Behavioral science is the systematic study of human behavior. It encapsulates multiple fields of study, such as cognitive neuroscience, psychology, and economics, combining it with behavioral aspects of biology, psychiatry, law, and political science. Behavioral science is becoming an emerging topic in market research for the past few years. Companies are harnessing behavioral science to understand and impact customer-decision making. An enhanced understanding of customer behavior helps to avoid the common pitfalls in marketing.
Often, market research strategies do not take into account the behavioral barrier. Hence, it becomes challenging to align the brand with the needs of the customers. The customers do not always indulge in rational decision-making while making a purchasing decision. Instead, they use mental shortcuts that create biased thinking—also known as “cognitive bias.” It helps them to make subtly tilted decisions through which they make easy and comfortable choices. Behavioral science helps to understand the heuristics or mental shortcuts the customers deploy in different circumstances, enabling them to get involved with customers for better product/service planning.
Behavioral science market research helps to understand what influences customer decisions and where and when, and most importantly, why. It enables the marketer to change their marketing, investment, or messaging trajectory to facilitate better outcomes. Moreover, it allows them to implement small ‘nudges’ which can make all the difference. With this, the stakeholders can create or break habits ethically to make the marketing endeavor a success. The article elaborates on how behavioral science is becoming critical to market research.
From Insights to Action
A Brand faces multiple challenges and opportunities in reaching out to customers. Behavioral science facilitates the understanding of the wants and needs of the target audience, access the conscious and subconscious motives behind consumer decisions, and address the behavioral shifts that inform customer decisions. The traditional market research draws conclusions based on observables based on quantitative data, whereas behavioral science adopts a different approach. It forms a connection between emotions and thoughts to determine how customers make decisions. Behavioral science in market research enables the stakeholders to focus and act on human insights. Hence, behavioral science in market research expedites the journey from insights to actions.
Create New Consumer Habits
Consumer behavior is rapidly changing the current marketplace. Leveraging on behavioral science in market research helps to make insights more actionable to enable real behavior change. The deep customer insights allow companies to keep up with and even influence changes in customer behavior. It facilitates the identification of new beliefs, habits, and peak moments that drives behavioral change. Enterprises are now reinforcing and shaping behavioral shifts for better positioning the product/service with the upcoming customer needs and demands. Behavioral science provides marketers with the right strategy to use contextual cues for sustaining new habits, shape emerging patterns with new offerings, and better align brand messaging for targeting and personalization. Behavioral science helps companies keenly follow consumer behavior evolution for enhanced brand positioning to thrive in the next normal.
Leveraging Behavioral Data
Behavioral data is used in marketing research to know about consumer preferences and behavior. With AI and ML models, it has become easier to gather data from browsing activity, search behavior, purchasing and return behavior, and app usage and activity. Practical and ethical tracking of customer data is used for creating marketing strategies, tactics, and campaigns. The enhanced access to behavioral data with intelligent algorithms helps to distinguish stated and observed behavior. It helps to understand the motivations behind consumers and what drives customer purchasing. The process of assumptions on individual customers’ interests, needs, wants, or values without leveraging data can land companies in the abyss. Data is an essential organizational asset; using data to understand customer behavior can help enterprises drive customer acquisition, retention, and growth.
Predicting Market Trends
Behavioral science can help to predict the future of marketing. The market research (MR) industry is at the threshold of an exciting shift point, and behavioral science is becoming a key component incoming wave of change in marketing tactics. Bridging the gap between behavioral science and business is essential for organizations to maintain a strong foothold in the marketing landscape. Behavioral science helps to derive insights by observing customer behavior in different experimentally designed conditions and segments to assess consumers’ subconscious motivations and emotions. While it is a qualitative field, it draws upon quantitative data by bringing together historical data with current data sets and using it together with qualitative data to better predict future market and customer behavior trends. The process of evaluating a prospect’s mindsets, behavior, and demographics has become much easier with AI-driven deep learning. Deep learning can predict outputs using the given set of inputs. It adds new data to existing data sets to fine-tune its inferences and predictions. Hence, companies that seek to gain insights on customer behavior through AI can remain up-to-date with the recent changes and identify upcoming trends for effective marketing.
To Conclude:
Identifying consumers’ underlying emotions or motivations is helping brands to make better sales and drive growth and innovation. In the present market scenario, marketers need to use empirical evidence instead of simply relying on assumptions to understand customer behavior for making better marketing decisions.
