Understanding and controlling consumers’ mental journeys to obtain accurate research insights
We’d like to believe that we are rational beings that think and behave in a consistent manner, this is not the case. In fact, something as simple as the order in which information is presented can have a huge impact on how we process it and subsequently respond. This has some very important implications to the field of qualitative research; without understanding and correctly controlling respondents’ mental journeys, the validity and accuracy of insights can become seriously compromised.
To demonstrate, if I was to ask you to quickly guess the total of 1x2x3x4x5x6x7x8 (no calculators allowed!) what would you say? Without knowing your mathematical ability I wouldn’t like to guess how close to the correct answer you are. However, what I can predict (with the help of behavioural science) is that your answer is likely to be significantly less than if I’d asked you to guess 8x7x6x5x4x3x2x1. In fact, the average estimate is almost 4x higher for the second calculation, even though the answers are actually the same.1 The reason for this? Priming; the first piece of information people receive (how they are primed) can heavily influence how they process subsequent information and in turn how they think/behave. In this instance, people attach greater significance to the first few numbers and estimate accordingly.
A similar priming effect can be demonstrated with words. Which of the following two drinks would you prefer to try? Apple, kiwi, pineapple, spinach and kale? Or kale, spinach, pineapple, kiwi and apple? Even though you are now attuned to priming, it’s easy to imagine how the first is more likely to entice you if you encounter both at your local café.
Priming can also impact consumers’ experiences at a neurological level. For example, it’s been found that people not only perceive wine as better quality when they’re told it’s more expensive, they even experience increased activity in the mOFC; an area of the brain associated with experienced pleasure.2 And the prime even extended to how people perceived accompanying food; with consumers rating it 50% higher on average when it was paired with the more expensive wine.
What’s interesting, and of particular importance to the field of qualitative research, is that priming works at an unconscious level; people aren’t typically aware of how it has influenced them. This raises some questions regarding the reliance on direct questions in consumer research. Firstly, direct questions rely on the assumption that people can understand and explain their own thoughts and behaviours when in reality, this is simply not the case. How many of the diners in the above example would have said the reason they preferred the food was because the wine looked expensive? To uncover such insights, research techniques that look beyond people’s conscious awareness and explore what’s influencing behaviour at an unconscious level are needed.
A further issue is that the questions respondents are asked work as a prime and subsequently influence their responses. Research questions can often serve as a self-fulfilling prophecy; researchers will ask questions on topics they believe to be of importance which in turn primes people to consider them important. Imagine a subscription-based company are underperforming and want to conduct consumer research to find out why. Internally there’s a hunch that the issues are price-related so they start by asking consumers questions regarding price. These questions prime respondents to this area; encouraging them to place more importance on price than they are likely to in real life. The end result? The company is left believing price is the issue and may spend significant sums of money and time addressing this. When in reality, the psychological validity of the insights was compromised by unrealistic priming meaning price may actually be having little influence. As a worst-case scenario, lowering the price could even have a negative impact, such as reducing perceived quality. Although consumers would be unlikely to directly tell you this!
At Shift, we have a deep understanding of how priming can influence human decision-making and behaviour. We avoid direct questions in all our research and use techniques that look beyond people’s conscious awareness to provide accurate insights into how your consumers’ think and behave (and why!).
References
1 Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1974). Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases. science, 185(4157), 1124-1131.
2 Plassmann, H., O’Doherty, J., Shiv, B., & Rangel, A. (2008). Marketing actions can modulate neural representations of experienced pleasantness. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105(3), 1050-1054.