AI reaching out to us, we lose agency. And so we probably— we're
gonna have to learn a lot about how to— how to use that in a way
that doesn't make humans feel as though they're devalued relative
to technology. Okay, thanks very much for your
time today. And thanks for joining us here on Ripple
Effect Meet the Authors. - Thank you so much.
- Cait Lamberton, Marketing Professor here at Wharton. The book, by the
way, again, is titled <i>Marketplace</i> <i>Dignity: Transforming How We
Engage With Customers Across</i> <i>Their Journey</i>. - Thank you for
listening to The Ripple Effect. We hope you found this episode
informative and engaging. Don't forget to subscribe and leave us
a review so that we can continue to bring you the best insight
from the Wharton School.
