Understanding Behavioural Science - Not All Feedback is Equal

There’s no denying that behavioural science is a hot topic. It’s a blueprint to better understand - and more critically anticipate - human behaviour and decision making. 

As the title of Rory Sutherland's book on behavioural science suggests, when it goes well it can be business “Alchemy”. That’s why understanding it can be so beneficial and important. 

The following is an excerpt from the first chapter of our book, Atmospheres That Sell - Using Behavioural Science To Create Branded Atmospheres in Retail & Hospitality. 

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Without wanting to be too much of a Debbie-downer, within business we often rely on frankly flawed systems of feedback, data and individual opinions to drive our strategic decision making. There are some more common traps that it would be wise to avoid and I’ll go through these one by one. But overall, what is most important to remember is that good decisions can only be made based on multiple factors that take the full market and full behavioural considerations into account. No single system will give you all you need to know to make good decisions, so take on multiple factors and make sure you weigh them appropriately.

Now, let’s look at a few different tools you might use to gather feedback and assess their value to you.

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Don’t ask customers things they don’t know

Ok, big statement alert. There are of course some things that you can ask customers, but if you’re running surveys that ask things like, ‘Why do you prefer brand X?’, ‘What would make you do X?’ or ‘Why do you buy brand X instead of brand Y?’, you’re likely making decisions based on flawed data that’s - deep breath - nearly as good as useless.

As chapter one covers in detail, we are very good storytellers that try to rationalise our motivations that, in truth, we don’t have much conscious access to. For all that you were able to answer the above questions, and the survey participants might earnestly work through your survey, they are, in effect, just making it up as they go along. In Nick Chater’s incredible book The Mind is Flat, he exposes our pretence of emotional depth that appears to speak more of our highly skilled brain as an improviser than our true ‘hidden depths’; “No amount of therapy, dream analysis, word association, experiment or brain-scanning can recover a person’s ‘true motives’, not because they are difficult to find, but because there is nothing to find. It is not hard to plumb our mental depths because they are so deep and so murky, but because there are no mental depths to plumb.”

Pairing this with the fundamental attribution error, the propensity to overestimate the influence of personality and underestimate the influence of context on people’s decisions (discussed in detail in the previous chapter), survey data simply falls away as useful insight. If you also tag on misrepresented averages, you may as well just make up your data and throw a dart at a list of strategic options.

Woah, it’s getting a bit punchy. Don’t throw questionnaires out yet.

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When questionnaires work

There is certainly a place for questionnaire data. The thing to remember is that questionnaires are good at collecting quantitative data (that which is represented in numbers), but really bad at collecting quantitative data (the blurrier thoughts and feelings that might provide context to hard data). Questionnaires can capture ages, wages and even which brands someone is buying. Where they go awry is when they’re used to capture motivations, meanings or psychological detail. By all means, use questionnaires, but make sure they only ask questions that the participant can answer with objective fact, unless you want to measure how they answer a question (not the answer to a question). When building an atmosphere, for example, it would be a really poor idea to run a questionnaire either with staff or customers to ask them what music they’d like to hear in the shop. They don’t know your business objectives that need support in the atmospherics, or what will nudge them towards the most preferable behaviours, or which music will curate the best branded atmosphere for you according to behavioural science insights.

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Opinions are convincing liars

What’s your favourite toothpaste? Why?

I’m sure you could convincingly fill a good five minutes on these topics, and be happily assured you’d answered the questions earnestly. The truth is that it may well just be impressive improv. There is a theory called the query effect, which tells us that people can make up an opinion about anything when asked. It doesn't mean that their answer will truly represent their actions, intentions or decision-making processes and this can be the source of dangerously useless insight. As David Ogilvy (famous ad man) said, "Consumers don't think how they feel, say what they think, or do what they say". And pretty much, that’s true. So avoid the heartache of bad decisions by having low weightings attached to opinions. The only real litmus should be; does it work? A friend of mine, Giles Edwards, founder of the agency Gasp! and podcast host on Call to Action says something similar (in this instance, on the measure of good advertising)… “it’s like a parachute; when you’re plummeting towards the ground, no one cares about whether you like the parachute or not, the only real question is - does it work?”

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Observed data for the win

It’s been a bit of a feedback massacre. Sorry. Whilst it might feel like nothing is left, there is one final type of information that I’d like to discuss. This time it’s the gold mine for actionable insight - observed data.

The strongest measures that you can use to guide your strategic decisions (aside from the obvious sales data, POS, repeat customer etc.) are gained from observing people in action. From a scientific point of view, this would be called field research. It’s the case of being in your branded atmosphere and observing what’s going on around you; how do people look? How are they responding to the space? What are they picking up? How quick are they moving? How long do they stay?

You could ask people this stuff in a questionnaire. You could talk to people to get their opinions on your branded atmosphere. But the value you’ll get from those versions of feedback pale in comparison to what you’ll get from just watching and learning. Marrying this with hard bottom like data and you’ve got yourself a much stronger standpoint to know, (1) what is happening, (2) the impact of small changes, and (3) which route to take next. This is so believed at Startle that each employee is actively encouraged to visit our clients' sites and take observed data whenever we can. Armed with company cards, we can get the full experience and be our customers best customers.

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To find out more about the world’s first behavioural science book specific to retail and hospitality, head here.