 Scouts and Consumer Behavior
A Scout Story
"One evening in November, 1966, a young woman named Paula went out for a run. It was the first time in her 14 years that she had purposefully run, and she wasn't sure why she was doing it. On this night, she felt an unexplainable longing in her body and psyche, a vague dissatisfaction, a pull to the street, so she hunted up her gym shoes and headed outside. She took off in a burst, burning out in less than a quarter mile, and felt both satisfied and bewildered as she returned home, not understanding what drove her to this out-of-character behavior.
That night, it was still nearly a decade before streets and trails became clogged with everyday joggers and bikers. The only person Paula knew who seemed to exercise for no apparent reason was a man she saw rowing alone on the river each morning from the school bus window. Paula didn't look or feel like an athlete; there were no girls' sports at her school, and her only fitness experiences besides gym class had been childhood fun like swimming, biking, and corner lot ball games, all long abandoned.
The following weeks found her running nearly every day, her motive still incomprehensible to her. Within a year, her short jogs became strong 5-milers ("10K" was not a common distance or term in the vernacular then). She ignored peoples' stares, most of whom assumed running was meant for track competitions and military training.
For several years, Paula ran alone, the dissatisfaction she once felt overtaken by the sense of well-being that engulfed her when she paced the road or track. She became aware of how fit she felt, and took joy in this practice that enhanced her appearance, her stamina, and her self-esteem. Bystanders became familiar with "that girl who runs." Eventually, she was joined by a friend, followed by more runners along the sidewalks and beside the river. It had become a popular trend.
As Paula's enthusiasm with running grew, her focus on races now, so did her wish for more professional shoes. It wasn't until the early 70's that she heard about a pair of running shoes for amateurs just introduced for men. Hoping to find a woman's version of the same, she discovered that, if women runners were scarce at the time, shoes for them were nonexistent. She bought the men's shoes that fit her best, and snapped up a woman's pair when they were introduced a couple years later.
As Paula continued her runs, she became a frequent buyer of running shoes. Her enthusiasm for fitness also fed her interest in other products that made her workouts more effective and fun, from exercise clothes and equipment to headphones and magazines and on to vitamins and health foods.
When Paula wore her first waffle-soled, neon-accented shoes over 30 years ago, her friends laughed. Who would have known she was one of a handful of forerunners leading millions of people toward a personal fitness boom, and related businesses toward multi-billion dollar sales categories? Not Paula; for her, running answered an inner need for a change in her overall lifestyle. She was dissatisfied with how physically complacent she had become, having discarded but not replaced all those childhood games. She observed the same thing about people around her. The 60's was an era of new frontiers in the culture, intellectually, technically, spiritually, but not physically, and her intuition about that drove her into her new behavior. She had no idea that she, with others, was setting the stage for a major shift in mainstream human behavior, a longing and striving for personal fitness. She just knew she had to run."
About Scouts
Paula demonstrates the characteristics of highly individualistic people called "Scouts". Scouts are, by nature, behavior change agents. They make both conscious and intuitive observations about themselves and the world around them, and are driven to change their lifestyles in unique ways. They become unconscious models of behavior for the rest of the population.
The men's shoes Paula bought in 1973 were Nike Waffle Trainers®, a training shoe designed by Bill Bowerman, track coach at the University of Oregon and co-founder of Nike, Inc. The shoe had been developed for the university's track team, but Mr. Bowerman, a creative observer, noticed the herd of new fitness runners like Paula, and also introduced the shoes into the consumer category.
It seems simple to find individuals like Paula in hindsight, but how can we uncover the behaviors of today's Scouts, who will help us invent categories for the future?
Scouts dwell in the shifting front end of human behavior, the precursors to leading edge and mainstream individuals. Their new behaviors evolve to reflect human values rather than consumer values.
Finding Scouts requires an understanding of the complex profile of these rare but powerful individuals. Leveraging their new behaviors requires a creative and insightful observer. When we connect creative insights to the new behavior of Scouts, innovation happens, as it did with Mr. Bowerman, Nike, and their Waffle Trainers. We find ourselves at "entrepreneurial moments," able to invent and guide trends directed at meaningful values and behaviors, and therefore respond to the humanness of consumer need.
For more than twenty years, Paula Rosch has followed the new behaviors of Scouts. She has developed a broad expert network of Scouts and a proven screening profile for identifying category Scouts in the general population.
You can read about these new behavior Scouts in the May/June 2006 issue of Spirituality and Health magazine.
Click here to read the Scout article.
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