Marketing Theories & Practices
Assignment # 1
TiVo in 2002: Consumer Behavior

Submitted to
Mr. Abid R. Khawaja

Submitted By
Muhammad Bin Zaheer
2011-NUST-EMBA-17

1. According to Keast, “there is a mystery in the sharp contrast between the inertia of prospects and the evangelical zeal of TiVo users.” As an emerging expert in consumer behavior how would you tackle that mystery? What do you think could be going on? Beyond your pet hypothesis, try to be creative and list a large number of conflicting hypotheses by taking multiple points of view. What might “evangelists” mention as a cause of their failure to sell TiVo to their friends? What might a “couch potato” say about his reluctance to buy TiVo? What would you expect a top executive at NBC to say about the situation? What explanation would the founder of TiVo love to hear? Hate to hear?

For an emerging expert in consumer behavior, research is very important. This can include surveys and feedbacks from both current and potential customers. These surveys help develop not all but a little understanding of the consumer and consumer behavior while at the same time, they also help identify changing needs of the consumers and so these results can be analyzed, quantified and evaluated to make your product and consumer needs meet at a common point where both the marketer and consumer are satisfied.
To sum up: * Identify potential customers and understand their needs based on their past practices and from interactive surveys * As mentioned above, the surveys don’t give a whole insight into the consumer’s mind, hence a positive survey result cannot necessarily turn out to be a positive cash flow i.e. that the customer said he’ll buy the product but doesn’t mean that he definitely will. So the second point to work on for a consumer behavior expert is to take steps to lessen the gap between