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

The “Do as I say not as I do” paradigm may work for Moms and their kids, but when it comes to consumers and marketers, the exact opposite holds true.  Marketers should in fact, follow what consumers do rather than what they say.

Sentient recently partnered with Schneider Associates to conduct the Tenth Annual Most Memorable New Product Launch Survey. The results of this study have been published in USA Today and can also be accessed at MMNPL. Despite the large number of new products launched in 2011, there were a few that were especially memorable to consumers. Kinect for Xbox 360 topped the list, with 27 percent of Americans identifying it as one of the most memorable products of 2011, though the Nintendo 3DS and 2011 Chevrolet Volt were not far behind, tying for second place. Interestingly, memorability of new products this year was dramatically lower than that of 2010, with the Apple iPad being voted as most memorable in 2010 by 42 percent of Americans.

If you’re interested in establishing and maintaining your brand as your targeted customers’ preferred choice (and why wouldn’t you be?), understanding and applying Predecisional Distortion – a behavioral economics irrationality – could be your answer.  In this article, we define Predecisional Distortion and describe how you can apply it to establish and maintain your brand’s preference and choice.

Complete the sentence. Every kiss begins with ____. If you consider yourself a marketing buff or a jewelry aficionado, you probably recognize the Kay Jewelers tagline: Every kiss begins with Kay™. Read that again and you might experience one of two reactions. Either you’re Mapquesting the nearest jewelry store, or you’re thinking, “Nonsense — I don’t need to show my love by buying diamonds for my significant other.” Advertisers are banking on the former, but they should expect the latter, according to the consumer behavior literature. Recent studies indicate that certain marketing tactics can produce a behavioral backlash, known to psychologists as a reverse prime.

The future of marketing can be found today in the behavioral science literature. As an industry, it is our job to reveal the whys behind consumer behavior, and the disciplines of Psychology, Neuroscience, Sociology, Behavioral Economics, and Cultural Anthropology, all provide advanced understanding and insights on consumer behavior that have yet to be applied on a large scale. This is why we believe this enduring truth: as long as the behavioral sciences continue to advance human understanding of the fundamental drivers of consumer behavior, the future of marketing will be found in those insights.

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.

Before we get into the “business” of this article, if you have 3 minutes and 33 seconds to spare, we invite you to listen to Amy Winehouse’s version of the classic song Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? It’s a great track and we think you’ll enjoy it.  Just click on the picture below.  When you’re finished, return to the article and we’ll explain how it applies.