In a report published by Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman in 2018 is a killer figure that suggests 90-95% of purchase decisions are based on emotion. When I share this stat with clients, their usual reaction and subsequent questioning is two-fold:
- Do we need to communicate more emotionally with our target audience?
- Does this mean consumers are far more emotion driven, and therefore, irrational in their decision making than we thought?
Emotions make us more predictable
The answer to question number one is almost always, “Yes, far more than you are doing,” unless you’re Rolex, Disney or Airbnb, and even then, there’s always room for more.
The answer to question number two is not quite as straightforward. Instinctively, since consumers are emotional rather than logical, we think that in some way we cannot predict behavior, however, there have been numerous reports and studies done that prove that the opposite is actually true. Most emotional decisions are extremely predictable and far from spontaneous. This is because they are impacted and informed by many subconscious biases that we have collected on our journey to make a purchase decision. As a result, there is a huge benefit in brands understanding biases and how they can help our strategic decision making.
The Value of Understanding Bias
A 2024 WARC research paper concluded “brands that understand and leverage emotional responses can predict and influence consumer behavior more effectively.” Biases trigger and create emotional responses, the responses to which can be quite predictable.
Richard Shotton talks of 25 biases in his book The Choice Factory, all of which highlight the way day to day influences affect us and our decision making. He estimates that although he outlined and tested 25 of the most understood and impactful biases, there are probably 190+ biases that initiate our day-to-day behaviors. The 25 biases Shotton specifically looked at can hugely impact the make-up of someone’s emotions and therefore decision making. Some biases are more personal, some are more community driven, but all of them leverage our emotional reaction to something.
Bias Examples
Social proof is one of the most researched biases. It tells us that if we see large amounts of people behaving in a certain way, we are more inclined to do the same. It is for this reason hotels and ticket sites often say, “28 people have booked this today,” illustrating a very literal application of social proof in marketing. More lateral applications can arguably be more effective incentivizing brands to give the impression they are more popular than they actually are. Social proof has a large impact on why we make the decisions we do and how trends grow successfully through culture. Think adidas Samba last summer (until Rishi Sunak slid into a pair). In a crippling reality check for our visions of pure individuality, unfortunately we do have a tendency to follow a crowd. There is a safety in numbers which can make us feel part of a club and therefore give us a sense of belonging and emotional wellbeing. Following the crowd isn’t a bad thing, but it is an emotional decision formed from a bias that can make us more predictable as humans.
Another of my favorites is the pratfall effect largely because it has the word prat in it (criminally underused in today’s society). The pratfall effect is the concept that you boost appeal and trustworthiness with consumers by admitting a failing or flaw which can help you stand out in a world of brands bragging for attention. Marmite are seasoned exploiters of the pratfall effect love it or hate it admitting they are not perfect for all.
These are two different biases, two different examples, but the same outcome: a tapping into your emotional structures to ultimately have a higher resonance/connection with a specific brand whose behaviors have had a positive impact on you.
“There are thousands of these experiments; the job of a strategist or a marketer is matching the unique challenges of your brand to a specific study.” – Richard Shotton
What does this mean for our brands and media strategies?
For strategists and marketers, the more we learn about biases and how they leverage emotion to create a predictable outcome, the more we can ensure that our campaigns and communications are drawing on the most relevant bias(es). There are a number of considerations, but these three should be a healthy starting point.
- Understand what biases are most relevant to your brand: As Shotton says, not all biases work for all brands. The pratfall effect, for example, probably wouldn’t work as well for luxury brands as it does in FMCG. Understand what works for your brands and build campaigns around them.
- Understand your prime influence point in the purchase journey: For brands with a longer purchase cycle, the passive stage of decision making may be more effective. This is because it is when as consumers we are not actively looking, we are aware that our barriers are down, and we are more open to influence and bias. However, some categories don’t have such a long passive stage and so will need to position influencers closer to the point of sale.
- Don’t underestimate context: Start with your audience, but not by looking at them through the lens of demographics. Instead, understand them. Know their routines, where they are most likely to be influenced positively, what contexts put them in a better mood, and where they may be oversaturated with information and consequently harder to positively influence with an interaction.
In summary
Humans are emotional and therefore predictable (sorry) because of the way that biases form our emotional make-up and trigger behaviors and decisions. However, this gives strategists, planners and marketers a huge opportunity to leverage bias in ways that use emotions to deliver desired outcomes or reactions to our brand.
