Over time, marketers have developed theories about why consumers buy. Most of these err by viewing the consumer through the lens of the product. Marketers start with the features and benefits of a product and conduct consumer research to find matching needs and motivations. More recently, Internet and digital media companies added a new layer of suppositions to explain and predict consumer behavior. Their approach views the consumer through the lens of digital technology. However, they misinterpret data about the activity of online users as being a valid insight into the consumer decision-making process.

Consumers do not have a Pavlovian response to products and to their marketing programs. Nor do the fundamentals of consumer behavior change to accommodate the latest innovation in digital technology.

We’re taught that we’re thinking creatures that feel. The truth is we’re feeling creatures that think. Science now tells us that humans make decisions emotionally below the threshold of conscious awareness. And few would argue emotion is the key to connecting with people. But what does “unconscious emotion” even mean? And how do we apply it to our business?

If we raise our sightline and define our audience as humans, not just consumers—we deepen our empathy and widen our appeal. An understanding of our purchase behavior must be based on knowledge of human emotion and include the paramount influence that emotions have on decision-making.

For consumers, perhaps the most important characteristic of emotions is that they push us toward action. In response to an emotion, humans are compelled to do something. In a physical confrontation, fear forces us to chose between “fight or flight” to insure our self-preservation. In our daily social confrontations, insecurity may cause us to buy the latest iPhone to support our positive self-identity.

The Key’s experience again simplifies the complex nature of human emotions. The ‘unconscious emotion’ needs to be drawn out. It cannot result from a simple ask-answer routine. Our researchers are able to elicit both the rational and emotional responses from people by following three simple elicitation principles:

THE 3 S’s

Sense Experience - Empirical Evidence also knows Sense Experience - evidence beyond testimony and experience the experience

If knowledge is empirical, it's based on observation rather than theory. To do an empirical study of donut shops, you'll need to visit at least some of them. Meditate all day on the origins of donuts, but you'll still lack empirical knowledge of donut creation.

The Key firmly believes that any kind of knowledge that comes from experience is better than that coming from opinions.

While engaging with customers, our researchers encourage them to narrate their various experiences with a brand or the category. Narration of experiences tells a completely different story from an anthology of opinions.

An opinion on a brand may originate from an experience with another brand in the same category. So ahoy researchers and marketers! Suspend your perception of a brand and go deep into living the brand experience of your customer. Live. Repeat. Evaluate.

Simulation of real life setting - Engage in almost real setting to ensure candid responses.

If in real life a brand decision is not made on the basis of a discussion with eight strangers then do not engage consumers in a customary focus group discussion. It dwindles into a discussion of who has got the most powerful voice and who tows their line. The key brand decision makers must be kept away from a controlled environment of a one way mirror setting. Put them instead in a real life situation and watch the nuances of brand consumption, imagery, triggers and barriers emerge without too much probing.

The Key has tried to replicate the real life setting which encourages a natural interaction between the consumer and the category. Accompanied Test Drive, Accompanied Pubbing and Shop Alongs are some of the ways of recreating that natural setting – something that The Key has been doing since its inception. The post modern simulation of the setting which The Key has successfully attempted includes Ankho Dekhi or Social Reporting in a study for toilet soaps. The Key managed to ‘observe’ a girl taking bath with a new brand of soap through the eyes of her friend who would regularly help her in her monthly waxing of arms and legs. The friend became the social reporter who wrote down her observations on key headers.

Societising or Social Influence

Cognition is as much a social as it is an individual activity. The most useful way to understand humankind and human behaviour is to see humans as social animals. The power of influence that other individuals can have over a subject, the social effect of the design of our human mental capabilities, and our tendencies to join together freely in groups that share passions and emotions--all these demonstrate our species' social nature. it is the interaction between individuals, and not just their individual agency, that determines what we do and why we do it.

A large part of our purchasing behaviour is habitual rather than considered: an individual's next purchase is largely determined by his/her previous purchases. But an individual's purchasing behaviour is also determined by what other individuals do (or are thought to do), both now and in the past. What if my choice of Brand A is really our choice of Brand A? If buying Brand A is something that 'we' do? Take the classic Coke-Pepsi example of where product preference (as indicated by blind taste tests) is overcome by either habit or the 'power of the brand'. This is an important tenet for The Key. Most brand choices are not individualistic but social decisions. We may not know it but subconsciously our first purchase in any category is the result of a social influence – be it from our friend, family, neighbor, relative,colleague or even the sales person.

This is also where Maslow missed a couple of glaring truths. A fascinating article by Pamela Rutledge in Psychology Today entitled “Social Networks: What Maslow Misses” (November 2011) points out that Maslow’s model misses the role of social connection.

“Here’s the problem with Maslow’s hierarchy,” explains Rutledge. “None of these needs — starting with basic survival on up — are possible without social connection and collaboration…. Without collaboration, there is no survival. It was not possible to defeat a Woolley Mammoth, build a secure structure, or care for children while hunting without a team effort. It’s more true now than then. Our reliance on each other grows as societies became more complex, interconnected, and specialized. Connection is a prerequisite for survival, physically and emotionally.”

Related Reading

Click here to Read The Missing Pieces in Maslow’s Need Hierarchy as per The Key