L'economia comportamentale indica come le decisioni, in situazioni di complessità siano semplificate attraverso euristiche efficaci. La comprensione dei meccanismi decisionali però non può prescindere nemmeno dall'interpretazione razionale. Il meccanismo di scelta è dunque un sistema individuale, costruito e modellato dalla memoria affettiva e da motivazioni razionali. Per una interpretazione olistica dobbiamo rispettare l'essere umano in quanto individuo, unendo l'insight che l'economia comportamentale ci propone con le conoscenze che le altre scienze comportamentali ci offrono.

1. Brain Game
Behavioural economics: the complete picture?
In Focus
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2. Behavioural economics: the complete picture?
In Focus
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3. Behavioural economics: the complete picture?
The picture here shows a young couple
taking part in one of shopping’s great
rituals – the search for an engagement
ring. It’s a routine that’s been
established in the consumer mainstream
since the late 1930s – and you would
think that by now we would have a
pretty robust idea of what takes place on
such occasions.
However, our view of this and other
familiar shopping scenes has been
transformed in recent years. We now
know that an unseen landscape of
contextual and unconscious factors has
the potential to sway our couple’s choice
in ways that they may well, themselves,
be completely unaware of. The playing
field of choice is by no means level – and
we can’t resist the challenge of working
out exactly how it might be slanted.
In Focus
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4. Behavioural economics: the complete picture?
In Focus
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5. Behavioural economics: the complete picture?
Choose your heuristics
When doing so, we could start by looking
at the fast and frugal heuristics, the
mental rules of thumb that our brains use
to guide our decision-making, and which
prevent us agonising over every possible
permutation of our choices. These
heuristics are the product of our own
experiences as well as psychological,
social, cultural and market influences. The
reality of which heuristics we follow in
different circumstances is often as
individual as we are.
The jewellery industry has worked hard to
establish its own convention governing
the judgement of wedding ring
purchases: a man should spend the
equivalent of two months’ income on the
ring that he buys for his future wife. If we
can establish whether our couple are
likely to be following this consciously
created heuristic then we may take a very
different view of the price of ring they are
likely to buy than if we went on their
preferences and purchasing power alone.
However, just because a heuristic
theoretically exists does not mean that
somebody is necessarily following it. This
particular heuristic was deliberately
established by the marketing of De Beers
in the early 20th century, and it is most
likely to be followed in western markets,
and in particular the USA. Consumers in
other cultures may follow it but they may
equally be unaware of it – or consciously
reject it, if it were pointed out to them
(by a helpful sales assistant, for
example).
In Focus
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6. Behavioural economics: the complete picture?
Indeed, there are plenty of alternative
heuristics that our couple could be following
in this scenario, many of which are shaped
by personal experience. Some men, when
buying jewellery for their wife or partner (a
purchase with more than its fair share of
subjective pressures and second-guesses)
will follow a version of the familiarity
heuristic and buy the item that is most
similar to something they have bought for
them on a previous occasion; others will
always opt for a jewel that matches the
colour of their wife’s eyes. Many will make
use of brands, which can themselves act as
heuristics, to guide their perceptions of
quality and value.
Such heuristics are classic examples of
bounded rationality in action, wherein we
deliberately simplify choices to make them
more manageable. All involve our jewellery
purchasers effectively putting artificial
constraints on their decision; constraints
that are designed to steer them towards an
acceptable choice whilst significantly
reducing the degree of angst involved.
Gigerenzer’s ‘stopping rule’ describes how
using a clearly defined hierarchy of
heuristics to judge a decision prevents us
from having to weigh up all the options in
the style of a wholly rational neo-classical
economist. If weighing up our choices
according to the first rule of thumb in our
hierarchy produces a clear winner, there is
no need to consider any further.
In Focus
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7. Behavioural economics: the complete picture?
Minding the rationality gap
An appreciation of heuristics and bounded rationality
brings us significantly closer to understanding why
many human decisions (wedding ring purchases are
one example, although the choice of drink in a pub or
breakfast cereal in a supermarket are just as
applicable) do not fit with what we might expect if we
sat down with pen, paper and calculator and worked
out likely courses of action according to the neoclassical economic model; or indeed, if we took brand
tracker surveys at face value and expected people to
make the choices they say they will and buy the
brands they say they prefer. Heuristics are accessed
at the moment of decision, by our experiencing self
that deals with the day-to-day business of life, rather
than by our remembering self, which evaluates and
explains it afterwards (and handles the task of filling
out questionnaires). As such they help to explain why
consumers themselves cannot always accurately
predict what they will do. However, heuristics do not
in themselves provide us with a complete
understanding of our happy couple.
In Focus
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8. Behavioural economics: the complete picture?
In Focus
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9. Behavioural economics: the complete picture?
Contextual triggers
In our picture, the importance of physical
context begins with the shopping mall
itself, or to be precise where the
shopping mall is located. Is in an
upmarket, sophisticated part of town
that has framed the couple’s decision
making in a way that tends them
towards a more expensive purchase? Did
they take special trip to get here, setting
expectations that this is a unique
shopping experience justifying a unique
purchase price? Or is the ma in fact,
around the corner from their home
district, somewhere they walk through
every day? Is the jewellery store one
they have passed on numerous occasions
on the way to buy something else? In
such a case they may well be less predisposed to paying an ‘out of the
ordinary’ price. sorts of subconscious
phenomena, defined and described by
behavioural economics experiments,
could be at work in helping to prime our
couple to spend more or less on their
ring. Transaction utility describes how
we are predisposed to pay more for
something that we visualise in an
expensive setting; priming helps to
explain how we enjoy things more when
we are told that they are more expensive
(through their being sold in an upmarket
store in an upmarket location or simply
commanding the biggest price tag);
anchoring shows how unrelated
numbers can affect our judgements,
suggesting that if our jewellery store
stands next to a display of expensive
sports cars it may dispose our couple to
pay more for the rings in front of them.
And it would be a dangerous oversight to
ignore the role of our own visceral mood
states in swaying decisions: the types of
day that our couple have experienced are
themselves a form of context that could
exert significant influence over their
choices.
In Focus
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10. Behavioural economics: the complete picture?
Beware the decoy
When it comes to comparing
rings and choosing the one for
them, our couple are likely to be
influenced by the manner in
which the rings are displayed –
and their relationship to one
another. Let’s say that they have
narrowed their choice down to
two rings, one of which is set
with three emeralds (matching
the lady’s eyes) and two
diamonds and costs US$3,000;
the other set with a single
emerald and single diamond and
costing US$2,500. They are torn
because it is difficult to weigh up
the additional cost against the
additional gemstones,
particularly given the fact that
this is also a subjective
judgement about which ring is
most aesthetically pleasing, and
which suits them best.
Now let us consider a third ring,
conveniently placed between the
two, which costs US$3,200 and
is set with two emeralds and a
single diamond. Our couple are
unlikely to choose this ring
(since its gemstones are
relatively far more expensive
than the other two), but its
presence significantly increases
their likelihood of choosing the
first ring over the second. It acts
as a decoy, providing a basis for
comparison between the other
two. Since the first ring is both
less expensive than this third
ring and contains more gems, it
is more likely to be chosen than
the second ring, which is less
expensive than the third, but
contains fewer gems.
In Focus
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11. Behavioural economics: the complete picture?
Now imagine that our third ring is taken absolute value but by their prediction of
away and replaced by another, which is its value to them. They are buying not a
set with only a single diamond but costs collection of gems and precious metals
US$2,750. Suddenly the comparison
but a token of their love for one another
shifts in favour of the second ring,
and a promise of future happiness. In
which now contains more gems than the weighing up the cost of rings with the
decoy whilst costing less. Our first ring difference their choice may make to
also contains more gems than the decoy their future lives together, they are
but it also costs more. In this scenario, asked to distinguish between two very
the second ring becomes the ring more different forms of value. The task of
likely to be chosen.
assessing which form of value
Or does it?
dominates our judgement in a given
Because at the end of the day, the
situation is one of the most challenging
couple are not diamond or sapphire
for behavioural economics – and for
traders. Their choice of ring is not
research in general.
directed by their perceptions of its
In Focus
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12. Behavioural economics: the complete picture?
Distinction bias and affect Studies of distinction bias
suggest that human beings tend to over-estimate the
value of something that can be quantified, whilst
under-stating the value of something that cannot.
When faced with a choice between a stimulating and
fulfilling job paying US$60,000 a year and a tedious
one paying US$70,000, it seems that we are
predisposed (depressingly enough) to go for the bigger
paycheck. This might lead us to conclude that our
husband-to-be may hold back from spending more on
a ring just because it is more strikingly beautiful and
may make his wife and himself happier for life. But
wait: there are other forces stirring in this balancing
act. Behavioural economics experiments also point to
the influence of affective value (the extent to which
things align with our deepest personal motivations and
desires) over the monetary decisions that we make –
and behavioural economists are well aware of the
phenomena of loss aversion, whereby the threat of
loss is weighted far more heavily than the promise of
gain. How do such factors influence the value that we
place on efforts to make our partner happy for life?
In Focus
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13. Behavioural economics: the complete picture?
In Focus
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14. Behavioural economics: the complete picture?
In Focus
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15. For further info, please contact:
Gabriella Bergaglio
Marketing Mnager TNS Italia
Tel. +39.02.2707.2299
@: gabriella.bergaglio@tnsglobal.com
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