This site needs a damn overhaul. The internet has given me a minimal attention span and a need for fast results without ever having to use my keyboard.

Examples of where I’ve drifted to recently:

Polyvore: Like window shopping with control. The result of the things I throw together on there seem to be the only reminders that I still have girlish desires. Like overpriced nail polish, Red Stripe, and heels

Tumblr: This site gives you fair warning of what you’re getting yourself into. Even the NAME of the website it some word that drifts off into a mumble and a drool. I got into posting on it once I realized you can upload music.

Dinosaur Circus: Last month, I felt inspired to try posting a photo I took every day for a year. Like finding out about the existence of narwals, its unrealistic and exciting all at once

DIY: If a blog could be associated with vomit, it would be through my d.i.y. guide, so far. The content is there, it seems to be floating in a sea of half formed goals.

I’m too all over the place. My main goal from here on out is to stick to something I start. And since I started this first, I’m sticking to it.

Yep. I’d say my plan for 2010 is coming together pretty nicely.

High five, kids!

Conjoint analysis is an innovative powerful research methodology which helps to determine how consumers value different features/characteristics that make up an individual product or service. It is an effective technique to quantify the perceived values of specific product features & determine what attributes drives consumer behavior.

At AbsolutData, we utilize Conjoint Analysis to lend winning edge to our clients by identifying optimal product attributes/characteristics combination that will help to achieve maximal market share. We have conducted numerous Conjoint based Studies for various business applications including:

• Designing new products/Re-designing existing products
• Product line extension research
• Estimating brand equity
• Measuring price sensitivity (elasticity)
• Branding and packaging

How Conjoint Analysis Works?

Conjoint analysis requires respondents to make a series of trade-offs which is used to analyze relative importance of product/services attributes.

Conjoint Analysis helps to present the trade-offs as a choice exercise where the respondent simply chooses the most preferred alternative from a selection of competing alternatives. The set of chosen products generates preference/part worth utility values at a respondent level, and for every level of each attribute. The most popular statistical estimation routines for estimating part-worth utilities are Ordinary Least Squares regression or Hierarchical Bayes. These part-worths are helpful to summarize the preferences for segments and markets, but they are most useful in the context of projecting buyer choices

One of the key outcome of Conjoint Analysis is ‘What-If Simulators’ which helps to exploit the utility information to generate different product scenarios and help explain market behavior at an aggregate level.

Our dissertation “Precision Pricing: Measuring Consumers’ Willingness to Pay Accurately” is now available as book for EUR 49.00 (CHF 81.00).

Voices on the book

“Setting the ‘right’ price is one of the key management tasks that drive a firm’s performance. Even small price variations can have a major impact on sales and profitability. Therefore, it is important for managers to know consumers’ willingness to pay as precisely as possible in order to harvest their product’s profit potential as much as possible. This book will help you get your price right!”

Professor Dr. Dr. Z. John Zhang
The Wharton School,
University of Pennsylvania, USA.

The articles from our dissertation are now available as pdf downloads. Get your copy below:

Full Dissertation

Including all four articles. Available as eBook (PDF) for EURO 19.00.

Precision Pricing: Measuring Consumers’ Willingness to Pay Accurately (287 pages)

Preface: A key challenge in pricing management is to set the price right, both for new and exist-ing products. A key approach to this task takes a demand-oriented perspective, which uses the consumer’s demand and his corresponding willingness to pay as a key guidance for pricing decisions. Such a demand-based approach is in line with the concept of customer orientation – a key success factor in marketing. Against this background, the elicitation of consumers’ will-ingness to pay is a task that has gained considerable attention by marketing researchers over the last years. However, many recent academic research studies on this topic have taken a path towards increased complexity and over-specialization that has not always met the required practicability and cost efficiency of management practice. The current highly innovative dissertation by Reto Hofstetter and Klaus Miller has been written in truly cooperative teamwork and has been able to bridge the gap between im-proved academic methods to measure willingness to pay and the pragmatic applicability needs of applied market research. The authors take an intelligent contingency perspective on the elicitation of willingness to pay and can make managerially highly relevant recommendations of when to use which method for the elicitation of willingness to pay. In order to do so, the authors have taken a very broad perspective – comparing different methods across different contexts – and were also able to improve existing methods. I think this dissertation generates original insights and will make an important contri-bution to pricing research. This dissertation is truly world-class and gives an impressive ex-ample of the benefits of teamwork. It was a great pleasure to supervise the authors’ disserta-tion and I wish Reto Hofstetter and Klaus Miller for their future career and also for their pri-vate lives all the very best.Prof. Dr. Harley Krohmer Executive Director of the Institute of Marketing and Management University of Bern, Switzerland The dissertation contains the following four articles: Measuring Consumers’ Willingness to Pay: Do Direct Approaches Really Work? How Should We Measure Consumers’ Willingness to Pay? An Empirical Comparison of State-of-the-Art Approaches Who Should We Ask When Measuring Consumers’ Willingness to Pay For Product Innovations? The Importance of Involvement for the Direct Measurement of Consumers’ Willingness to Pay

Dissertation by Article

Available as eBooks (PDF) for EURO 9.00 each.

Measuring Consumers’ Willingness to Pay: Do Direct Approaches Really Work? (76 pages)
In the present paper we analyze the direct survey approach to elicit hypothetical willingness to pay in a marketing context. Although the direct survey approach has been neglected and is seen as being inferior to indirect approaches by marketing academia, it is widely used in market research practice. Hence, from the standpoint of a marketing researcher, the question arises if the direct survey approaches really work. As a first attempt to answer this question, we conduct an empirical study and analyze the direct survey approach in a marketing context among 2,048 consumers. Statistically, we find evidence for biased results. Economically, we analyze how well the direct survey approach can be used for business decision making such as setting the profit-maximizing price in a monopoly and forecasting the quantity sold as well as profits. We find the direct survey approach to be able to yield good (not statistically different) estimates for profit-maximizing price and quantity, which may explain the use of the methods in applied market research. Based on literature, theory, and the findings of this study, we further present three methods to improve the results of the direct survey approach ex-post. All three methods are able to improve the validity of the business decisions. We conclude that even though the direct approach shows statistically biased results, it is able to guide the marketing manager to good business decisions.
How Should We Measure Consumers’ Willingness to Pay? An Empirical Comparison of State-of-the-Art Approaches (85 pages)
A precise knowledge of consumers’ WTP is instrumental in economic theory and practice. Market researchers can choose among a variety of methods to determine WTP. However, prior literature provides little guidance on the choice of the appropriate approach to valid WTP measurement. In our study among 1,124 consumers, we address this research deficit and assess four state-of-the-art approaches to measure consumers’ WTP with regard to their external validity and economic outcomes. Specifically, we compare the open-ended question format, conjoint analysis, the BDM mechanism, incentive-aligned conjoint-analysis, and real purchase data. Our statistical analysis shows that hypothetical WTP approaches are not always biased. Specifically, our results indicate a significant mean bias for both hypothetical approaches. However, we only find a biased demand curve for hypothetical conjoint analysis, whereas directly stated WTP from an open-ended question format yields unbiased results with regard to estimating consumers’ demand. Moreover, we did not find a bias for the incentive-aligned methods, the BDM mechanism and incentive-aligned conjoint analysis, which indicates a high external validity of these approaches. With regard to our economic analysis, we find that all methods yield valid estimates of optimal price and quantity. However, only incentive-aligned methods are able to give valid forecasts of optimal profits. Our results can guide market researchers to select the appropriate WTP measurement approach for their business decisions.
Who Should We Ask When Measuring Consumers’ Willingness to Pay For Product Innovations? (70 pages)
When eliciting price preferences (WTP) for product innovations, researchers mainly apply hypothetical survey methods. Such hypothetical survey methods, however, are found to yield biased results. In order to reduce this bias, prior research mainly focuses on improving the survey methodology (i.e. the “how” to ask for consumers’ WTP). In the present study, we propose a different approach to reduce the bias in hypothetical WTP measurement. We argue that respondent specific characteristics, motives, and traits (e.g. the “who” to ask) might play an important role when consumers’ WTP is measured for product innovations. Based on literature and an exploratory qualitative pretest study, we develop a conceptual framework of consumers’ characteristics, motives, and traits that might explain the hypothetical bias. Confirmatory factor analysis shows highly significant effects on the hypothetical bias by the two factors consumers’ certainty in the WTP statement and the degree of strategic answering behavior. Based on these findings, we develop a data-cutting approach that is able to remove the bias to an insignificant level. We validate this approach in a second dataset. As the present study shows, respondents’ characteristics, motivs, or traits (the “who”) play an important role when it comes to measuring WTP for product innovations. Market researchers are well advised to take consumers’ certainty in the answer and their strategic answering behavior into account when evaluating such WTP survey data.
The Importance of Involvement for the Direct Measurement of Consumers’ Willingness to Pay (49 pages)
Knowledge of consumers’ willingness to pay is essential for the successful pricing of new and existing products. This study addresses the issue, under what circumstances a direct measurement approach can reveal consumers’ true willingness to pay. Based on a conceptual discussion and an empirical survey, the authors argue that this issue is not related to the choice of alternative direct question formats but rather related to respondents’ involvement: The authors show that the direct measurement approach can provide a valid instrument to measure willingness to pay in the case of highly involved consumers. This finding has important implications for applied market research, since the direct measurement approach can provide a time- and cost-efficient alternative to indirect measurement approaches such as conjoint measurement, if respondents are highly involved in the underlying product.

Comment l’émerveillement vient-il ? Comment naît-il en nous ? Faut-il le vouloir, le faire advenir, se mettre « en état de » sentir l’émerveillement ?

Bref, y a-t-il une ou plusieurs méthodes  ? Une trousse à outils, un recueil de trucs et astuces pour émerveillement assuré ? Une science, estampillée par des experts ?

Et s’il n’y avait tout simplement pas de méthode pour se mettre en état d’émerveillé…

S’il s’agissait seulement de tout oublier.

S’il fallait d’abord et surtout savoir attendre.

Pas de méthode ? Y aurait-il contradiction avec ce que j’ai écrit, notamment Comment apprendre à voir des miracles dans le banal ? Non, il n’y a pas opposition. Car bien sûr il y a des moyens pour apprendre à découvrir comment s’émerveiller et comment sortir de nos vieux schémas invalidants et traumatiques. Oui, nous pouvons apprendre à changer notre regard et décider de suivre des chemins de vie, plutôt que ces voies mortelles dans lesquelles nous tournons en rond en remâchant le passé et notre statut de victime.

Décider de changer, c’est bien le préalable indispensable. Même si la décision suit des étapes aux périodes parfois longues et prend des formes variées selon les personnes, la décision de changer venant parfois presque malgré nous à la suite d’un traumatisme, d’une maladie, d’un accident, d’une épreuve violente.

Etape. Le mot est essentiel. Et quand je parle d’apprendre à attendre pour connaître l’émerveillement, je parle de cette première étape.

Qu’est-ce qui m’émerveille ?

Je ne le sais pas toujours.

Je ne le sais pas tous les jours.

Il y a des aubes grises, des après-midi sans soleil et des soirées solitaires. Il y a des moments où je n’entends plus le chant du monde, où je trouve l’autre et moi-même si lourds à porter.

S’ouvrir à l’inconnu

Comment faire ? Il n’y a plus aucun moyen qui vaille dans ces cas-là. Il ne me reste plus qu’à me mettre en état d’attente. Pas une attente inerte, mais une attente active : je me mets en disponibilité, j’ouvre mes sens à l’inconnu, à ce qui va advenir et que j’ignore encore.

L’autre, mon conjoint, mon collègue, mon enfant me plongent dans un état de stress, de tristesse ou de agressivité. Le même, qui la semaine ou l’année dernière me donnait des ailes et s’accordait « à merveille » à mon rythme, est aujourd’hui un facteur de réaction traumatique. Comment est-ce possible ? Et me voilà qui remâche intérieurement : il ou elle agit comme ça parce qu’il ou elle est toujours ceci ou cela, il ou elle ne changera jamais, etc.  Me voilà englué dans le cercle traumatique du ressassement intérieur, des phrases automatiques, des émotions négatives et des réactions décalées.

Plutôt que de réagir justement, je peux me mettre en état d’attente. Attendre sans rien attendre. Sans attendre ce que je crois savoir, ce que je crois connaître par cœur de moi et de l’autre. Ce moi et cet autre que je connais pourtant si mal en réalité.

Mais attendre, ça veut dire quoi ?

C’est la même question que pose un interlocuteur imaginaire dans l’ouvrage de François Roustang : Savoir attendre. Pour que la vie change. Et l’auteur lui répond :

« Pour le savoir, tu devrais te taire cinq minutes et te mettre en suspens, comme si tu étais un oiseau qui plane ou même un oiseau qui est arrêté dans l’air, ne sachant même plus s’il vole ou ne vole pas, s’il est là ou s’il n’est pas là. Il ne s’occupe plus de savoir ni ce qu’il est, ni ce qu’il veut, ni ce qu’il fait. »

Et son interlocuteur, après quelques minutes de silence, répond :

« Ah, mais ce n’est pas mal du tout. Je me sens calme… À vrai dire, je ne me sens rien du tout. »

Et le dialogue continue :

« - L’autre jour, quelqu’un m’a dit lors d’une séance : “Quand on est comme ça, on n’a plus d’humeur.” On ne se préoccupe plus de savoir si on a bien ou pas bien, si on est content ou pas content.
- Mais on ne peut pas rester comme ça tout le temps
- Bien sûr, mais tout de même ça peut durer comme si nous étions sans cesse en contact avec un fond, une base. Les agitations de la mer en surface n’empêchent pas qu’il y ait du silence loin en dessous. Et puis, on s’aperçoit que les choses qui nous troublaient dans notre existence, qui étaient plus ou moins en désordre, qui brouillaient notre vue, on s’aperçoit que ces choses sont mieux en place les unes par rapport aux autres. Surtout, on est plus disponible pour prendre d’un bon côté les événements. »

Voilà ce que je vous propose. La prochaine fois que vous vous sentez entrer en état de réaction négative et invalidante, prenez le temps d’attendre. Attendre avant d’agir. Attendre pour laisser naître en nous ce qui nous correspond profondément. Attendre pour nous ouvrir aux merveilles au fond de nous et aux merveilles à l’extérieur de nous.

Aspaldi daukat gordeta post hau nere zirriborroetan, eta oporretara joan aurretik argitara ematea erabaki det. Vendiendo elefantes azules, hori da gaia jorratzeko gomendatzen dizudan liburua, nahiz eta sarean ere informazio dezente badagoen.

Galdera sinple batek marketing ikerketan ari diren guztiak aztoratu ditu, eta eztabaida bizia piztu da komunitate horretan. Ba al dauka galdera sinple eta bakar batek marketing ikerketa guztia ordezkatzea? Batzuen iritziz bai, beste batzuen iritziz Net Promoter Score (NPS) delakoak ematen dituen emaitzak ez dira beste metodologia batzuek ematen dituztenak baino hobeak.

NPSren arabera galdera horren erantzuna 9-10 denean, horiek Hernaniren sustatzaileak dira. 6tik behera erantzuten dutenak detraktoreak dira. Sustatzaileen eta detraktoreen arteko proportzioak definitzen du Hernaniren NPSa. hemen daukazu NPSren adibide zehatz eta praktiko bat. Klikatu irudian handitzeko.

Ikusten denez, NPS osoa atera daiteke, baina baita aztergai ezberdinak ere. NPS oso zehatza izan da esaten zein haziko dan eta zein joango dan pikutara. Adi: soilik 9-10eko tarte horretan bazaude esan daiteke ondo ari zarela. Hor ez bazaude horra iristeko ahalegina egin behar dezu, dagokizun arlo bakoitza hobetuz. Adibidean, gainera, koloreekin eta emotikonoekin berezitu dituzte erantzunen emaitzen esanahia.

Munduko enpresa ezagunenak ari dira NPS aplikatzen.

NPS Fred Reichheld-ek garatu zuen, kontsumitzailearen fideltasun kontuetan aditua, aholkularia eta ikerlea dena. Ez da kasualitatea: fideltasuna da edozein ahalegin kolektiboaren gakoa, errazagoa eta merkeagoa baita fidelizatzea bezero berriak egitea baino.

Zergatik iruditzen zait garrantzitsua NPS?

Kontsumitzaileak/erabiltzaileak/zaleak/bazkideak erakundearen zentroan jartzen dituelako. Dena pentsatzen/egiten da pertsona horiengandik abiatuta eta haiek ditu helburu. Hemen, berriz, haustura etikoa sor daiteke, eta, beti esaten dudan bezala, bakoitzari dagokio hori bideratzea alde batera edo bestera.

Ezagunen bati zerbait gomendatzen diozunean, konfiantzaren auzia agertzen da tartean, lagunen arteko sareek osatzen dutena. Sare jakin batean zure sustatzaileak zertan diren jakiteak definitzen omen du enpresa/antolakunde baten arrakasta edo heriotza (arriskua, ahulezia, arazoak…). Kontutan hartu behar da Internetek hartu duen jitearekin NPSk sendotasuna irabazi duela, nere ustez, sare-sozialek, foroek eta komunitateek ahoz ahokoaren eragina biderkatu dutelako. Internet esperientzien errekomendazio sare erraldoia da. Izan ere, jendea gehiago fidatzen da “lagun” batek egindako gomendioarekin markak berak esaten dionarekin baino.  NPSk satisfazioa neurtzen du, eta hortik irabazien gaineko aurreikuspena egiten da. Hori da Net Promoter Score.

Merkea da, oso merkea. Goiko irudia Google Forms-ekin dgo egina, excel-eko datu base batera lotuta (irudia sartu det wordpress.com-ek ez duelako uzten formularioa txertatzen…). Formazio minimo batekin edozein antolakunderen esku dago ikerketa-metodologia oso emankorra eskuratzea. Hobetzeko programa oso baten abiapuntua ere izan daiteke. Komeni da puntu honetan conjoint analisiaz pixka bat informatzea.

]]> http://technoblogue.wordpress.com/2009/07/29/comment-trouver-le-mot-de-passe-de-la-boite-de-courriels-de-mon-conjoint/ Wed, 29 Jul 2009 03:45:31 +0000 technoblogue http://technoblogue.wordpress.com/2009/07/29/comment-trouver-le-mot-de-passe-de-la-boite-de-courriels-de-mon-conjoint/

Comment trouver le mot de passe de la boîte de courriels de mon conjoint?

Voilà une question que je me fais souvent poser.

Je connais que deux possibilités à cela.

La technique de “pishing” qui consiste à développer une page similaire à celle de la page d’accueil du fournisseur de boîte de courriels de votre conjoint.  Méthode très laborieuse à mettre en place et peu efficace.

L’autre technique c’est la technique du “keystroke” qui permet d’enregistrer dans un fichier toutes les touches tapées sur l’ordinateur de votre conjoint.  Des outils sont disponibles sur Internet.

Voilà bon espionnage !

This is the 5th in the line of Market Research related posts and I shall attempt to cover market research methods used. (Note: These are based on personal experiences and learnings, so if I’m missing anything, kindly feel free to add comments)

So here we go:

Market research in my view happens in two distinct stages pre-product definition and post prototype stage (before mass production/final go-live).  Though, there are some industries which follow – create ‘em and they’ll come approach, but we will focus on industries where it is a necessity and a differentiator to do market research to understand the customers. I would also like to divide them up broadly as secondary and primary methods as below:

1. Secondary Market Research – When a company starts a market research project, first is mostly (mostly because some people like to start with a preliminary easily accessible primary sources of information and we will cover this in the next point below) a secondary research phase. Anything about the market, competition, customers, ecosystem, trends about the industry available online -articles, magazines, conference presentations, published research material, discussion forums, free/paid market reserach reports are used in this phase. The information is organized and presented, in the process forming/validating a few theses for market research work.

2. Primary Market Research - As I mentioned above, some marketeers prefer to do a preliminary primary phase first to focus and give direction to the secondary research process (believe me, there is a lot of information out there and one can get drowned in the process…and hence, this is a valid viewpoint). Initially, primary research candidates could include experts within the company/outside that one might get access to. There are perfectly valid reasons to start with one vs. the other depending on how prepared one is to ensure that the time of the expert is well utilized. The various forms of primary market research include personal interviews, focus groups, conjoint analysis, online surveys, forums/collaboration tools, alpha/beta product testing etc. These are then followed by detailed analysis of the collected data to provide insights on which features are important vs. nice-to-have, what will customers pay for, what kind of product roadmap should the company be investing in and what kind of channels to push the product through, even price point indicators can be obtained through the right mix of tools.

In the next post I shall cover some ground with a real-life example to wrap up this series on market research.

Sorry for being astray for awhile. We’ve had another far-away visit. Johan’s brother and his partner have been staying and a lot of the time has been spent roaming around out of doors, on picnics, shopping tours, bbqs and meeting wildlife such as the above quite worryingly tame squirrel.

One of the leasurely activities we got the time to enjoy was playing ducks and drakes (skimming/skipping stones). It must be the greatest sport in the world, where half of the fun obviously is searching for the perfect stone! I adopted such a peculiar style I now go by my ducks-and-drakes-name when playing; mesdames et mesieurs, meet The Beach Angler!

Later we had a picnic in the park with flat bread from our local Turkish corner shop supreme (I do not know how we managed before it was there) artichoke & olive oil purée, couscous salad with tarragon and crisps and more…

including conjoined twin cherries…

and carrot cake cupcakes with cream cheese frosting and little crystallised rose petal toppings.

The boys played beach ball whilst us girls dosed off on the blanket.

All in all a very refreshing day out.

Good Bye and see you soon again; have a wonderful rest of the weekend!

Big news!  We have launched W5 Conjoint, in conjunction with our newest W5 white paper, “W5 on Conjoint Analysis.”

W5 Conjoint is a specialized analytical boutique of W5, a custom market research consultancy. We have launched the website to introduce the boutique, to complement the white paper, and to serve as a resource for those interested in the understanding, use, and benefits of conjoint methodologies.

W5 Conjoint specializes in the application and design of conjoint analysis for Fortune 500s and their respective advertising agencies. While we’re focused on specific analytical techniques, we’re still W5 consultants – curious, attuned to the needs of our clients, and focused on actionable results that help strengthen brands.

Check out the links and contact us for more information!

As many readers have requested further information on the calculation of willingness to pay based on conjoint data, we have decided to make our little calculation tool freely available. Check it out here:

Choice Based Conjoint to Willingness to Pay Converter Tool

The tool is free and available as a beta version (v.1.1). Please leave a comment in case of any errors or questions.

Author: Reto Hofstetter

2009 is looking to be a big year for conjoint analysis. Sawtooth will be releasing Adaptive Choice-Based Conjoint (ACBC) the first half of the year, giving market researchers yet another tool in their arsenal to answer those two FAQs, “What do consumers want?” and “How much will consumers pay?” As more information about ACBC comes out over the next several months, we’ll be sure to pass along our own thoughts on this new methodology.

Conjoint is also starting to get some play in mainstream media. The Price of Prejudice, appearing in the January 15 issue of The Economist, discusses the work of Eugene Caruso, a behavioral science professor at The University of Chicago.  He and his co-authors find that people often deceive themselves as to what they actually take into consideration when making choices. Using conjoint analysis, Caruso et al were able to conclude that it’s not what you say, but rather what you do that counts – long a tenet of conjoint researchers.  Overall, an interesting application of the methodolgy to social cognition research.

Un chanteur célèbre a dit :

” J’ai grandi dans la rue, et on obtient plus de résultat avec un mot gentil et un révolver, qu’avec le mot gentil tout seul.”

Serait-ce la raison pour laquelle je me suis retrouvée, enceinte de 5 mois, avec un Beretta  (équivalent 357 magnum) sur la tempe et un oeil au beurre noir ? 2 semaines d’ hosto, affaire étouffée, aucune sanction. C’est permis alors ?

Je suis logique : après tout monsieur est gendarme, donc il est exemplaire, et la justice confirme la justesse et l’à-propos de l’acte, je vais donc essayer aussi …

Petite annonce :

“Ch flingue pour demander gentiment justice, et notamment revoir sans me faire démolir l’enfant que je portais et ses frères et soeur. Faire offre. Annonce sérieuse. Discrétion assurée. Merci.”

Les autres violences subies pendant le mariage, biographie, photos, documents, articles de presse sur mon site :

http://www.violence-conjugale-aider-victimes-et-violents.com/

Voici la dernière photo que j’ai de mes petits, elle est ancienne.

J’ai posé mes enfants à l’école un matin de février, et ils ont disparu. Sur ordre d’un juge qui ne me connaissait pas, sans audience. Pour les remettre au père.  Le choc a failli me tuer. Je n’ai plus jamais eu de nouvelles. 3 ans. Je deviens folle de douleur et je n’ai plus rien à perdre.

Extrait de l’article :

“On voulait une association d’hommes pour les hommes, on pensait que le contact serait plus facile”, précise Anne Bonnaudet. L’intuition était bonne : créée à l’initiative des féministes travaillant au centre pour femmes battues, l’association Parenthèses à la violence, où officie Pascal Cuénot, s’occupe, elle, des agresseurs. Du moins, de certains d’entre eux : tandis que Solidarité femmes accueille “plus de mille femmes” chaque année, Parenthèses à la violence ne reçoit, dans le même temps, qu’“une vingtaine d’hommes” violents.

“Un homme ne dit jamais d’emblée qu’il est violent, commente Daniel Welzer-Lang, aujourd’hui maître de conférences à l’université de Toulouse-Le Mirail. On ne bat pas une femme, même avec une rose, dit le proverbe : aux yeux de la société, un homme qui cogne une femme, c’est un pauvre type, un homme qui n’a pas su imposer son autorité. Pourtant, ce sont des hommes qui souffrent beaucoup.”

Quant à ceux – psychologues, sociologues, éducateurs spécialisés – qui s’intéressent aux hommes violents, ils sont aussi des oiseaux rares. La plupart se sont inspirés de l’expérience québécoise et, notamment, des enseignements du psychologue clinicien Robert Philippe.

Au début des années 1990, la liste de ces pionniers français n’est pas longue : Daniel Welzer-Lang et Gérard Petit, à Lyon ; Charles Hein et Michel Sylvestre, à Marseille ; Alain Legrand et Claude Mastre, à Paris ; puis Pascal Cuénot à Belfort ; et enfin Magali Barre, à Limoges. Dix ans plus tard, la liste s’est réduite comme une peau de chagrin. A Lyon et à Marseille, l’expérience a tourné court – faute de subventions – et les centres d’accueil ont fermé. A Paris (SOS-Violences familiales), Belfort (Parenthèses à la violence) et Limoges (Mots pour maux), les centres qui marchent encore survivent au jour le jour. En cette fin d’hiver, l’association d’Alain Legrand n’a que 3 000 euros en caisse. “Le ministère des droits des femmes devrait nous verser 6 000 euros – du moins, on l’espère !”, ajoute, amer, le psychologue.

“La fermeture des centres en France est une victoire de la victimologie, estime l’universitaire Daniel Welzer-Lang. L’Etat défend la veuve et l’orphelin, il assure le service minimum.” “Parler des seules victimes permet d’occulter les rapports sociaux de sexe, analyse, de son côté, la sociologue Sybille Schweier. On évite ainsi de mettre en cause la domination masculine et les relations hommes-femmes.”

La France n’est pas le Québec. Elle n’est pas non plus l’Allemagne, où existent “une vingtaine d’associations pour hommes violents”, rappelle Sybille Schweier. La résistance de ces derniers à reconnaître leur conduite et à vouloir faire l’effort de changer conforte l’inertie des pouvoirs publics. Coauteur de Vivre sans violences (Eres, 2004), un ouvrage collectif où est retracée l’expérience de son association marseillaise, Charles Hein s’amuse de la capacité des Français à croire “ que, tant qu’il n’y a pas de demande pour régler un problème, c’est qu’il n’y a pas de problème”. Et conclut : “Puisque les hommes agresseurs ne sont pas demandeurs, c’est sans doute qu’ils n’existent pas !”

24 mars 2004

© Le Monde

Article complet avec le lien vers sa source sur le journal “Le Monde”.