A leading indicator of consumer social behavior
Consumer behavior is challenging to predict. Most market research techniques rely on people's opinions in a survey to forecast future behavior. These predictions are often inaccurate, and the insights on the why are commonly inadequate.
To be able to predict what people will do tomorrow, we must know how people truly feel today. Relying on stated opinions in a poll won't get us there (see the US Presidential election of 2016 for one of the most egregious examples of relying on stated answers to surveys).
When will we return to "normal" social behavior? If not normal, when we will at least be comfortable gathering again in groups? We're not going to find the true answers to these questions by relying on stated survey responses. This moment calls for better measurement of emotion. This moment calls for insights, fast. This moment calls for automated behavioral science.
By applying automated implicit measurement to the challenges of this moment, the Sentient Consumer Subconscious research lab, has produced a series of pre-designed studies in Sentient Prime that measure how people are feeling right now. The first social comfort study tells us how people truly feel about gathering again in groups. While we used to feel "safety in numbers", be attracted to a packed room of socializing people, and seek out the social hot-spots on the town, those same images now evoke feelings of fear. And when people are fearful of social situations, they withdraw.
Implicit research can separate our desire to see and be with people, from our feelings of safety versus danger evoked by the thought of gathering in groups. As of this week in May, 2020, people are not feeling safe with more than 4 tables full in a room. To see how people are feeling about gathering inside of restaurants, read this article summarizing implicit data being continuously collected through the Sentient Prime implicit research platform.
Drop this implicit exercise into your online study for free and have immediate access to human comfort associations with the density of a social group. Use that as a dependent variable to figure our whether your messaging and safety measures are sufficient to alleviate feelings of fear. Figure out why or why not, by conducting drivers analyses on that variable. And forecast future consumer social behavior by incorporating that measurement as a leading indicator in your trackers.
To use this social comfort study in your own research (or others including the consumer emotional state of the self, implicit bias against Chinese people, or comfort spending versus saving) visit our Sentient Prime COVID-19 site.
In a moment like this, we need insight fast. And through the automation of research processes, we're now in a position to deliver insights in under 24 hours. However, as an industry, we can't simply accelerate the delivery of inadequate insights through automation and expect to remain a valuable source of business information.
By automating the creation of scientific design, the collection of data, and the reporting of results, the industry can now focus on quickly delivering the insights businesses need with the confidence that scientific evidence brings to our conclusions. Combine automated experimental design, with implicit measurement of how people are really feeling, and we have research that tells us how people are truly feeling, why, and further, how it will affect their behavior tomorrow.
Implicit association testing isn't merely a cool tool. It is the scientific tool that this moment calls for, right now. With automated implicit association testing, we can tell not only what people are truly feeling today, but also how those feelings will impact their behavior tomorrow. What businesses need right now, is not opinion research that won't predict behavior; rather, we need leading indicators of what people will actually do.
To experience a true implicit test, take this study yourself, and add your implicit emotions to the growing global database.