Driving behaviour change – the balance between push and pull
I often talk about the fact that as marketers, we’re in the business of behaviour change. The rise in this topic has been incredible to see, but it’s also come with some risks. The most common approach when thinking about changing behaviour is to push harder – give more incentives, more urgency and more pressure to get consumers to act. However, what if in doing this, we are actually missing a trick? What if there’s an easier way, where instead of pushing harder, we should be pulling back and reduce any blockers that keep the behaviour from happening?
What’s the theory?
This theory was first shared by Kurt Lewin, who’s Force Field Theory gives us a valuable framework to understand this. Lewin suggested that human behaviour is a balance between two things:
In marketing, we often focusing on the driving forces, but this can oversimplify the complexity of decision making and could led to less effective outcomes.
This theory considers how when it comes to decision making, it isn’t just about improving motivations. With any decision, there are always push and pull dynamics at play. We will always have things that are encouraging us to act (e.g. impulse, excitement, FOMO), but we’ll also always have those restraining forces (e.g. I should save, I don’t really need it, what if I make the wrong decision).
What happens if we focus only on driving factors?
It’s an easy mistake to make that if you just increase the driving forces and the motivations around a purchase, a consumer will eventually act. However, the risk with this is that if we push too hard, we run the risk of creating a negative reaction. Think about the old stereotype of the pushy car salesperson, the one that won’t take no for an answer no matter how many times you say you are just browsing. Regardless of your motivations, you are unlikely to act here, because you’ll no longer be interested. It’s the same thing that happens with offers – if a brand is constantly sending offers out, it’ll likely lead to discount blindness, where the discount no longer feels like it has any value.
Although it can be tempting to keep pushing the driving factors, in the same way that if you speed up too much, you’ll have to hit the brake at some point, which is exactly what happens with consumer behaviour – the purchase and opportunity will be slowed down.
How can we balance driving factors with restraints?
So if the solution isn’t just pushing harder, how do restraining factors coming into things? By focusing on reducing these restraining forces, it makes it easier for consumers to move forward, in the same way that taking your foot off the brake in the car will allow you to travel to your destination.
A great way to do this is by removing friction. This could be simplifying the purchasing process, addressing and fixing consumer concerns or making an experience feel effortless. These can all be great ways to reduce any restraining forces that might cause hesitation. It’s not about making the end goal any bigger or better, but instead making it easier for people to get to that end goal.
How can we put this balance into practice in marketing?
Finding the balance for behaviour change
The best marketing to drive behaviour change doesn’t just push harder on the accelerator, instead it understands the balance between these driving and restraining forces. Reducing the things that hold people back can be just as, if not more powerful than pushing harder, creating a more strategic and nuanced marketing approach which leads to greater outcomes.