What We Know About How We Decide What To Buy January 29, 2015

Tim Gohmann, Ph.D.

Although marketing researchers have been studying what we buy for over 70 years, little was known about the process consumers use to buy or not buy branded products. Most researchers would relegate the decision to a concept of brand equity (the more equity, the greater the likelihood of purchase) or maneuvering the “right” consumer in front of the “right” product (“path-to-purchase”) to some combination of perceived price and product features (price/feature optimization) or to some combination of these. Marketers were forced to turn to off-deal aggregate brand volume forecasting from big-data models. This forced marketers into a “wait and see” mode since the “why” of brand demand could only be approached after the models had run. It added significant unpredictability into the marketer’s understanding of how to drive demand in the future, since the model was based on past brand performance.

To give marketers a heads up on the “why” of brand purchase, Behavioral Science Lab (BSL) began to model the purchase decision process starting in 2011. Here is what we have learned.

Decision ElementsSM Decision alternatives are evaluated on a finite number of mental components. To date, we have found that there are no more than nine and no fewer than six such Elements. They “appear” at the time of the purchase decision and may not be “available” to the buyer outside of that context. They are not demographic or psychographic in nature but are relevant to the buyer and the expected consequences of purchase. They range from price and usability to the emotional and social consequences of purchase.

Perhaps most interesting: Every buyer has access to the same set of Elements but may use each differently.

Why has it taken so long to understand these Elements? Every researcher and brand manager believes that they already know what they are! In reality, we have found that the Elements actually used by the buyer may not even be consciously available to them or sufficiently articulated to tell the researcher.

Element GatesSM We found mental “rules” that specify how decision alternatives are evaluated against each Element. For example, an Element relating to social responsibility will have different definitions for different buyers.

Why have these definitions not been previously understood? The simple answer is that if the Elements themselves were not defined in ways the buyer themselves could relate, what they meant to the buyer could not be understood by the researcher.

Gate BlueprintsSM These are mental strategies that specify how the Element Gates are used in a decision. They persist over time; our longest longitudinal study of 14 months confirmed the same Blueprints in use. For this reason we believe that Blueprints are mental habits, much like muscle memory but for the mind. Interestingly, there appears to be a finite number of Blueprints in each category. Looking across all of the all product categories we have evaluated to date, the majority of buyers can be described with roughly half the number of Blueprints as there are Elements in their Blueprint. So the purchase decision process of most buyers in a category can be described using only three or four Blueprints.

Why have these models of decision making not been specified until now? Some have but are focused on a very narrow range of decisions, usually in an experimental setting and not directly relevant to marketers. For most everyday decisions, researchers have usually assumed some decision calculus based on an available analytic technique, e.g. regression, principal components or segmentation using demographics and psychographics. The important conclusion is that researchers are more likely to use external models rather than those that decision makers themselves appear to use.

Does It Work? To date, BSL has conducted two experiments designed to test the predictive validity of Decision Elements, Element Gates and Gate Blueprints. The purpose of these experiments was to test whether or not a set of messages could persuade on the basis of which Gate Blueprint was being used by the prospective buyer. In both cases, this expected result was obtained. Messages designed to persuade against the Gate Blueprint of the prospective buyer were effective, and those messages not in harmony with the buyer’s Gate Blueprint were not. Additional experiments are planned.

The Future Behavioral Science Lab is committed to improving our understanding of why we buy what we do and will release those results on its website www.behavioralsciencelab.com.

Tim Gohmann, Ph.D. Co-founder and Chief Science Officer

©Behavioral Science Lab LLC 2015