To BE or not to BE: A ‘binary’ question?

Members Evening

Please Note due to emergency building work in the training suite at MRSthe venue for the event will be held at:

TNSUK
6 More London Place
London
SE1 2QY
Tel: + 44 (0)20 7656 5000

Overview:

Much has been made of the impact of Behavioural Economics over recent years. As an industry we have been challenged to cast aside our assumptions that consumers are System 2 thinkers (act rationally, able to articulate their motivations, able to take in all of the information they receive, capable of maximising their resources, and so on), in favour of seeing them as System 1 thinkers (act according to instinct, satisfice rather than maximise, use only a fraction of the information available…). We have been urged that consumers simply cannot consistently be System 2 thinkers and, as a result, should review and redesign our approach to targeting and researching them.

Most of the reviews and evaluations of Behavioural Economics focus on the implications for marketing and research. What research techniques should be used? What questions we should avoid? What research environments are more/less appropriate?

This challenge to existing approaches is, as always, important. But we must be careful not to see Behavioural Economics as a ‘to BE or not to BE’ question. We should be ready to go beyond its basics and ask whether it is truer of some people than others? Whether it is truer at some life-stages than others? And, in certain contexts compared to others?

Lisa Edgar, Founder of the Big Window, together with Jo Kenrick, Marketing Director at Homebase, scratched beneath the surface of the BE bandwagon by testing consumers’ reactions to emotional and rational advertising and exploring how BE could explain variations in these reactions. The implications for marketing to consumers were then reviewed.

Lisa presented this research at the MRS Annual Conference in 2013 and has since continued to test the variant reactions to BE interventions.

How the session will help both client and agency-side research professionals

This session will demonstrate how understanding more about how BE plays out in reality will help clients as well as the research industry. Our understanding of who uses what system and when, will not simply aid the use of research techniques but it will help organisations:

• Use the right marketing approaches and language to the right consumers in the right contexts
• It will enable them to use techniques such as choice framing, price anchoring and loss aversion more effectively

Time: 6:00pm for a 6.30pm start