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Hello, welcome to the programme.

Now, as consumers, we believe certain things, we say things and we do things.

But the three are not always aligned.

We might say we love arty, subtitled foreign films.

We might even believe that's what we like.

But when it comes to actually

choosing a movie to watch on a specific evening, it's an American rom-com every time. We might say

we're worried about the plight of garment workers in Bangladesh, but confronted with a choice of

more expensive clothing and better paid workers, it may be we opt for the cheaper one.

It is difficult for businesses to read consumers when consumers themselves can be so muddled

about what they want. There was an interesting case, in fact, that of a tabloid newspaper launched

in 1988, probably forgotten now, it was called The Post. It was designed to be a cleaner

competitor to the incumbent tabloids. I think the slogan was, all the breeze without the slees.

Market research had apparently showed many popular tabloid readers were dissatisfied with their paper.

Many said they were too sensationalists, for example. Well,

the conclusion was, consumers didn't want sensationalism and sleaze in the tabloids. Except maybe they did.

The post just lasted a few weeks. Well, the gap between what we say and do is a very interesting

one, very hard to read consumers, extremely

relevant to ethical trade-offs. And I have four guests today to help us understand consumers.

Let us meet them. And let us start with Marsha Smith, who's Deputy Chief Executive at

IKEA, UK. And Marsha, what I want to know is you launch a new product at IKEA.

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