Irrational Blog

How To Solve the Problem of Claimed vs Actual

Written by Irrational Agency | Nov 30, 2023 11:44:11 AM

Behaviorual science by its nature goes beyond the conscious to understand the behaviours and motivations we can’t articulate. It’s great at predicting future behaviours or answering big complex questions on value, price, and knotty topics such as sustainability. In these areas it certainly has huge advantages over traditional research methods and can provide unique insights, as we demonstrated in our own work on the cost of living crisis here. 

At Irrational Agency we believe only behavioural science can help you get closer to consumers and provide true future insight. It can be applied to any traditional quantitative and qualitative research methods to generate insights that provide not only the “what”, but also the “why”, and the “where next”. 

Take the brand tracker for example. Understandably, brands want to know how perceptions of the brand changes over time and when issues that require attention may crop up. But the tracker only reveals one tempting corner of truth: has the brand score gone up or down? The problem is it won’t tell you why, or how to change it. It invites a debate among stakeholders that can never be resolved. The challenge is trackers capture claimed attitudes, not true behaviour. So a brand score could go up even when sales go down. More often than not, there is a correlation between brand scores and sales, but it’s far from perfect. But if you expand the information you capture and overlay a behavioural science approach that will understand brand narratives you can collect more predictive insight while still offering that simple score beloved by stakeholders. Ultimately your brand tracker can provide the “why” behind the “what” and give you the “where next”. 

If you’re interested in learning more about applying behavioural science to brand trackers, along with segmentation projects, U&A research, depth interviews, concept testing, conjoint analysis, UX research, shelf and pack testing and more. Then sign up for webinar: Solving Claimed Vs Actual, on the 23rd January 2024 at 4pm. 

 

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