Case Studies
Testing and optimising marketing communications
CHALLENGE
How do consumers respond to different advertising executions? What is the impact on brand perceptions? How can the comms be optimised?
APPROACH
We recreated a realistic context (where the comms would be seen in real life) before gauging consumers immediate, unfiltered reactions, rather than their conscious critiques.
Using PrimeTrack, we then tested if, and how, the comms influenced subsequent purchase decisions.
OUTPUT
Several concepts were struggling to land the intended message at a reflexive level (which was critical as this is how consumers typically process ads in real life).
The tonality of some executions was compromising the brand’s authenticity.
We identified the optimal communication hierarchy, and executional watch-outs for future developments.
Maximising the potential of a new product range in a new category
CHALLENGE
How do consumers perceive and shop a new category? How does the client’s product compare to competitors in terms of taste and pack appeal?
APPROACH
Using our proprietary technique, ReTrack, we identified what category and brand associations exist, what is driving consumers to buy from the category and what is influencing their purchase and consumption behaviour.
We also conducted a taste evaluation with a separate sample (to control priming).
OUTPUT
Amongst other insights…
1. The parent brand was conflicting with the new proposition and reducing appeal.
2. The launch flavours were more challenging to buy than those offered by competitors.
Understanding how online clothes shopping behaviour has changed since Covid-19 to improve customer retention
CONTEXT
Covid-19 has caused tremendous shifts in consumer behaviour; driving many shoppers who hadn’t previously shopped online, to do so.
CHALLENGE
What had happened from a consumer psychology perspective? How can retailers improve customer retention and thrive post Covid-19?
APPROACH
As most decisions are driven by unconscious processes, people are incredibly poor at understanding and explaining their own behaviour. So, instead of directly asking respondents how and why their behaviour had changed, we used specialised techniques that allowed us to relive recent purchasing journeys and uncover what was influencing them at both a conscious and unconscious level.
OUTPUT
We identified different shopper types and the underlying motivations driving their behaviour.
We also uncovered challenges faced by retailers, including two main points of friction for online shopping. By understanding the psychology behind these challenges, we were able to identify ways in which they might be alleviated.
Our client is using these learnings to help retailers improve retention and thrive in the current climate.
Evaluating and optimising new product concepts
CHALLENGE
Does the new concept appeal to the intended audience? Which design route has the greatest potential? How can the concept be optimised?
APPROACH
Using ReTrack, we revisited a recent purchase journey to understand what was influencing and driving the behaviour.
Because attitudinal measures are notoriously unreliable, we avoided directly asking respondents what they thought of the new concept. Instead we explored their unfiltered reactions and behavioural response to the different concepts in a realistic context.
OUTPUT
We identified key purchase drivers within the category and how each concept performed against them.
One route had the greatest potential but was struggling to connect with the intended age group. We were able to provide insight into why this was and potential areas for optimisation.
The pack design was revised in line with our learnings prior to launch.
Understanding and improving patients’ experiences
OVERVIEW
Many patients with metastatic breast cancer (MBC) don’t feel comfortable discussing their diagnosis and prognosis with family, friends and Healthcare Professionals. Shift was tasked with providing insight into the patients perspective to feed into the development of communications that help facilitate these types of conversations.
APPROACH
Using our proprietary interview technique, ReTrack, we revisited relevant conversations to identify how MBC patients felt during these exchanges and what unconscious factors were influencing this.
OUTPUT
We provided our client with insight into the concerns patients have with these types of conversations (and why) and suggested potential areas that further communications could focus on to help improve patients’ experiences.
Successful new product development: becoming the category leader in three months
OVERVIEW
Our client’s drink had failed to connect with consumers. There was widespread confidence that the liquid was superior to the market leader, but the sales were disappointing. They had a number of propositions that they thought could work better and wanted to gauge which would be the best route forward.
APPROACH
ReTrack enabled us to understand the market leader’s strengths and weaknesses. PrimeTrack evaluated the new propositions to identify the strongest route and provide guidance on how to optimise it.
OUTPUT
Our client launched on the basis of our recommendations and became the category leader within three months.
Repackaging to broaden appeal
OVERVIEW
Our healthy snacking client had grown successfully since launch, but was starting to see a fall-off in growth. We recommended that they revisit their packaging design, to compete by the ‘rules’ of brands that are solely focused on taste (and use healthiness as a secondary support).
APPROACH
New pack designs were evaluated using our purchase simulation methodology. We could tell the designers how their work was ‘seen’ by target customers.
OUTPUT
Our client moved to a bold, new design with an optimised pack communication hierarchy. Our recommendation to re-balance ‘taste’ and ‘brand’ messaging was incorporated to maximise appeal.
Product innovation with savings customers
OVERVIEW
Many customers stay on ‘back book’ savings interest rates for years. Our client wanted to see if they could develop a proposition to encourage more of these people to switch. By really understanding the psychological drivers of these customers existing behaviour we would have the best opportunity to create a successful new product.
APPROACH
We relived customers’ behavioural interactions with savings accounts. Shift identified how they thought about their accounts and their interactions with it (deposits, withdrawals and statements).
OUTPUT
These savers behave like mathematically-challenged squirrels. Understanding the ‘reward’ they got from their behaviour was the key insight that led to the creation of a very successful new product.
Decoding a market to improve innovation success
OVERVIEW
Spirits have seen a move towards premiumisation. Companies have the opportunity to increase profit if they can persuade consumers that certain products are worth paying more for. Shift was tasked with identifying what led consumers to pay significantly more for a premium spirit.
APPROACH
Reliving consumer purchase decisions (with ReTrack) enabled us to identify the unconscious factors that influenced the decision to pay more for a ‘better’ spirit.
OUTPUT
The insights we provided gave our client a recipe for creating new premium brands and a clear perspective on where it should focus marketing dollars to increase the appeal of its existing products.
Changing a proposition successfully
OVERVIEW
Our client (a bank) wanted to make some significant changes to its proposition. How should they communicate the change to maximise the opportunity? Shift was tasked with seeing the brand through the bank’s customers’ eyes (and their unconscious minds).
APPROACH
We used ReTrack to explore key moments in each customer’s journey; from joining the bank to opening a statement.
OUTPUT
We uncovered a key psychological desire that defined the brand’s connection with its customers. We identified key associations and ruled out two that the bank believed mattered.
Understanding value for money decline
OVERVIEW
Our restaurant client was concerned about declining value for money scores. They wanted to know what was driving this change. Frontier Economics identified interesting anomalies in the company’s data (the most frequent users had lower VFM scores). The target was shifted to understand behavioural differences (frequency).
APPROACH
We used ReTrack across the customer journey to identify differences between frequent and infrequent customers. Without priming we could look at everything from ease of ordering to eating.
OUTPUT
We ruled out several factors that our client thought were significant and discovered that infrequent users experienced negative feelings about over-ordering (which was a result of pricing architecture).
Post-launch evaluation
OVERVIEW
Our client had launched a new variant of an established liqueur in the ‘free from’ category. They wanted to understand if it had mass appeal or not. Initial sales suggested aggressive targets were justified. However, with repurchase being infrequent, would mainstream customers repurchase? Was it cannibalising or adding new occasions to the parent brand?
APPROACH
We recreated purchase journeys to understand what was driving purchase and how buyers decoded the pack. We also recreated the consumption occasion.
OUTPUT
We established that, whilst the product’s packaging was attracting positive attention, the proposition wasn’t understood and only had niche appeal. Sales targets were revised accordingly.
Using Behavioural Insight to Drive Profitable Growth: Babies and Bathwater
OVERVIEW
Most companies know that they need to innovate to survive. But when you’re a large successful retailer, how do you ensure that the changes you make don’t undermine what appeals to the customers who are happy with your current offer?
The client’s data showed that they had two important customer groups. On every measure available they were exactly the same; where they differed was in their frequency and spend. We were tasked with investigating these differences.
[It’s worth noting that, amidst all the studies on so-called ‘irrationality’ that make behavioural economics so intriguing, the pure economics are vital in ensuring that insight work is commercially beneficial rather than ‘just’ interesting.]
APPROACH
Shift used our qualitative behavioural insight techniques to explore the experience of customers from the two groups in store and online shopping. It’s important to note that we weren’t asking these people what they thought, we were exploring the way they experienced the retailer through their behaviour to find clues to the way the store design, pricing, service and other shoppers shaped their purchase behaviour.
We also explored the shopper experience through the behavioural experiences of the shop staff. Again, our approach enabled us to unlock the unconscious drivers of their behaviour.
OUTPUT
Despite their success, prior to our work the client hadn’t had a clear understanding of what made them successful. We were able to tell them and, because we’d looked at less frequent shoppers, able to identify areas of opportunity. Our work on the drivers of employee behaviour were used by the Human Resources Director to inform recruitment practices.
Influencing the Behaviour of Pharmacists
OVERVIEW
When our client launched the most effective over the counter drug for a particular medical condition they expected that sales would naturally follow. But they didn’t.
Shift was tasked with identifying why pharmacists were only offering an inferior drug to patients and to propose strategies that the pharmaceutical company could use to address the issue.
APPROACH
We knew that direct questioning would not provide reliable, psychologically valid insights. In addition to knowing that people are usually poor witnesses to their own behaviour, there was the added complexity that people we interviewed would adopt a hyper-professional mindset; in other words, they would tell us what they should say and think, not what we knew they really did.
We positioned the research as work to explore the patient’s experience of a consultation for the condition in question. Our ReTrack interviewing technique enabled us to recreate pharmacist-patient interactions, but our focus was more on interpreting the psychology that was driving the pharmacist’s behaviour.
OUTPUT
We identified a significant number of cognitive biases that were leading pharmacists to only recommend the competing product and proposed psychological levers that could target these. This formed the basis of a creative brief and we worked alongside a creative agency to develop new, more effective communication.
More Effective Healthcare Consultations
OVERVIEW
On the face of it, healthcare professionals and patients usually want exactly the same thing – the patient to get better as quickly as possible. And yet, if you were an alien observer, you could be forgiven for thinking the opposite was true: patients can be resistant to the healthcare professional’s advice, not follow the treatment plan and sometimes arrive convinced they know better because of what they’ve read online.
Our client has a reputation for supporting healthcare professionals and wanted to explore if consumer psychology could equip them with new ways to influence patients to follow their treatment path.
APPROACH
We used our behavioural insight techniques to understand the issues from both sides: what was driving the healthcare professionals’ actions and why were patients resistant or non-compliant?
OUTPUT
Having identified why this paradox existed (which included a range of unconscious and contextual factors) we developed a number of psychological techniques for healthcare professionals that would improve the consultation for the patient and make better outcomes more likely. Our ideas were communicated through various media (including through a presentation at a specialist health conference). The reaction of healthcare professionals was overwhelmingly positive: many recognised the fact that it’s an area of critical importance to their work, but one that is barely covered in their training.
Subscriber Retention: Getting Behind the Post-rationalisations of Exit Surveys
OVERVIEW
Our client has a hugely successful subscription business. With a mature business of this kind there are (broadly) three marketing goals:
- Keep attracting new subscribers
- Grow the average revenue per subscriber
- Maximise retention (i.e. minimise the number of people who leave)
Shift was tasked with exploring the third point because the company was considering making some significant changes and wanted to be certain their insight base was as solid as possible.
APPROACH
The client had a wealth of insights from exit surveys. However, they had become aware of our founder’s work on research and post-rationalisation (see Consumer.ology, Nicholas Brealey Publishing) and realised they might not be getting an accurate picture.
Aware of the risks of asking people to post-rationalise their decision to leave, we took a different approach. We recruited people who had ended their subscriptions but concealed this topic amongst a host of other financial decisions and lifestyle choices. Using our ReTrack interviewing technique, we relived the events around the time when we knew the subscription had ended.
This included their use of our client’s service prior to them leaving and the decision to leave but, crucially, did not make this an overt focal point for respondents. We also retraced their experience from the outset of their subscription to understand how their feelings about it had changed over time.
OUTPUT
We concluded that the evidence from the exit interviews was almost entirely misleading. Where customers had justified their decision to leave by drawing on negative associations with the company’s service, we established that leaving was the result of a sequence of events:
- Their pleasure from the service had been eroded by their inability to manage the choice on offer.
- The breadth of choice made it hard to attract attention to new content, so habitual and default use of the service made it feel less exhilarating than it had.
- Importantly, a tangential trigger had caused the customer to focus on the cost of the subscription, leading to the decision to end their subscription.
- And the perspective we provided on how subscribers behaved on their platform provided clues about when and how to communicate with them.
On the basis of our insights the company changed its strategy with significant success. It put more focus on using technology to help customers manage choice, changed its marketing to convey more of the new content that was available, and increased efforts to flag and attract viewers to the new content it was creating.