Take your consumers to a shrink: Profiling consumer motivation for influencing their behaviour

1. Elina Halonen, The Irrational Agency, UK
Festival of NewMR 2012 - Main Stage - Session 5
A
Presenta*on
from
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of
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Main
Stage
5
December
2012
The Quick and the Dead
A manifesto for change in the market research industry
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Elina
Halonen
The
Irra:onal
Agency

2. Elina Halonen, The Irrational Agency, UK
Festival of NewMR 2012 - Main Stage - Session 5
Take your consumers to a shrink
Profiling consumer motivation for
influencing their behaviour
Elina Halonen | The Irrational Agency

3. Elina Halonen, The Irrational Agency, UK
Festival of NewMR 2012 - Main Stage - Session 5
Once upon a time…
…the results of a research project are wildly
different from a project conducted by another
agency for the client
…you’ve felt confident about your
recommendations to a client (internal or
external), yet implementation falls short of
expectations
Seem familiar?

4. Elina Halonen, The Irrational Agency, UK
Festival of NewMR 2012 - Main Stage - Session 5
Our job as researchers is to understand consumers and help our
clients to influence their behaviour
We know consumers are not all the same so we get under their
skin by using
Are we missing something?
demographic,
socioeconomic
psychographic measures…
We’re often still left guessing how to…
influence their behaviour, and
predict their reactions to marketers’
attempts to persuade them

5. Elina Halonen, The Irrational Agency, UK
Festival of NewMR 2012 - Main Stage - Session 5
So, what do we do?
We measure things that we think are important factors in the
consumer’s decision making…
attitudes
values
tastes
Important!
We still assume the way in
which consumers make
decisions is the same…
…but is it?
20 years of consumer psychology research suggests
that there are significant individual differences
when it comes to the way in which we make
purchase decisions

6. Elina Halonen, The Irrational Agency, UK
Festival of NewMR 2012 - Main Stage - Session 5
Ok, so what do we need to do?
To persuade consumers…
…we need to understand their deeper goals and motivations
Discovering these deeper needs will help us understand…
how much information consumers seek before a purchase
how they interpret the information they find, and
what types of marketing tactics are likely to be most effective
It helps us uncover the most effective
triggers for influencing their behaviour
These are characteristics of the way in which they make
decisions, regardless of category or product, and consistent with
the way in which they act in all their decisions.

7. Elina Halonen, The Irrational Agency, UK
Festival of NewMR 2012 - Main Stage - Session 5
And why do we need to understand this?
When consumers are making a purchase decision, they select a
decision strategy based on what best meets their personal goals for
that situation, guided by individual motivational traits
Affects…
how much they think about
the purchase
how they think about it
how confident they need to
feel with their decision
how they use the
information available to
them
In other words…
how much/in what ways they
think about products/
marketing messages
how they use cues/arguments
in their decision making
how marketers can influence
purchase decisions…

8. Elina Halonen, The Irrational Agency, UK
Festival of NewMR 2012 - Main Stage - Session 5
Four motivational traits drive decisions
Need for cognition
1
Need for
cognitive closure
2
Need for affect
3
Need for
uniqueness
4
How much you enjoy
thinking
How quickly you want
to make a decision
How much emotion you
want to experience
How unique you need to
feel

9. Elina Halonen, The Irrational Agency, UK
Festival of NewMR 2012 - Main Stage - Session 5
“Thinking is my idea of fun”
Need for cognition
1 How much you enjoy
thinking
How it affects purchase behaviour…
• High NFC consumers more likely to carefully consider their
purchases and less swayed by heuristic cues like celebrity
endorsement in advertising – more likely to base attitudes
on evaluation of product attributes
• Low NFC consumers more sensitive to the mere presence
of a promotion without carefully considering the actual
discount – positive effects on value perceptions and
shopping intentions
• Humorous advertising generates more favourable
responses from low NFC

10. Elina Halonen, The Irrational Agency, UK
Festival of NewMR 2012 - Main Stage - Session 5
“I can’t wait to decide!”
Need for
cognitive closure
2 How quickly you want to
make a decision
How it affects purchase behaviour…
• High NFCL consumers want to make a decision
quickly and limit their information search à rely
more on heuristics and tangible benefits to
make a decision (e.g. stereotypical judgments
based on country of origin of product)
• High NFCL prefer well-known brands à
confidence in their decision
• Price is a stronger quality cue for high NFCL
consumers

11. Elina Halonen, The Irrational Agency, UK
Festival of NewMR 2012 - Main Stage - Session 5
“I’m just not feeling it…”
Need for affect
3 How much emotion you
want to feel
How it affects purchase behaviour…
• High NFA consumers will be more
affected by emotional advertising à
they want to experience strong
emotional states
• Consumers high in NFA prefer visual
information over verbal information
• More likely to have extreme attitudes,
impulse shopping, preference for brand
names with strong emotional cues…

12. Elina Halonen, The Irrational Agency, UK
Festival of NewMR 2012 - Main Stage - Session 5
“I’m different, just like everyone else.”
Need for
uniqueness
4 How unique you need to
feel
How it affects purchase behaviour…
• Tendency to pursue uniqueness through
consumption
• Desire for scarce, innovative and
customised products… High NFU
consumers more likely to make
unconventional choices
• Opinion leadership, market mavenism…

13. Elina Halonen, The Irrational Agency, UK
Festival of NewMR 2012 - Main Stage - Session 5
How do we use this?
Established and scientifically validated scales available
in the academic literature
Scales can be used for…
profiling in segmentations, U&A’s, ad testing etc.
à predicting consumer reactions to
marketing activities more accurately
recruitment screeners to avoid psychologically
biased samples or ensure specific target audiences
à achieving a higher level of consistency
over projects

14. Elina Halonen, The Irrational Agency, UK
Festival of NewMR 2012 - Main Stage - Session 5
On reflection…
Current ways of profiling consumers are not enough to accurately
measure and predict their reactions to marketing actions
We need to uncover consumers’ deeper needs and goals
à crucial for us as researchers and especially for our clients to
understand if we want to figure out the most effective
triggers to influence their behaviour
Motivational profiling adds a deeper layer of understanding of
consumers’ needs in addition to demographic and psychographic
measures
à helps us predict more accurately how different groups of
consumers will react to marketing activities such as advertising
and pricing, and provide genuinely actionable recommendations
for our clients.

15. Elina Halonen, The Irrational Agency, UK
Festival of NewMR 2012 - Main Stage - Session 5
Thank you!
Elina Halonen

16. Elina Halonen, The Irrational Agency, UK
Festival of NewMR 2012 - Main Stage - Session 5
Q & A
Leonard
Murphy
Greenbook
Elina
Halonen
The
Irra:onal
Agency

17. Elina Halonen, The Irrational Agency, UK
Festival of NewMR 2012 - Main Stage - Session 5
Elina Halonen
Company website @ http://www.theirrationalagency.com
Read The Irrational Agency blog @ http://theirrationalagency.wordpress.com
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Connect with Elina on LinkedIn @ http://uk.linkedin.com/in/elina.halonen