Sentient Insight: the business blog for consumer psychology and consumer marketing

Sentient Decision Science, Inc. received the 2011 EXPLOR Award.  Please click to watch the 2011 EXPLOR Awards video.

Aaron Reid and Will Leach at "The Market Research Event" 2011   This morning, Sentient Decision Science, with partner PepsiCo, was awarded the 2011 EXPLOR Award. Presented at IIR’s “The Market Research Event”, the EXPLOR Award recognizes the most compelling, high impact example of innovation and technology advancing research. A world-class judging panel – from noteworthy organizations such as General Mills, GfK, NBC Universal and Wharton – selected Sentient Decision Science, with partner PepsiCo, as a finalist out of an elite field of contenders, including finalists Hewlett-Packard/QualVu and Microsoft/Blue Ocean.

How behavioral science could have turned a multi-million dollar mistake into a multi-million dollar topline growth. When Netflix imposed a 60% increase in the prices consumers paid for their movie rental and streaming subscription service, naturally, consumers were not happy. Netflix did the rational math to determine price per subscriber and the percentage of subscribers per distribution channel etc., etc.  The logical math would have shown that only a small percentage of their consumers would be impacted and that they should press on with the increase.  However, underestimating the impact of consumer emotions and not factoring in the degree of those consumers around their willingness to pay more proved to be a critical misstep.

There is so much that we can see in this world, yet did you know what we can’t see can in fact be perceived by the brain? It sounds pretty scary when our behavior is influenced by factors that we can’t see or explain, but it is so true. This actually happened at the 23rd Annual Convention of Association of Psychological Science where a group of psychologists sitting in the same room were presented an invisible target prime by a French psychologist named Stanislas Dehaene. Dr. Dehaene has dedicated most of his research career to the study of consciousness using priming methods.

A world-class judging team has selected Sentient Decision Science, with partner PepsiCo, as a finalist for the most compelling, high impact example of innovation and technology advancing research in 2011. Sentient and PepsiCo are joined by an elite field of finalists including Hewlett-Packard, QualVu, Microsoft, and Blue Ocean.