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9 Biases That Affect Decision Making in Marketers and Consumers

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9 Biases That Affect Decision Making in Marketers and Consumers Behaviour Attitudes Habits Psychology 9 Biases that affect decision making in marketers and consumers wethinkagain.com What is ‘Bias’? Our actions are not always the rational considered things that we may assume them to be. Our brains developed to make decisions quickly so that we could assess and respond to the dangers around us and still survive. Rapid assessment of our surroundings is as relevant now as it was thousands of years ago, we still make decisions quickly and often subconsciously, with little thought or understanding to how we arrived at the choice we made. Those decision making shortcuts, the rules of thumb and gut instinct decisions we make are called biases and heuristics. Although they serve us well they are prone to manipulation – to the point where we may feel like we’re the masters of our destiny, but in reality we can be manipulated by context, references and unseen external pressures. The following pages spotlight 9 biases that we feel are important for marketers to understand and use when they’re making decisions… or trying to influence others to make decisions! Bias Blind Spot People see bias in other people’s decision making, but don’t acknowledge that they are prone to bias themselves. This failure to see your own fallibility, is a bias in itself and can lead to poor decision making. This bias can be seen in everything, from political alliances to conspiracy theories, and much more. People often highlight that the ‘other side’ aren’t taking a fully rounded view of the evidence, then share their own equally flawed viewpoint. As marketers we need to be aware that our own biases can hugely affect our decision making. If we don’t tie our decisions to facts, observations and insight, we risk making ineffective decisions that are based on a segment of ‘one’ – ourselves. Curse of Knowledge The curse of knowledge is a cognitive bias that occurs when an individual assumes that the person they are talking to has the same level of background information as themselves. Have you ever hummed a song to someone and asked them to guess it? You hum the greatest rendition you can, convinced your friend will get it immediately and can’t believe it when they say they don’t know what it is. The reason you are certain is you have the context of knowledge to help you and you assume your friend has the same context. This is the curse of knowledge. As marketers we need to remember that although we are immersed in the brands we manage, consumers pretty much don’t care about them and certainly won’t understand the product to the same extent we do. So even if your brand is the best in the category, it is very dangerous and even foolish to assume that everyone knows it is the best brand, as this can lead to short term thinking and assumptions that your marketing activity will perform better than it may well do. Wishful Seeing People often promote what they want to believe, or what fits with their own belief, rather than what is reality. As Warren Buffett said “What the human being is best at doing is interpreting all new information so that their prior conclusions remain intact” It is very easy to be convinced by what you want to believe, rather than what the data or evidence is telling you. As marketers this can lead us down blind alleys, chasing targets or performance based on a preference or idea. This is visible every year, when the latest, shiny trend comes along, promising to revolutionise marketing – we want to believe them because new is better, faster, and more efficient than old! isn’t it?! Not always. ‘Traditional’ media, (eg TV, Radio, OOH) often touted as dying out to new digital channels still has a tremendous impact. It’s important to let data, insight and observations shape your strategy – using evidence, not preference to dictate your approach. Confirmation Bias People seek out information that supports their already held viewpoint, rather than information that contradicts their viewpoint. Linked to the previous topic, this bias creates an artificial bubble of ‘truth’ within the person and is very hard to shake. Even when presented with impartial facts the person will often assume the data is flawed and will not believe it. Confirmation bias has been proven to affect how people select data and is therefore a very difficult bias to overcome, as the data they select will always support their point of view. The first step is going back to the bias blindspot and understanding that we are all prone to these mental shortcuts. As marketers it is crucial to try and eliminate biased thinking by using decision making tools to aid us. Even just viewing the decision from several viewpoints (the ‘many hat’ approach) to try and make a more rounded assessment of the issue, can lead to elimination of internal biases. Availability Bias People tend to assess the relative importance of issues by the ease with which facts are recalled from memory. This bias has been shown in several studies, an example of which was an experiment where a group of people were asked to list words that start with K, and a list of those which have K as the third letter, the group were then asked which selection has the most words. The group all believed that there were more words that start with K – but this is not the case, its just easier to recall words that begin with a letter. This availability bias can be seen in daily life if you look at the media. Coverage of the news can influence people’s viewpoints and perception of importance by the manner in and frequency of which it is reported. It’s important for marketers to help customers easily recall their brand when deciding what to buy. Recall is helped by creating mental ‘availability’ through distinctive brand assets, frequent exposure to the brand and easy to understand messaging. Mere-Exposure Effect This is a psychological phenomenon where people tend to develop a preference for things just because they are familiar with them. In social psychology, this effect is sometimes known as the familiarity principle. The mere-exposure effect has been well researched and is observed across all aspects of our decision making, from stock traders favouring certain companies for their investments, to academics favouring particular journals based on if they have been published in it or not. Mere-exposure shows that we don’t even need to to expend any cognitive energy, we can simply see a banner or billboard repeatedly and the associations build up. Mere-exposure has had mixed results in advertising, however it has been shown that for new or unknown products and brands, repeated exposure to the brand builds positive recollections. This is useful for brands trying to increase their following – be visible in the areas your audience are! Baader Meinhoff Effect This bias, also known as ‘frequency bias’, is based on memory driven attention, when you see or notice something new, then suddenly it’s everywhere. Remember the last time you changed car, you drive off the forecourt excitedly taking to the road, you turn a corner and there is your make of car, then suddenly you see it everywhere… that is an example of Baader Meinhoff. The frequency bias stems from the conflict in our need be aware of our surroundings, and the overload of information that would be needed to evaluate every piece of data. Our brains ignore things that aren’t important or noticeable and only take heed when something is front of mind, your mind then draws your attention to that thing in the environment in a way you don’t normally notice. As marketers there is a thought that people will engage with a brand because of communication, in reality consumers will engage with communication because of a brand, the brand has to be in people’s minds before they will interact. This is useful for thinking of the purchase funnel and ensuring that top of funnel activities are building the brand in the subconscious of the consumer. Anchoring Anchoring is a decision-making phenomenon that occurs when we subconsciously set an ‘anchor’ that all decisions are based on, from that point. We take the initial piece of information as the starting point, and decide by adjusting away from that For example when buying a used car, the initial price that is offered sets an anchor point for all following discussions. Any negotiations that result in a price that is lower than the anchor may seem reasonable, or even cheap, regardless if the price is higher than the car’s actual market value. Anchoring has some very common uses in marketing, either by manipulating how we perceive the cost of purchase, or in the case of smart phone manufacturers for amplifying the features the item has to justify the price point. A classic example of anchoring that easy to implement, is displaying the RRP of a product before the current price the product is being sold at, the RRP anchors the full price in our mind, making us feel the product is a good deal. Von Restorff Effect We remember the things that stand out the most. Hedwig Von Restorff was a doctor of psychology when she researched the effect of bizarreness on memory in 1933. She carried out research using lists of similar characters, with randomly placed distinctive items included amongst them. Her subjects were then given memory tasks to recall information and the research showed that a distinctive item is more easily recalled than those that are similar.
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