Introduction to Behavioural Economics

Build your understanding of behavioural change and how it creates commercial success

This course is now delivered online as a series of live sessions which fully meet the learning objectives of face-to-face training.

All business depends on selling or marketing to human beings. Anything that helps us better understand how and why people make decisions, for example when buying things, improves our chances of commercial success.

Behavioural economics offers a scientifically robust and accessible model for understanding the basis of behaviour change and how to implement it. This course is an entertaining and lively mixture of collaborative learning and team exercises. The form of training is in line with the principles of behavioural economics itself – full of experiments, case histories and even some psychological illusions.

You are encouraged to come armed with your own stories and examples.

Learning outcomes

• Why the old rational/cognitive model still clings on, and the limits of information-processing and ‘messaging’ models of communication
• How the roles of System 1 and System 2 differ in our brains
• The role and importance of engaging the emotions
• New areas such as priming, norms, heuristics and availability
• What this means for research, communications, changing consumer (and B2B) behaviour and new product development
• Why the ‘faulty, if seductive’ model of the rational consumer should be replaced with one more in line with cutting-edge thinking about the emotional and social triggers that underlie behavioural change
• How you make decisions within company culture, across all elements of marketing such as pricing, positioning, creativity, communications and innovation
• Concepts such as choice architecture, heuristics, anchoring, priming and the effect of other cognitive biases
• What this all means for research, insight, brands and communications

Who will benefit

Anyone whose role involves exploring or affecting decision making in both B2C and B2B. The course touches all aspects of business (not just market research and insight), and will benefit those who work in marketing, creative and innovation, as well as in communications development and culture and change management.

Testimonials

"Interesting, apt, useful"

Yo Green, Freelance
May 2020