Vera Age: how biases affect the behaviour of an average consumer

Ms Age, Vera to her friends, is 40, 5 foot 3 inches tall, and weighs just over 11 stone. She earns ￡22,151 per year and spends 34 hours per week in the office.

She reads The Sun and relaxes by watching her favourite show, Britain’s Got Talent. More surprisingly, although perhaps not to a statistician, she has slightly less than two legs.

We’re going to follow her for a day to see how various psychological biases affect her decisions and how marketers can respond.

The morning rush

It’s 7.38 am and Vera has overslept. She wakes up, swears and switches on the radio. With an impressive burst of energy she manages to shower and dress for work in just 30 minutes.

Advertisers might assume that the radio ads she hears are of little value. How could they be when she’s not concentrating? But they’d be wrong, according to research by Leon Festinger, a psychologist at Stanford University.

His experiment involved members of a college fraternity, who clearly supported the tradition of fraternity houses. Festinger played them a speech about the evils of fraternities, interested to see whether they’d change their views. But there was a twist. Half of the participants listened in peace and quiet, able to give the words their full attention. The other half were distracted by a silent movie.

The results were surprising. Those who listened with only partial attention were more likely to be swayed by the anti-fraternity arguments than their more focused peers.

Festinger had demonstrated that in certain situations, messages are actually more influential when the listener is distracted. His theory is that when busy elsewhere, the mind is less able to generate counter-arguments. So advertisers – especially those trying to overturn a negative image – might benefit from communicating when people are otherwise occupied.

Coffee break

Vera arrives at her office late and flustered. By mid-morning she’s peckish, so she pops out to the local cafe. She buys a coffee and, to make up for arriving late, croissants for the whole team.

But why croissants rather than muffins? Vera explains to a colleague that they looked particularly appetising that day.

She makes no mention of the French accordion music playing in the cafe as she walked through the door. She’d have laughed at the suggestion this may have influenced her.

However, the power of subtle contextual influences should not be underestimated. Adrian North, a psychologist at Leicester University, altered the background music in a supermarket wine aisle. Over a fortnight, he switched it between traditional German and traditional French music. When customers heard tunes from an accordion, French wine accounted for 77% of sales; and when folksy oopmah music played, 73% of wine sales were of a German variety. But only 2% of people spontaneously mentioned music as the reason for their purchase.

Advertisers can capitalise on these findings in two ways. Firstly, they might want to re-think their in-store experience by incorporating subtle prompts to purchase. Perhaps by playing classical music to nudge customers into a luxurious state of mind.

Secondly, they should be cautious when listening to customers as they might not always be aware of their genuine motivations. Far better to observe actual behaviour than listen to their claims.

Lunch

As it’s a sunny day Vera heads out to the park for lunch. On a whim she picks up her chicken sandwich from M&S, rather than her normal choice of Tesco.

Once again Vera’s choice of supermarket might have been influenced by environmental cues, in this case the weather. Recent research from Kyle Murray, of the University of Alberta, has shown that a burst of good weather can boost people’s optimism, which in turn increases the amount they’re prepared to pay for goods.

Murray asked two groups of students how much they'd pay for a selection of five items. The participants were questioned either under a sunlight condition, which was induced by sun lamps, or a non-sunlight one.

The students were willing to pay between 21% and 56% more in the sunlight scenario.

This work suggests that any brand seeking a premium should consider targeting consumers when they’re in a good mood, perhaps by thermally targeting their campaigns.

Afternoon meetings

Vera spends the afternoon interviewing candidates for a position as the team’s admin assistant. She quickly narrows her choice down to two excellently qualified candidates. Eventually she plumps for Norma, despite the fact that she tripped over as she was leaving.

Slightly surprisingly Norma’s clumsiness might have actually helped her get the job. Eliot Aronson, a psychologist at UCLA, has shown that competent people who display a weakness become more appealing. He termed this the "pratfall effect".

In his original experiment Aronson recorded a contestant ably answering a series of quiz questions. He then played the recording to a large number of students. Half of them heard just the answers while the other half also heard the contestant dropping a cup of coffee on his lap.

All the students were then asked to rate the contestant in terms of likeability. The clumsy one was rated significantly higher.

Interestingly, what works for quiz contestants seems to work for brands. A brand that feigns infallibility comes across as boastful while one admitting weakness seems more human.

Additionally, an advertiser that demonstrates honesty in one area makes their other claims more believable. This partially explains the stellar success of slogans such as"Reassuringly Expensive", "Naughty but Nice" or "Good things come to those who wait".

So what can advertisers learn from Vera’s day? The first point is how influential subtle changes in the environment can be on decision making.

The importance of contextual influences calls into question our industry’s obsession with target audiences. Perhaps brands should think of target contexts not just target audiences.

Marketers need to identify the set of environmental cues that will give their message the best chance of success.

Finally, since consumers aren’t necessarily aware of all the influences on their decision making brands must be careful about trusting claimed data.

Consumer explanations are often post-rationalisations which paint them as reasoned actors. In the memorable words of Jonathan Haidt, the rational minds "thinks it's the Oval Office when actually it's the press office". Far better for brands to prioritise observed data over customer claims.

Vera arrives home at 5.34 PM, slightly distraught at the mess her 2.4 children have left the house in. Vera Age is average.

This piece by Richard Shotton and Richard Clay originally ran on Brand Republic

For more posts follow @rshotton

Read more at https://www.brandrepublic.com/article/1355581/day-life-vera-age-psychology-drives-behaviour#zEFyT2r4d4v5oE6O.99