Ponencia de Colin Strong en el VI #CongresoDEC

2. Colin Strong
GLOBAL LEAD FOR BEHAVIOURAL SCIENCE
AT IPSOS
The Adaptive Consumer
WHY WE NEED TO RETHINK MODELS
OF CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR

3. • Behaviorism assumed that human behaviour
could be understood with animal
experiments
• Assumes our behaviour is the result of
stimulus and responses that we have been
exposed to in our pasts
• May be both recent and over longer spans
of our lives
• Much of the theoretical underpinnings of
marketing still have it as an implied theory
• Various models of habit as well as heuristics,
for example, are arguably informed by this
We often have a ‘lab rat’ model of consumers:

4. Making things easy makes sense
“If you want to
encourage someone to
do something, make it
easy.”
Richard Thaler
• By making things easy, then we facilitate
established ways of thinking and behaving
• It is generally understood in behavioural
science that ‘ease’ is a key way of
ensuring that desired behaviours are
undertaken
• The ‘Customer Effort’ score in market
research has also long shown that the
more easy it is to do something then
• We facilitate more automatic responses
learned responses when we make things
easy

5. Just as with riding a bike – we learn and master
• Most of the time these automatic responses
work well – they are the results of
effective adaptation
• We are not infallible but we have worked
out how to navigate a whole range of
categories – so we no longer have to think
about it
• We have worked out our preferences,
mastered our environment so the role of
marketing communications is often to help
confirm our preferences and gently nudge
us in a desired direction
• But within our existing framework of
understanding and preferences

6. Big challenge is now managing change in a disrupted world:
There are huge global trends that are fundamentally changing long established dynamics
Past societal gatekeepers that used to manage things on behalf of citizens have
less influence:

7. Less about reinforcing existing behaviours and more about navigating changing
environments
So the big challenge is managing change in a disrupted
world:

8. HOW WE OPERATE IN AN ADAPTIVE
WAY TO CHANGING ENVIRONMENTS
The Adaptive
Consumer

9. Humans are not simply automatic
“Humans aren’t simply automata carrying out plans of
action in response to external stimuli, based on
biological ad neurological mechanisms. Humans are
pro-active, not just reactive to the world around them.”
Dr Magda Osman
Queen Mary University of London

10. Sometimes we navigate change:
• Associations work well to help us to adapt to
stable environments
• We understand how to navigate them
• So theories that focus on automatic
behaviours have good explanatory value
• But when things change, then that aspect of
ourselves which is more automatic is less
important
• We now need new ways of understanding
consumer behaviour

11. We bring tools to help us navigate a situation:
GOALS
Motivation, needs,
preferences etc
SELF
Knowledge, memory,
attitudes
BODY
Bodily states

12. THE SCIENCE OF BEHAVIOUR
CHANGE OR ‘BEYOND NUDGE’
What We Do

13. Process for actively navigating change:
• This process of behaviour change allows us to think
carefully about the stages involved
• We need careful thinking through each of these
stages, informed by behavioural science
• This is drawn from the Behaviour Change Wheel
developed by Susan Mitche and colleagues at UCL
• We have adapted this for our own activities
STAGE 1:
Identify the behaviour
1. Define the problem in behavioural terms
2. Select the target behavior
3. Specify the target behaviour
STAGE 2:
Identify the barriers
4. Barriers to desired outcome
STAGE 3:
Identify intervention
options
5. Intervention functions
6. Intervention delivery
STAGE 4:
Identify means of
improvement
7. Test impact interventions on behaviours
8. Refine interventions

14. Change challenges we deal with
SOFT DRINKS
how do I encourage consumers to buy low / no sugar csd
rather than alternatives?
Change challenge: Awareness of sugar
VACCINES
how can I drive take-up?
Change challenge: Social media
CONTACTLESS PAYMENTS
How can I encourage use of contactless?
Change challenge: Tech changing
payments landscape
WEBSITE VISITS
how can I get more visits and dwell time?
Change challenge: Proliferation of media
PERSONAL CARE
how do I drive take-up of solid shampoo?
Change challenge: Awareness of environment
PUBLIC TRANSPORT
how can I make get people take public transport to the
airport?
Change challenge: Tech driving private car usage

15. How do we get people to engage?
• One of the downsides of ease is that
people are often doing things in a semi-
automatic fashion
• But we don’t necessarily want them to
operate semi-automatically
• Sometimes we want them to stop and
behave differently – engage more and
think (e.g. Santander)
• Or we want to use this as a means by
which people engage in a meaningful
way (UX design)

16. Emotional attachment changes behaviour
Our latest data shows that while there are
benefits associated to creating functional
satisfaction
Gains can be achieved in terms of ‘business
success metrics’ as relationship strength
progresses up the hierarchy
Emotionally attached customers’ likelihood to
continue with a brand following a negative
experience is 10 times higher than among
unfulfilled customers

17. BUCET Model of social relationships
• Belonging: Need to build and be a part of strong stable
relationships.
• Understanding: Socially shared understanding to predict
what could happen and make sense of what happened.
• Controlling: Feeling effective in managing one’s social
environment and self
• Enhancing Self: Placing a special status to protect, improve,
and maintain a sense of self.
• Trusting Others: The need to know whom to trust and the
rules that specify the nature of trusting relationships
Understanding the psychology of relating:
As our starting point we used the work
of Susan Fiske – framework that
resonated strongest
We have been using this to find ways to
make digital experience relevant and
sticky
Superficial stimuli or experiences will be
processed at a shallower level, leading
to weaker retention
Deeper processing leads to stronger
representations and retention due to
greater involvement and personal
importance in the experience.

18. Diagnosing & measuring engagement:
We developed a question set based on Susan
Fiske’s work – so it could be applied to
consumer relationships with brands
This has been used to assess the psychology of
relationship characteristics across sectors
Can be used as a diagnostic tool to assess ways
in which to better design more effective
relationships – creating a more relevant and
sticky experience
A design brief is generated helping to identify
those aspects of the relationship that can be
enhanced

19. Designing CX to enhance engagement:
The next stage in the process is to then assess
ways in which to design the customer
experience to meet the brief
There is a huge literature other way different
aspects of design can influence psychological
and behavioural outcomes
By using 5 Forces, we link these to a more
strategic change agenda
We test the impact of these different levers on
consumer outcomes

20. 1 What is the right balance between faciliating automatic response and managing
change?
2
What do you understand about the behavioural mechanisms? What is the underlying
behavioural science?
3 How can I use science to inform intervention design and make change happen?