The Artemis Strategy Group MOTIVATIONS ASSESSMENT PROGRAM™ (MAP) is an initiative based on primary, proprietary research to inspire marketing and communications leaders. MAP research focuses on issues relevant to leaders working in financial, health and nutrition, and association and non-profit services in the private and public sectors.
Our most recent round of MAP research dives deep into what motivates decision-making in two critical aspects of people’s lives: health and finances. In summer 2016, the Artemis team completed both qualitative and quantitative research probing into significant trends in consumer behavior and priorities.
This presentation provides a summary report on particular findings related to the landscape of financial decisions of Americans. Please contact us for more information on our findings, or to see how we can make our MAP initiative work for your organization.
MAP is an ongoing research program focused on financial and health decision making. In this review, we describe an analysis of our most recent major survey to identify major population trends and patterns. The depth of the database focused around financial decisions provides opportunities to further probe questions about specific audiences, problems or ideas. This presentation is focused on one of the central discoveries in this round of research: further evidence of a changing financial decision paradigm among Americans. At the back of this presentation we provide a brief description of the full scope of the MAP research program, and the kinds of questions we’re able to address through this research or studies like it.
As we examine the financial decision landscape the notion of stability comes through more and more prominently.
No matter how far above water you get stability is still an issue
Aspiration is harder to find
The ground is shifting below you
Search for control and the absence of support structure
Flat is the new growth
The expansion of information and the need to manage it
Contrast with health care: no navigators
These contextual questions show that while Americans have multiple goals in their financial lives, the majority of Americans are focused either on stabilizing, protecting or recovering their financial circumstances.
The divide between those seeking to achieve more financial comfort and those who have it is manifested in measures of satisfaction.
A strikingly large portion of Americans feel they are actually doing worse than others their own age. It’s a sense of relative deprivation that is pervasive.
Anxiety is a trigger but not a driver in any particular direction. Anxious people do a lot of things. But what it mostly does is spur action. But it does not guide what you do. What you do is based on your culture, your goals, your contenxt. It is not based on your actual level of anxiety. It doesn’t predict that you’ll do certain things.
Confidence vs vulnerablity
Anxiety is a powerful force that appears to be growing in importance, especially in relation to financial decision making. People who are struggling tend to be more anxious than others, though people at all levels of financial comfort or discomfort, and with widely differing goals all experience anxiety to some extent. In many respects anxiety represents a negative phenomenon. But anxiety has many dimensions, not all negative. And the impact of anxiety on financial decisions similarly can range from massive to non-existent. Understanding how anxiety interacts with financial decision making is a central objective of this research.
From our years of financial services studies, we’ve seen a relatively common set of thought patterns associated with financial decisions. Depending on the specific product or service being studied one common line of thought is how a specific activity will fit in with the rest of one’s life, helping people to maintain their standard of living in various ways to the end of achieving financial security. In many instances we’ve seen financial services as a critical tool to help people achieve particular aspirations.
Now we see a new line of thought emerging with much greater frequency. It reflects a need as well as an opportunity for greater personal involvement in the management of one’s financial affairs through active decision making. And that puts greater pressure on individuals to make the right call; to be smart and personally responsible. The aspiration that derives from this often is couched in more modest terms than we are used to hearing; stability rather than security or accomplishment.
Know credit score
Know how much they need for reitrement
The rapid expansion of computer access to financial accounts, tools and information, accelerated through the use of mobile devices, offers a response to this increased burden of individual responsibility.
