Starting small with behavioural science

One of the biggest barriers to adopting behavioural science in insights departments is the cost. I’ve been told many times that a behavioural approach, although it is deeper and more rigorous than traditional research, is too expensive to invest in “for this project. But when the right project comes along, we’ll be in touch…”

And there is some truth in this. Irrational Agency in particular is mainly known for working on big, difficult questions, like new segmentations, non-conscious barriers to purchase, foundational customer understanding, or designing a new loyalty program. These do typically require some investment.

But what if there was a way to get the benefits of behavioural science quickly, with a limited budget, across some of your smaller projects? Not every business question can justify a £50-100,000 research budget, but almost every one can benefit from a better understanding of consumers’ unconscious feelings and decisions.

Over the last few years, clients like Vodafone, Sainsbury’s and the BBC have taken advantage of a model that lets them get the best of both worlds. These companies have good in-house researchers who know how to put a survey together or run a focus group. And sometimes their budgets don’t justify bringing in the full agency approach to run an advanced behavioural research project. Here’s what they’ve done instead:

• Bring in tactical quant expertise: hiring a behavioural consultant for a couple of days to review a questionnaire design, remove implicit biases and suggest new question wording or new ways to ask about unconscious choices.
• Overlay qual analysis with behavioural lens: have a behavioural scientist watch your qualitative interviews or read the debrief, and layer in additional insights – what does that body language suggest? How about the words they used to answer that question? What are they not saying? All of these clues can reveal hidden barriers and biases.
• Run a behavioural training workshop: teach an insight team the principles of behavioural science and how they can be incorporated into research.
• Build a behavioural AI: to supplement a traditional research report, create AI personas based on known customer segments – incorporating the cognitive biases and heuristics that pervade your customers’ thoughts and feelings.

These approaches not only cost much less than a full outsourced project, but they give you a great way to quickly familiarise yourself with the benefits of behavioural science and decide whether it might be useful in other parts of your research portfolio.

We’ve been doing this for a while but as more clients run research in-house, we’re investing in scaling up our service: Build In Behavioural.

We'll step in to advise, only when you need us. For example, we can review your questionnaire or discussion guide, watch a group or depth interview and give you a behavioural perspective, or provide ideas for behavioural-inspired nudges and messaging. You get access to the same top behavioural expertise - for thousands instead of tens of thousands.

More examples of what a behavioural view can add?

• spotting biases in question wording that could lead to misleading answers
• discovering unconscious motives or habits that your respondent isn't aware of
• a new pack claim that uses behavioural heuristics (e.g. social proof, loss aversion) to increase purchase likelihood

While this approach works well with an in-house team, we’ve often worked alongside other agencies who are strong on fieldwork or industry expertise – we just provide the extra behavioural or psychological dimension.

Think about your next in-house qual or quant research project. Do you think there might be any hidden, non-conscious discovery that a straightforward survey will not uncover? Talk to us and we’ll be happy to help you add some extra insights without having to rethink the whole project.

Further reading:

• Build behavioural into your AI: 
• Build behavioural into your quant research
• Coming soon: Build behavioural into your qual research