Behavioral Consumer Model

Key Benefits

Summary

Our approach connects the dots between implicit & explicit data sources to unlock deeper consumer insight:

• Insights from multiple data collection sources (implicit & explicit) is an effective way of creating a cohesive story with clear actionable insights regarding which attributes impact decision making (which to target & which to avoid).
• Implicit reaction time testing can be used as a technique to uncover strong associations to liking-independent variables for better differentiation.

Detailed Explanation:

It is often said that we are creatures of habit – many of our daily activities end up being a matter of routine rather than direct deliberation. While this is no doubt true, this is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the impact that habits have on our daily lives. Habits play a major role in our personal lives and create a loop of behavior consisting of cue, routine, and reward. The elements in this habit loop can be manipulated to help modify our behavior and can have a domino effect that touches on all of the other aspects of life.  

This presents an opportunity to design the cues, routines, and rewards that build positive habits and aid in achieving higher-order benefits and emotional well-being. Products play a major role in this design when they are built not just for consumption, but for creating a lifestyle and meaningful moments. This presents an opportunity for innovation through the creation of an experience (based on cue, routine and reward) and not just products: behaviorally driven experience innovation.

The experience the consumer has with a product forms impressions in the brain that affect mood and arousal levels while also setting a context for the product. Cues designed within a product can trigger behaviors, physiological response and psychological benefits and a designed routine can build habits towards specific products that create more meaningful moments that impact wellbeing. Ultimately, a rewarding experience will help reinforce this habit loop. Behaviorally driven experience innovation is not just in creating optimized products, but developing routines and habits that create rewarding experiences and result in higher-order wellbeing benefits. 

Designing products around Routines: Experience Innovation

Habitual actions begin with a cue, which leads to a routine, which then ends in a reward. Once engaged in this loop (cue, routine, reward) repeatedly, the cycle becomes near-automatic. The cue and reward become neurologically entwined, thought processing is significantly reduced and a sense of craving (for the reward) develops, reinforcing the loop. It is important to note that although the cycle of cue, routine, reward can lead to sturdy habitual action, habits can also be broken, and new habits can be formed.  

The Larger Business Impact

Shaping commensality habits through behaviorally driven experience innovation involves research into both operant and classical conditioning. 

• Operant conditioning (or instrumental conditioning) is a type of learning in which an individual's behavior is modified by its antecedents and consequences. Mechanisms of instrumental conditioning suggest that the behavior may change in form, frequency, or strength.  
• Classical conditioning involves a kind of learning that occurs when a conditioned stimulus (CS) is paired with an unconditioned stimulus (US). Usually, the CS is a neutral stimulus (e.g., the sound of a tuning fork), the US is biologically potent (e.g., the taste of food) and the unconditioned response (UR) to the US is an unlearned reflex response (e.g., salivation). After pairing is repeated (some learning may occur already after only one pairing), the organism exhibits a conditioned response (CR) to the CS when the CS is presented alone.

Classical conditioning differs from operant or instrumental conditioning, in which a behavior is strengthened or weakened, depending on its consequences (i.e., reward or punishment).

• Identifying cues. Habitual cues can range from natural cues (US) such as the time of day to programmed (CS) cues such as the design of the packaging. The best product cues will be those that are congruent with natural cues and the context. 
• Identifying routines. Building a product for a routine and lifestyle will involve not only identifying the behavior (ex: commensality), but also understanding the motivations around the behavior. The best product routine will tap into the motivated behaviors of consumers.
• Identifying rewards. Rewards can range from the more obvious (satiates hunger) to the more abstract (higher-order wellbeing benefits like the feeling of belongingness or intimacy). The best product rewards will be those that are emotionally meaningful and promote higher-order benefits.

Identifying Opportunities

Through Investigation  In order to understand how you can embark on behaviorally driven experience innovation in commensality, key fundamental research must be conducted.  

• Phase 1: Leveraging a focus group setting, we will identify the foundation of the behavioral habit loop. The primary goal of these behaviorally designed groups is to obtain consumer-generated, behaviorally-driven, language, specifically focusing on cues, routines, and rewards. The importance of starting at this ground level is to ensure that inputs for subsequent phases of research are all-encompassing, consumer-generated, and context/occasion specific. Failure to complete this phase risks building a knowledge program on assumptive terms- internal assumptions about consumer behaviors that may not be accurate or provide the full picture.  

• Phase 2:  Armed with specific behaviorally driven cue, routine, reward language, we begin to quantify our findings to further define the habit loop. Phase 2 will employ a MaxImplicit methodology compounds powerful tools from traditional research, like MaxDiff, with measurements from social psychology, like Implicit Association Testing. Through strategic analysis, this method prioritizes top behavioral drivers of behavior (cue, routine, reward language) and identifies how well a category/brand/SKU/concept is meeting or not meeting these needs (through perceptions). This method allows us not only to quantify the habit loop but allows us to identify the top cues, routines, and rewards that should be explored further and develop into success criteria for future testing. Furthermore, whitespace opportunities for chocolates and confections are identified for innovation consideration. 

This research chassis leverages impactful methods from behavioral science, psychology, physiology to ensure you are building a strong knowledge foundation based on consumer behavior. This will be done through understanding what drives consumers towards a specific behavior and consumers feel rewarded- through higher order well being benefit- thus reinforcing this behavior. Furthermore, this program will identify opportunities for behaviorally driven experience innovation through products.