Why marketers should stop asking customers why they do things
Consumer responses to the question of ‘why’ are often unintentional lies and therefore the wrong basis for marketing insight, say Ashton Bishop and Gary Wilkinson in a piece that first appeared in Encore.
You are a liar. And so are your customers. Okay, so now you’re offended. We don’t like to think of ourselves as liars. Why? Because lying suggests self-serving manipulation and deceit. So what about when we’re not being manipulative, self-serving, deceitful or otherwise – but we’re still fibbing? It’s called confabulation and we all do it all of the time.
Marketers frequently ask customers and prospects why they do things. Many accept the responses at face value and then spend scarce marketing budget using these responses to guide their actions. There is enough evidence to suggest that this spend is based on falsehood or at least only half the story – our rationalised reasons. This information is important – you don’t want to contradict your customer’s rationalized view of the world. But reinforcing it won’t get them to choose you.
At the 2012 German Neuroscience Congress the headline consensus was that 95 per cent of the brain’s thinking processes are not made available to the conscious mind. Trust the Germans to quantify something – but what an acknowledgement of the lack of conscious control we have over most of our decisions. You might have heard that we make emotional decisions then make rational justifications, but it’s different when we experience it. Try it now.
What’s your mother’s maiden name? Say it. Okay, how did you recall it? If you came up with an answer to the ‘how’, you are a liar. We can call you that with a 95 per cent degree of confidence. We don’t consciously know how we access memories, why we like things, why we choose things; but this doesn’t stop us making up reasons very easily. The phenomenon occurs between our two-hemisphered brain and it has been proven scientifically in split-brain patients (when the connections between the two sides of the brain have been surgically severed). The experiment went like this. The patient is given an input to the right hemisphere only with an instruction to walk. The patient gets up and starts to walk. The researcher then asks them why they got up. The left hemisphere then jumps in and the patient confidently tells the researcher: “I need a glass of water.” Lab-proven confabulation.
In another experiment the much reviewed social psychologists Richard Nisbett and Timothy Wilson placed four sets of stockings outside a department store and asked women to select the ones of the highest quality. The ones placed on the far right were the clear winner. The pairs were actually identical. What is really interesting was the reaction of the test subjects who thought the researchers were mad – couldn’t they see that the far right was clearly the best quality?
We’re all masters at confabulations. We do this to fill in the blanks that make life more comfortable. We have a blind spot that’s about two per cent of our total vision and it’s right in the middle of our eyes. Do we see it? No, we have a visual confabulation that fills it in. We do the same with our rationalistion of decisions. What is needed to complete the picture is an understanding of what really drives behavior through observation or experimental design, just like Nisbett and Wilson’s stocking experiment.
Ashton Bishop is the head of strategy at Step Change Marketing and Gary Wilkinson is a behavioural psychologist and founder of Blisspoint Research.
This feature first appeared in Encore. Download it now on iPad, iPhone and Android tablet devices.
The best research I’ve seen tends to not ask the consumer anything. In my opinion the more you ask the consumer questions the less reliable/ valid the research tends to become.
Nice article.
Correct Adam and correct Ashton and Garry.
We view ourselves as independent thinkers but everyone else are sheep.
The introspection illusion.
This is one of the reasons that good mass media advertising – that knows nothing particular about you as an individual – will often be more relevant than the highly ‘personalised’ and ‘targeted’ ads your are served on online, and while the individual may not consciously acknowledge this – we unconsciously register it’s simple availability – and the advertising has had it’s effect.
We believe what comes most easily to mind in the context. Often without thinking.
And likewise, in focus groups and surveys, asking people about their own preferences or to articulate their reasons for a particular behaviour leads to false findings and failed campaigns.
However asking people what they believe others might do is a better indicator of the likely behaviour of the subjects.
Similarly with social influence. While subjects are quick to spot the impact of copying , except when that influence is on themselves.
In general, yep, it’s probably good practice to ignore reports or studies where the findings are based on people rationalising their own thoughts or behaviours because they are an illusion. We are routinely pretty bad witnesses to our own behaviour, we fail to detect aspects of ourselves that most others can clearly see.
However ask us what we think other people might do will give better clues.
Why do we ask Why?
Simply to apply that logic to another campaign/ product etc?
Why do i buy coke ahead of pepsi, Im told that pepsi tastes better in blind tests, im told all the other people like me who think they prefer coke, acrtually when blind tested preferred pepsi and yet i still prefer coke, Why?
I dont know.
Great piece.
I think there’s still value in asking what people think, and as Eaon says, what people think others are doing, as it helps identify the key levers to change that behaviour. If we can compare with observational/experimental data, and identify the discrepancy/dissonance, we know what buttons to push.
Agreed Adam.
To paraphrase Stephan Buck from AGB UK some 20 years ago … “It is better not to ask people what they think they will do, or what they thought they did, but to observe them actually doing it”. Mind you, observational research is not always possible.
Post purchase/action rationalisation has been around a long time, and so has ‘its not you its me’ and a whole barrow of lies we tell ourselves about ourselves.
Insight from consumers is even less likely if we put them in focus groups and create an expectation that they are being studied and probed -that’s when they start telling us what they really think they want us to hear. They provide themselves with the narrative that makes sense to them as to why they are there. And that’s usually completely useless to anyone that is drilling for insights.
Yet eavesdrop on a tram or catch someone in an unscripted moment without the blinds drawn so tightly and much more is revealed about who they are and what they stand for.
And this is complicated people’s tendency to be professional consumers and gab on about branding and targeting, ( and perhaps Gruen) which makes research appear more dumbed down when its actually more challenging and more in need of skilled people actually doing it.
Good article and the foundation to UX/Customer Experience. Don’t ask people, as they may give a rational reason but as the article says 95 % of decision making happens in the subconscious. Usually when a company asks a question , they already have the answer in mind and the questioning is therefore biased.
By observing and learning from customers, you are most likely to understand the context of the use of your product and service and how it fits with your customers world.
Ask a rational question and you’ll get a rational (and often unhelpful) answer. A lot of good research uses inferential question techniques to obtain insights in an indirect way. There are also a number of mulitvariate analysis techniques to ascertain what factors matter most to people without asking them directly.
Most people who have worked in movies know that preview or sneak screenings need special attention to the notes.
“Too long” doesn’t mean clipping a bit out will fix it, maybe it really means ‘boring in the middle’. And “couldn’t get into it” might mean a crisper opening is needed or a clearer narrative with more direct story line.
We’ve used video of screenings in comedies to see where the laughs happen – surprisingly they start before the gag. The audience anticipates.
What does that mean? It means show ’em the banana peel before the walking toff. Intercut banana, fat man walking, banana, fat man walking etc.
To get better results from surveys, ask better questions. Not “how often do you clean your house?” but “how often do most people clean their house?’
It used to be you could learn a person’s monthly income by asking how much is the most anyone should spend on buying a watch. Damn smartphones, nobody uses watches anymore… or DO they?
Have fun, ask some about their watches. Ask others “how old is OLD?” See what the Interns say.
Ask “what’s the average house cost?” Not YOUR house, an average house.
We might imagine a range of answers but be surprised by the real range of answers.
Tony Robbins says there’s only two important questions: “what’s the most important thing about blank?’ and “how do you know when you’ve got it?”
Most important thing about cars? Safety, economy, speed, colour, comfort, economy, environmentally clean, quiet, loud, sophisticated, exclusive, cheap, imported, local.
How do you know you’re got (whatever)? red, electric, diesal, Porsche, Holden, under $20,000, under $100,000, ABS, side-impact etc etc etc.
Build a better mousetrap – ask better questions.
When you ask people about airline travel, safety is “paramount”, apparently.
Then they all go off and fly Iran Air for $50 a seat.