PBS CAPA v18

CONSUMERS
ARE HUMAN

Using Pragmatic Brain Science®
to Understand People
and Your Brand

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Consumers are Human
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Consumers are human.
To win over their hearts and
minds, you need better ways
to understand the way they
think, how they feel and what
motivates them to take action.
Pragmatic Brain Science®
can help.

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Consumers are Human
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Created in the ivory
tower; activated in
business.

The world of marketing and market research is currently enthralled
with the idea that emotions and the nonconscious drive consumer
behavior. Traditionally market research operated on the assumption
that consumers rationally evaluate product attributes and features,
and they decide what to buy based on those evaluations. And so,
researchers asked consumers to rate product features and attributes
on Likert scales, determining their likelihood of buying the product
on the basis of these ratings.
Of course, marketers and researchers have, to some extent, known
all along that this was not the full story. The very existence of brand
names, logos and advertising point to a belief that associations
and emotions influence consumers. But this notion that consumers
rely on associations, heuristics, and emotions rather than rationally
deliberating their every decision has only become truly compelling in
the last 10 years or so.
Behavioral scientists, particularly social psychologists, have long
studied less conscious influences on behavior. The impact of
stereotypes and associations on people’s judgments and behavior
was clear, but we didn’t have the means to measure less conscious
associations. The well-known Implicit Association Test (IAT), first
presented in published research in 1998, transformed social
psychology.

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Consumers are Human

While much of the science to support implicit associations was
firmly established in academic circles, these ideas hadn’t necessarily
penetrated market research until a number of books on the topic
became popular. Malcolm Gladwell, a long-time staff writer at the
New Yorker, led the charge with Blink. Gladwell applied his skills as
an essayist to social psychology, simplifying very complex ideas to
pithy principles (too simple, complain some) and infusing them with
a bit of storytelling. More recently, Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast
and Slow made Nobel prize-winning ideas readable and accessible to
non-scientists.

Inspired by popular
books on the behavioral
sciences, marketers and
insights professionals
are seeking better
ways to understand
consumers in a more
holistic manner.

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Motivation... what
drives us.

At the core of our thinking and behavior are basic motivations. You
may be familiar with the “hierarchy of needs” proposed by Maslow.
While this hierarchy captures some needs, there are other needs: a
need for mastery, a need for esteem, a need for control, and so on.
Integrating various theories on motivation with our experience
in market research, LRW developed a framework of fundamental
human needs that motivate behavior in a consumer context. Those
needs. Belonging, Appeal, Security and Exploration comprise our
BASE Framework.

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Consumers are Human

Why do you pay
$100 for pair of
sneakers when you
could get a similar
pair for less than
half the price?

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The BASE framework
addresses core human
motivations.

She orders using the language His car was proof that
of her tribe of coffee drinkers. he had made it big.

BELONGING APPEAL

Giving and receiving love and support from Attracting people to us, seeming cool and
family, friends, and community. popular.

• Is this warm or friendly? • Does this make me more
• Does it help me connect likeable?

and feel connected? • Will they be jealous that
I have one?
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Consumers are Human

Her safety was his biggest concern He couldn’t wait to post
when he made his choice. his pics from the day.

SECURITY EXPLORATION

Feeling safe and secure in my environment; Creating, discovering, and experiencing new
free from harm or fear. things.

• Is this made well? • Does this excite me?
• Will it be reliable? • Does it inspire me to get
• Will it break at a bad time?
out, do things, and create?

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Quick
judgments
are crucial for
navigating our
world.

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Consumers are Human

Many of our judgments
are based on gut
reactions.

How do people evaluate whether the stimuli they encounter in
the world meet their needs? People are quite capable of making
judgments, even about stimuli with which they have little previous
experience. Such quick judgments are essential for navigating our
complex world. You see someone walking toward you on a dark
street and you immediately become aware of your surroundings.
You engage in small talk with someone at a party and decide they
could be your friend. You call the pediatrician after taking one look
at your child’s swollen face.
We must be adept at evaluating where we stand with respect to our
fundamental needs. Thus, we make judgments without a great deal
of deliberation, but rather quickly, from the gut.

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Identifying with others
fulfills Belonging needs.

One of the most important psychological needs is belonging. We
need to feel that we are meaningfully connected to others. This
may include our immediate family, our country of origin, even
people who share our obsession for a particular watch. When we are
meaningfully connected to others, they become part of who we are.
As the adage goes: “Show me your friends, and I’ll tell you who you
are.”
The brands we buy or aspire to buy can also become part of our
identity. Brand identity offers us a way to signal to others (and
ourselves) that we possess certain desirable characteristics. Do you
run in the latest Nike sneakers or are you lacing up with Brooks
running shoes? Are you willing to go along with the popular choice
or do you march to a slightly different beat? The more we include
a brand as part of our identity, the more we see ourselves and
the brand as being similar, and the more the brand is associated
with who we are. If the brand is part of us, we treat it like we treat
ourselves; we feel pride when the brand does well and are quick to
offer up an explanation when something goes wrong. We’re less
likely to end the relationship when our brand is not perfect.
Identification with brands is critical in explaining aspects of
behavior that seem to defy purely rational attitudes. For our loved
ones, we do things that may not be in our personal self-interest. The
same is true for brands. For example, a consumer might be generally
averse to brands in a given category, such as fast food. But if a brand
offers relatable values and a personal connection, as In-N-Out does
for consumers in Southern California, a consumer may be more
likely to justify an indulgence.

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Consumers are Human

We can use
identitites to
signal to the
world what we
are about.

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Consumers are Human

The notion of emotion.

A bus is speeding toward you. Before determining exactly what is
happening, your heart rate increases, you eyes are wide open, and
you hop on the sidewalk. As a tear rolls down your cheek, you are
awash with a sense of relief realizing that you are not hurt. You are
angry at the bus driver who almost hit you, and let out a scream,
although the bus is long gone.
In the scenario above, we can see that emotions vary in level of
consciousness and level of arousal. At the less conscious level,
emotions occur fairly quickly and automatically. On a more
conscious level, emotions involve interpretation of your feelings.
They exist on a continuum from low to high arousal, with higher
arousal emotions being more likely to move you to action.

In the simplest
terms, an
emotion is a
feeling produced
as a result of an
experience.

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The role of narrative.

We are our stories. Stories allow us to relay the events of our lives
or to escape our lives by listening to the real or fictional stories of
others. Parents the world over share stories with their children. It
doesn’t take too long before those children start telling stories of
their own. By the time we’re adults, we’re very experienced in the
art of storytelling.
Our stories are not just a series of facts, but convey emotions,
motivations and judgments. The specific words we use can reflect
how we perceive our environment, what we want to avoid, and how
we feel. So if we listen closely to the stories people tell, we can learn
a lot about their feelings, personality and behavior.
In the consumer context, people talk about their experiences with
and feelings about products, brands, and categories. In a narrative,
the respondent expresses both a sense of self and a reaction to
experiences. And in the age of social media, these stories can easily
be shared with hundreds or thousands of “friends.”

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Consumers are Human
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Want to apply
Pragmatic Brain Science®
to understanding your
consumers’ behavior?

LRW’s Pragmatic Brain Science Institute® brings a holistic perspective
to companies trying to understand and influence the consumers’
world – their attitudes, their feelings and their behaviors. This
accomplished team of consultants draws from extensive academic
research, deep expertise in theory and methods, and knowledge of
marketing and business to design, analyze, interpret, and provide
actionable recommendations.
LRW’s Pragmatic Brain Science Institute® combines traditional
research techniques with cutting-edge approaches (rooted in
social, evolutionary and cognitive psychology, as well as behavioral
economics) to provide a holistic understanding of the human
consumer, why they do what they do, and what companies can do
about it. These Pragmatic Brain Science® approaches are scalable
and grounded in extensive academic research.
The team consults on research design that replicates relevant
consumer situations so companies can gain real insight into how
people experience their reality and what motivates them to act
in a consumer context. In some situations, we might recommend
including a specific tool, such as a measure of gut reactions to get at
more automatic aspects of thinking and judgment.  At other times,
it’s a simple question asked in the right way.

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Consumers are Human
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The tools should match
the process.

Pragmatic Brain Science® tools and approaches are developed
in adherence to a few core principles; measurement tools and
approaches should be grounded in (1) scientific theories and
frameworks and (2) psychological processes that are believed to be
at work in decisions and behaviors that are under consideration.
Let’s take candy bar purchases, for example. For most of us, they are
impulse purchases, made at the last minute, because well, it’s there,
you’re feeling a little down, you need a little pick-me-up, and you’re
a little hungry. But instead of choosing the store-brand chocolate
bar with almonds in it, you chose an Almond Joy. You always buy
Almond Joy. But you decide to buy the fun size, not the full-size bar,
because it’s January 3rd, and you did make a New Year’s resolution.
So the process involves some emotion, some less conscious
processes, and some more conscious processes. The research
and the tools should match that process. In the case of candy bar
purchases, that may include assessing emotion in the moment
as people are standing in the check-out line and pairing that
with research that assesses less conscious brand perceptions and
more conscious attitudes and beliefs that affect eating behavior.
The selection of tools should depend on research questions and
hypotheses about the process.

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