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.

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.

One of the Sentient Applied Choice Architecture principles is anchoring and adjustment –defined as the influence of an arbitrary number on subsequent judgments of quantity or value (Chapman & Johnson, 2002). In this principle, the value (or “anchor”) serves as a reference point for consumers, and they form their subsequent judgments on value based on this anchor. For example, research from Ariely, Loewenstein, and Prelec (2003) showed that participants who were asked to recall the last two digits of their social security number whose digits were high (e.g., 76) were willing to pay more for a bottle of wine than participants who recalled the last two digits of their social security number whose digits were low (e.g., 12).

Traditional research is in trouble. It is suffering from what we call the “can’t say/won’t say” problem. With 95 to 99 percent of all cognitive processes occurring below conscious awareness, consumers often can’t or won’t tell us the real reasons behind their preferences and behaviors. This is troubling for the multi-billion dollar market research industry which still largely relies on self-reported data to figure out the “whens” and “whys” behind consumer decision-making.

Behavioral Science is the future of market research and insight coming out of Neuroscience and Psychology are dovetailing to produce new methodologies of tapping the consumer subconscious. Here we discuss these trends in an interview with Ed Gaskin of CMOAdvantage, detailing best practices and case studies using methods that capture consumer visceral response to products and advertising.

A compelling out-group can be one of the most galvanizing forces of in-group loyalty. This is as true for playground cliques as it is for presidential candidates. This human truth applies to brands as well, and you can use it to your advantage in the way you communicate with your customers. Whether you use inspirational positive emotion or shameful negative emotion to motivate in-group loyalty is up to you and your brand’s values.

First Command Financial Services has won a 2011 Bulldog Award for Excellence in Media and Public Relations for the Financial Behaviors Index®. Created in 2008 by First Command, the Index is a research initiative that provides timely consumer data to journalists and the news media. The Index assesses trends in the American public’s financial behaviors, attitudes and intentions through a monthly survey of approximately 1,000 U.S. consumers aged 25 to 70 with annual household incomes of at least $50,000.

Admitting that a brand is part of your self-identity is difficult to do. Can you imagine admitting to the following “Pepsi is part of who I am.”? Or this: “Starbucks represents how I want to present myself as a person.”? Those are easy to dismiss off the cuff, yet years of research tells us that we do connect personally with the brands that we buy, and that we use “brand badges” to reflect aspects our personality to the world. The trouble with traditional research methods is that consumers often can’t or won’t admit to that reality.

  In this video, hosted the Pulse’s Ed Gaskin, Dr. Aaron Reid and Julie Hall (Schneider PR) discuss successful product launches from 2010. Reid and Hall explain how particular marketing and social campaigns contribute a product’s popularity, using the top ten product launches of 2010 as a benchmark. These strategies, Reid explains, are ubiquitous and can be utilized in any part of a productpositioning campaign.