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Syndicated Research

The brand effectiveness & growth advantage. Since 2011, we apply proprietary behavioral factors to fuel double-digit growth via activation.

 What do you get when you combine forward-thinking neuroscientists with seasoned strategy vets? You get a framework and research approach that catapults your insights forward with…
 <ul>
<li>A better means of profiling your audience based on what REALLY drives behavior.</li>
 <li>An accurate understanding of who, where, and how to activate to drive real-world behavior.</li>
 <li>A breakthrough understanding of heuristics – the decision-making shortcuts that empower your teams to communicate much, much more effectively with your customers, consumers, and shoppers.</li>

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Amazonified Millennials: How to Thrive via The 9 Why’s of Context

Why brands should avoid ‘shrinkflation’ in the face of rising costs.

No One Hates Shrinkflation More than Inflationaires

How the recent chaotic years are part of a recurring cultural pattern.

Still Crazy After All These Years: Neuroscience, Cultural Cycles, and 2022

In 2011, neuroscientist T. Sigi Hale PhD was principal researcher (known in academia as principal investigator) leading a National Institute of Health-funded lab at UCLA. He left academia to enter the market research industry (he’s a principal neuroscientist at Alpha-Diver) and has helped pioneer the advent of the behavioral science movement.

Neuroscience in Market Research: Beyond the Hype

Picture a group of young children. As they start in life and through their early years, they assimilate. They strive to talk, act, and socialize like their parents. They want to contribute to the household, and show that they can function as worthy, contributing members of the tribe. They rely on their parents’ protection, and essentially would have trouble surviving without the constructs and established practices of the household.

Decoding Cultural Zeitgeist in 3 Simple Steps

Explore the complex world of consumer behavior. Learn how time, social, physical, and emotional currencies influence purchasing decisions on our website.

Beyond Price: The Currencies That Truly Drive Consumer Behavior

Finally, an article examining the impact of inflationary pricing on <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/the-prompt-ai/consumer-behavior-ai-advances-and-disruption" target="_blank" rel="noopener">consumer behavior</a>. But wait! This is not the standard &ldquo;things cost more so people are buying less&rdquo; rhetoric.
Rather, there&rsquo;s much more at play in consumers&rsquo; minds &ndash; and purchase decisions &ndash; than the purely rational assumption that buying behavior is perfectly aligned to pricing.
Bottom line, up front: for some purchase decisions, things that actually cost more are perceived by consumers to be a better value.
And I&rsquo;m not talking about buying a better car that will cost less in the long run. I&rsquo;m talking about everyday things like snacks and beverages. And it boils down to the two factors that underlie all purchase decisions: interest, and action.
Interest: how much do people WANT the brand?
How much attention is it earning? How engaged and intrigued are people by it?
Action: how much are they BUYING the brand?
How routinized is consumption? How much is it part of everyday life?
When you look at a given industry through this lens, you find that brands will generally fall into one of four buckets:
<ol class="ol1">
<li class="li1">Exploration: consumers have high interest in the brand, but they haven&rsquo;t full adopted it into everyday life yet. Usually newer, unique brands.</li>
<li class="li1">Routine: the brand is part of everyday life, but not particularly exciting / interesting as a result. Generally big, well-established &lsquo;power brands.&rsquo;</li>
<li class="li1">No man&rsquo;s land: the brand is not interesting, nor is it driving action &ndash; this is trouble, and time for something like a restage.</li>
<li class="li1">The promised land: this is the most elusive territory in that the brand is adopted and part of daily life, and yet continues to earn consumer engagement and interest. Very tough to pull off. Chick-Fil-A manages this in the QSR space: its fans eat there regularly, yet remain emotionally engaged and excited about it.</li>
</ol>
The vast majority of brands will fall into groups 1 or 2: Exploration, or Routine. And here&rsquo;s where it gets interesting relative to how consumers perceive price.
People are less concerned about price for brands in Exploration, and more sensitive to price for brands in Routine.
<h2 class="p1">Looking at the top 50 beverage brands in the U.S.</h2>
The cluster of brands that are high on routine &ndash; brands like Coke, Pepsi, Sprite, Dr. Pepper, Gatorade &ndash; cost roughly $0.08 per ounce at Walmart.
The cluster of brands that are high on exploration &ndash; brands like Olipop, Poppi, <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/insights-industry-news/interview-with-rick-mochulsky-and-melissa-harrington-of-liquid-death" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Liquid Death</a>, Electrolit &ndash; cost roughly $0.13 per ounce.
The kicker? Consumers perceive less price concern with the more expensive group ($0.13/oz.) than they do the less expensive group ($0.08/oz.).
Let me say that again. The brands that cost roughly 62% MORE create LESS price concern in the minds of consumers.
And it makes sense: if you drink a Coke several times per week &ndash; it&rsquo;s part of your routine &ndash; a price increase is going to hurt more.
If you&rsquo;re just trying out Poppi occasionally &ndash; exploring the brand and a new category &ndash; the price doesn&rsquo;t matter as much.
So what to do? A can of Coke is about $0.80, and a can of Poppi is around $3.79. But Coke&rsquo;s getting more pressure in the minds of consumers. And this is true in categories like fast-food, snacks, and beyond. The more established brands &ndash; Coke, Hershey&rsquo;s, McDonald&rsquo;s, Pepsi, Lays &ndash; are being met with more price concern than newer, more novel brands.
So what to do if you run one of these brands &ndash; whether in exploration or routine?
The first step is to recognize that the playing field is not level. You have to know where your brand sits in consumers&rsquo; minds before you rush down the &ldquo;price optimization&rdquo; path.
The second step is to serve the consumer psychology that&rsquo;s impacting YOUR brand&rsquo;s situation.
If your brand is high routine, you&rsquo;re in a tougher situation. But the path forward is not to lower the price. It&rsquo;s to increase the interest.
Among the host of routes forward, the simplest mechanism to pump-up interest is to leverage Classical Conditioning to create novelty, excitement, and perceived uniqueness around your well-established, well-entrenched brand.
Think, access to exclusive concerts or gaming unlocks. Early access to new flavor drops. Limited-time-only offers exclusive to app users. And so on&hellip;
The other route to increasing interest in the face of high price sensitivity is to reduce the perceived barriers OTHER THAN price. As demonstrated above, lowering the price per ounce to $0.07, or $0.06 is not going to accomplish anything other than eroding your margins. Consumer perception is neither linear, nor rational. So focus on removing the other &lsquo;costs&rsquo; consumers perceive:
<ul class="ul1">
<li class="li1">Time &ndash; what would I have to give up doing if I choose this?&nbsp;</li>
<li class="li1">Social &ndash; what will others think of my choice?&nbsp;</li>
<li class="li1">Physical &ndash; will this make me feel bad physically?&nbsp;</li>
<li class="li1">Emotional &ndash; will I be disappointed by this choice?</li>
</ul>
Now, if your brand is high exploration, you&rsquo;re under less price pressure. Good for you, but don&rsquo;t get too comfortable. The path forward to higher action &ndash; more regular usage and growth &ndash; remains your challenge.
If your brand is in this situation, you need a different playbook. You&rsquo;ll use the principles of Operant Conditioning to create loyalty and frequency. After all, consumers aren&rsquo;t too concerned about your pricing &ndash; yet &ndash; because they simply aren&rsquo;t buying you enough to feel the financial pain.
Chains like Chipotle and Starbucks have used this approach with great success in promotions like &lsquo;streaks&rsquo; &ndash; the social media-inspired technique where consumers are rewarded for visiting the restaurant every week for four weeks to unlock a badge, for example.
Another example made famous by Starbucks was the &lsquo;treat receipt&rsquo; where morning beverage buyers receive an appealing offer if they come back again that same afternoon.
Eventually, as your brand hopefully moves into the more routinized, everyday space, price pressure will naturally emerge; consumers will be using you more, so they&rsquo;ll feel the price pain more.
But there&rsquo;s fertile ground to drive growth without resorting to price-slashing, if you leverage consumer psychology to serve more than meets the eye in terms of black-and-white price considerations.&nbsp;

Explore how inflation impacts consumer behavior, revealing why higher costs sometimes boost perceived value, challenging the simple price-demand relationship."

The Price Perception Paradox: When Is More Less in Consumers’ Minds?

Understandably, I continue to field a myriad of questions from senior leaders across industries on value, affordability, and the role of inflationary pricing. And my response is consistent: while monetary price will always matter, consumer and shopper behavior are hindered by much more than money.
Beyond the tangible price tag, consumers engage with a variety of currencies&mdash;time, social, physical, and emotional&mdash;each playing a distinct role in the intricate dance of purchasing choices. Understanding and optimizing for these hidden costs is paramount for marketers seeking to create impactful strategies and activation.
Before delving into the exploration of these perceptual currencies, it's essential to recognize the fundamental principle guiding human behavior&mdash;a delicate balance between the proverbial carrot and stick. Consumers are willing to endure impediments ('stick') if the reward ('carrot') is enticing enough.
[related-article title="What Really Motivates Consumer Behavior?" url="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/gain-retain/what-really-motivates-consumer-behavior"]
Therefore, marketers need to not only assess barriers but also focus on enhancing the allure of the reward, a concept we'll delve into in future discussions. For now, let's examine in greater detail the four types of perceptual currencies that extend beyond the monetary realm.
<h2 class="p2">Time: the world&rsquo;s scarcest commodity</h2>
In today's fast-paced world, time has obviously become an increasingly precious resource for consumers and shoppers. Balancing longer work hours and numerous daily responsibilities, individuals find discretionary time more challenging to obtain. Consequently, leisure time emerges as the ultimate luxury, and consumers gravitate towards <a href="https://alpha-diver.com/how-improving-the-shopping-experience-can-help-food-and-beverage-brands-compete-in-an-omni-channel-world/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">shopping experiences </a>that respect and optimize their time expenditure.
But this is where consumer decision-making takes an unexpected turn&hellip; Picture this scenario&hellip;
&ldquo;Your delivery will be there in 27 minutes&rdquo;
&ldquo;Make that 37 minutes&rdquo;
&ldquo;Check that, we&rsquo;re not quite sure &ndash; standby&rdquo;
&ldquo;Okay, we&rsquo;ve assigned a new delivery person &ndash; 44 minutes away&rdquo;
It&rsquo;s easy to misperceive that eComm, delivery, and other progressive forms of shopping are all about the obvious factors of convenience and time. In traditional research, respondents will dutifully report that this is why they favor eComm.
However, we continually see in our data that shoppers who are the most concerned with time pressure actually avoid methods like delivery. Why? Because when one perceives that time REALLY matters, they don&rsquo;t want to relinquish control over it.
Theoretically, ordering for delivery, purchasing for click-and-collect, and the like, are time-savers: they empower the shopper to do other things and otherwise spend less time shopping, buying, and getting.
However, through the lens of psychology, they&rsquo;re actually control-takers. And control over time is far more valuable than the actual time itself. So the pursuit is not to promise less time; it&rsquo;s actually to promise more control over time. 
<h2 class="p2">Social Currency: balancing individuality with the wisdom of the tribe</h2>
Consumers wear dual hats when making purchasing decisions&mdash;expressing their individuality vs. fitting into a larger social context. Purchases become signals of values, status, and personality, influencing how others perceive them &ndash; within their own households, and beyond. Striking a delicate balance between standing out and fitting in, consumers navigate a complex calculus of social currency, considering family, peers, co-workers, and cultural norms.
Brands often build their identity around specific social circles. Glossier, for instance, taps into the "cool girl" skincare space by leveraging influencers within desired social circles. Meanwhile, classic brands like Lululemon thrive by signaling aspirational living for busy parents. Social currency can influence pricing decisions, particularly for status symbols like luxury vehicles, premium dining experiences, or seasonal fashion.
To delve deeper into the social dynamics, it's crucial for marketers to understand the evolving nature of social connections and influences. The rise of social media has clearly amplified the impact of peer recommendations and influencer endorsements. Consumers not only seek products that align with their personal values but also ones that resonate with their broader social networks &ndash; often most heavily influenced by the people they actually know personally.
Marketers who grasp the nuances of these social dynamics can tailor their strategies to create products and campaigns that not only meet individual preferences but also align with the collective identity of target audiences, reframing social currency to drive strong emotional resonance.
<h2 class="p2">Physical Effort: the precursor to purchase, and product experience</h2>
The physical effort involved in a shopping trip or purchase can significantly impact consumer behavior. Traveling to a store and navigating aisles can consume energy before any dollars are spent. Additionally, the ease with which a purchased product can be unpacked, set up, merchandised in the pantry, and integrated into one's life matters.
As the global population ages, there's a growing reluctance towards complex assemblies, heavy appliances, or products requiring technological sophistication &ndash; and this spills over even into fast moving consumables categories.
E-commerce experiences that reduce barriers, such as offering free shipping and lenient return policies, appeal to consumers. Companies like Made.com provide AR visualization for furniture, allowing customers to assess aesthetic fit and dimensions in their own space.
Apple's seamless devices, easily set up straight out of the box, contribute to the brand's appeal. Simplifying the pre- and post-transaction physical considerations conserves consumer energy for the essential experience.
Furthermore, the concept of physical effort extends beyond the immediate act of purchase. It encompasses the entire product lifecycle, from the manufacturing process to disposal or recycling.
Sustainable and eco-friendly practices not only appeal to environmentally conscious consumers but also reduce the perceived physical effort associated with the guilt of contributing to environmental harm. By integrating sustainability into their practices, companies can address a growing consumer demand for products that align with their ethical and environmental values.
<h2 class="p2">Emotional Bank Accounts: attentional bandwidth and fear of disappointment</h2>
Perhaps the most challenging to detect, <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/research-methodologies/typology-of-respondents-and-model-of-empathic-communication" target="_blank" rel="noopener">emotional currency</a> wields incredible influence over shopper &amp; consumer behavior. Shopping and purchasing involve a spectrum of emotions&mdash;from discovery and decision-making to anticipation, unboxing, and product integration into daily life. Heightened emotions at each step deepen customer engagement with brands, creating a more significant investment.
On the flip side, fear of disappointment carries substantial weight. Subscription services curate experiences to consistently "delight" members, while brands like Goumi provide at-home try-ons to alleviate guilt or worry. A myriad of retailers offer generous return policies, providing both financial and emotional reassurance. Recognizing the vulnerability of consumers during shopping journeys and mitigating uncertainty at each step fosters brand loyalty beyond the confines of a reasonable price tag.
The emotional dimension of consumer behavior is an intricate tapestry that marketers must delicately weave into their strategies. Understanding the various emotional touch-points throughout the customer journey allows brands to create more personalized and resonant experiences.
This involves not only meeting basic expectations but also exceeding them to evoke positive emotions (aka keep attention on &lsquo;the carrot&rsquo; rather than &lsquo;the stick&rsquo;). Personalized communication, thoughtful branding, and consistent quality all contribute to the emotional bank account a brand holds with its consumers.
<h2 class="p2">The Next Frontier for Savvy Marketers</h2>
While pricing remains a crucial aspect of market expectations and positioning, consumers often make decisions driven by factors beyond rational cost-benefit analyses. Savvy marketers should shift their focus towards understanding and optimizing for the "hidden" costs exchanged in any transaction. Time invested, social signals gained or lost, physical burdens, and emotional energy expended are currencies that shape <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/understanding-consumer-behavior-and-habits-through-frameworks-for-change" target="_blank" rel="noopener">consumer behavior</a>.
Optimizing for these behind-the-scenes currencies not only fosters brand loyalty but also unlocks consumer psychology. In a landscape where discounted economics might not be enough (nor be desirable boardroom solutions), the most successful marketers will be those who recognize and address the multi-dimensional currencies that truly drive, and hinder, consumer behavior.

Picture a group of young children. As they start in life and through their early years, they assimilate. They strive to talk, act, and socialize like their parents. They want to contribute to the household, and show that they can function as worthy, contributing members of the tribe. They rely on their parents&rsquo; protection, and essentially would have trouble surviving without the constructs and established practices of the household.
<h2>They seek to belong</h2>
Eventually, this group of kids transitions into the teenage years. Oh, the horror. All that safety, assimilation, and honoring of tribal norms are out the window. They seek to do anything BUT talk, act, or socialize like their parents. They reject virtually any requests to help around the house. They venture far afield into dangerous territories like the basements of those friends&rsquo; homes with lax supervision. They consume what they want, when they want, and appear to plan roughly 6 seconds into the future.
<h2>They seek to rebel</h2>
This gives way to the young adult or university years. The rebellion is quelled, replaced by exploration and discovery. They seek to understand their options in life, and where they might fit in the world. They try new foods, hang out with different types of people, question their mentors, and challenge themselves to uncover new truth (granted, often annoyingly presuming they&rsquo;re the first group of humans in history to do so).
<h2>They seek to discover</h2>
As this group of now-adults transitions beyond the exploratory days on campus or in first jobs, they&rsquo;re back out in the real world. They look to the conventions of peers in their same situation to guide the way. They look to the types of jobs, living situations, social activities, and relationships adopted and endorsed by others &ldquo;like them.&rdquo; They share the discoveries made with others and collectively adopt the most worthwhile (from bubble tea to social media platforms).
<h2>Once again, they seek to belong</h2>
From there, this cycle repeats through life. You can examine these three forces in your own life, and the familiar meme of the &ldquo;midlife crisis&rdquo; exemplifies a notable era of rebellion many experience.
<div class="post-related-post">
<h3>Related</h3>
<h4><a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/focus-on-latam/interview-with-lucia-roncancio-how-consumer-insights-help-drive-alquera">Interview With Lucia Roncancio: How Consumer Insights Help Drive Alquer&iacute;a</a></h4>
</div>
These three forces, modeled and studied by neuroscientist T. Sigi Hale, PhD, relate to the deep human biological compulsion to be both socially integrated / connected, and the opposing compulsion to be individually unique and independent. This subconscious tension between these opposing forces (to belong vs. to self-discover) creates the third force (to rebel).
And these forces go well beyond life stage experiences to help explain the zeitgeist of culture at a given time. This lets us understand what&rsquo;s driving, and stressing, a society &ndash; and <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/consumer-behavior">why consumers behave in certain ways</a>, and buy certain product categories and brands as a result. Just as these forces manifest throughout a person&rsquo;s life, they similarly manifest in cultures in a cyclical manner.
Culturally, we&rsquo;re in a decidedly teenage era.
Hale and team have been tracking the impact of these psychological forces for years. Below is a table for U.S. gen pop, beginning with a historical benchmark which essentially creates an index norm for the pre-COVID period. Tracking these three forces from 2020 to present, and indexing against the historical norm, the data speaks for itself&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter wp-image-37729 " src="https://greenbook.org/mr/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/h.therman.png" alt="" width="858" height="518">
The &lsquo;Rebel&rsquo; force is strongly shaping the zeitgeist consumers experience. This force is particularly pronounced among younger consumers; <a href="https://alpha-diver.com/the-science-of-snacking-a-deep-dive-into-gen-zs-choices/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">the Gen Z most every marketer covets</a>. And, just as with the teen years of our group of kids described above, it&rsquo;s having a cathartic impact on emotional tension, behavior, and purchase choices.
It&rsquo;s no surprise to any citizen of earth that the last several years have been&hellip; intense. The past few years have been particularly stressful. And I don&rsquo;t mean project-deadline-at-work stress; I mean societal stressors that create the kind of ambient pressure that shapes cultural cycles. In short, things have really sucked, and people are reacting at the cultural level.
Anyone in the behavioral science space knows that we humans crave one thing above all else: control. However, what we actually crave is the perception of control, as control itself is not achievable within the constructs of real life. From flat tires to global pandemics, we&rsquo;re struggling mightily to control our fortunes, only to be dashed back to reality again and again.
And yet, people manage to live productive, reasonably happy lives. How? By doing things that reward them with just a bit of perceived control over their situations and outcomes.
Categories like soft drinks, snacks, and quick-serve restaurants are thriving, as they empower consumers to rebel in the form of something that helps them feel better, right now. I can&rsquo;t control the economy, but a trip through the drive-thru can sure provide some feel-good benefits for the next 20 minutes!
This is why these feel-good-right-now categories appear immune to pricing pressure (carbonated soft drink pricing is up ~17% in the past year, and yet volume growth has exceeded even that figure). The cultural &lsquo;teen years&rsquo; are raging, and categories and brands that provide for that instinctual compulsion to blow off steam will continue to thrive.
Eventually, this cultural phase will give way to an exploratory cycle. Just as with our group of kids above, society will transition from &lsquo;Rebel&rsquo; to &lsquo;Discover.&rsquo; We&rsquo;ll seek to find new conventions, and explore &ldquo;the best way&rdquo; to do things based on the pursuit of new experiences. The red line above will creep back towards the baseline, and the purple line will slope upwards.
As our cultures establish new norms and conventions based on this exploration, we&rsquo;ll once again tribalize, honor the new conventions, and otherwise &lsquo;Belong.&rsquo; But for the time-being, it&rsquo;s record-high &lsquo;Rebel&rsquo; compulsion.
So what? What can brand practitioners DO to activate on this insight to their advantage? Let&rsquo;s consider two scenarios:
<h3>Scenario 1: You&rsquo;re winning.</h3>
Your brand is thriving, growing, and riding this wave. In that case, beware that a key challenge with this mindset is that it is fickle. Loyalty will be challenged, as the consumer is as loyal as their best option. To combat this, ensure that your activation and promotions provide ongoing opportunities to win &ndash; contests, access to exclusive online content, etc.
Further, beware the shift to exploration. Eventually, this &lsquo;Rebel&rsquo; mindset will give way to &lsquo;Discover&rsquo; &ndash; craft your innovation pipeline with unique new extensions and discoveries to keep consumers engaged with your brand as this evolution occurs. Plan promotions that empower discovery, such as consumer-fueled social media innovation contests, and the like.
<h3>Scenario 2: You&rsquo;re struggling.</h3>
It could be that your category is mis-aligned with this zeitgeist; easy to see for categories like laundry detergent or baby food. This could also be due to too much focus on rational, practical considerations &ndash; the most obvious of which lately is focusing too heavily on mere price.
Remember that consumers are generally looking for emotional relief and a bit of escapism. Focus on experience; resist the rational, price-forward obsession and elevate &lsquo;the feels&rsquo; &ndash; even something as functional as doing your taxes can leverage this insight, as TurboTax has with its &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t do your taxes&rdquo; campaign.
Look for opportunities within your omni-channel activation to inject a bit of fun and rebellion &ndash; what if a digital promotion could create a shopping treasure hunt, or other gamified ways to make the mundane less so?
And plan for the shift to a discovery phase in the cultural zeitgeist as we evolve past this teenage-like era. After all, anyone who&rsquo;s lived with a teenager knows it&rsquo;s not easy &ndash; but it helps when it is at least predictable.

In 2011, neuroscientist <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/sigi-hale-ph-d-61089b5/">T. Sigi Hale PhD</a> was principal researcher (known in academia as principal investigator) leading a National Institute of Health-funded lab at UCLA. He left academia to enter the market research industry (he&rsquo;s a principal neuroscientist at <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/company/Alpha-Diver">Alpha-Diver)</a> and has helped pioneer the advent of the behavioral science movement.
From his first encounter with the world of &lsquo;marketing science&rsquo; to his experience over the decade to follow, he observed conventions, themes, habits, and some downright mistakes being made in the space. Sigi also emerged as a foremost expert in exploring and applying what &lsquo;behavioral science&rsquo; truly has to offer marketing insights and strategy.
While many in the neuro-marketing space are drawn to the sparkle and hype of tech &lsquo;gadgetry&rsquo; such as eye tracking and biomonitoring (e.g. via smartwatches), Sigi&rsquo;s observations provide a far more tangible, durable view of the ways insights professionals can better diagnose human behavior &ndash; and dramatically improve their results in real-world activation.
As Sigi discovered the marketing science world, his experience revealed three core insights that can guide marketers to truer, more effective brand activation &ndash; and which dramatically simplify the seemingly mysterious applications of neuroscience principles in business.
<h2>Observation 1: market research is model-free; academic research is model-based</h2>
The most fundamental &ndash; and likely the most instructive &ndash; difference between the world of academic research and that of market research is the fundamental philosophical divide between &ldquo;model-free&rdquo; and &ldquo;model-based&rdquo; research.
The vast majority of conventional market research remains model free. Under this philosophy, researchers go forth into the world to collect data (whether physically or digitally, qualitatively or quantitatively). They do so without a model, simply observing consumer behavior, asking people why they do one thing over another, or compiling data points related to various behaviors of interest. Then, they return to their huddle rooms, laptops, and offices to analyze the data; in essence, the effort to reveal &ldquo;the model&rdquo; from the data.
This effort to divine the signal from the noise of all the data they&rsquo;ve amassed is doomed to introduce subjectivity, bias, and inaccuracies. What&rsquo;s more, this approach fails to leverage all that&rsquo;s known from previous research or existing knowledge.
<h2>Academic research is different</h2>
Academic research looks much different. In academia (such as Sigi&rsquo;s university lab, and others), the first stage is to identify a reliable, established model and cultivate an associated set of hypotheses that will frame the data collection. Then, field work is driven not by collecting lots of disparate data, but rather mapping data collection back to the model and hypotheses. In other words, the model provides the guide as to what the researcher is looking for. Not only does this dramatically reduce the churn which so often paralyzes market research analyses, it &ldquo;stands on the shoulders&rdquo; of all previous research and learning to instill confidence, and assure objectivity in the findings and implications. While this comparison between these two approaches to research sounds simple, it&rsquo;s quite cathartic in the implications.
<div class="post-related-post">
<h3>Related</h3>
<h4><a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/brand-strategy/taking-a-stand-the-value-of-neuroscience-in-socially-charged-advertising">Taking a Stand: The Value of Neuroscience in Socially-Charged Advertising</a></h4>
</div>
Consider an analogy from everyday life: imagine you wanted to go for a hike. There are two basic choices you have&hellip;
Choice 1: consult a trail map, and follow an established path the destinations you&rsquo;d like to explore.
Choice 2: forge off into the woods and simply wander around.
Aside from the obvious perils of choice 2, most people would agree that having a map is a more reliable, rewarding experience. And yet, most market research projects look a lot more like wandering in the woods than they do consulting a map. Model free research amounts to wandering in the natural habitats of consumers (both physical and digital) and hoping to stumble upon new discoveries.
Model based research leverages the trails blazed by predecessors to much more reliably guide explorers to their desired destinations and discoveries.
<h2>Observation 2: human beings are incapable of explaining WHY they do things</h2>
In a recent interview at the IAB Brand Disruption Summit,<a href="https://www.gopuff.com/"> Gopuff</a> founder and co-CEO, Rafael Ilishayev discussed the notable popularity on the platform of having pints of ice-cream delivered. Axiom reporter Sara Fischer, who conducted the interview, noted that surely this was driven by Gopuff&rsquo;s reliably speedy delivery service, and consumer assurance that their ice-cream would not melt in transit.
While Ilishayev agreed with this practical component of the ice-cream category performance, he shared a more insightful explanation of Gopuff&rsquo;s performance in ice-cream: simply, the fact that ordering ice-cream for home delivery spares the shopper from social judgement.
Picture yourself walking into a convenience store and awkwardly carrying three pints of Chunky Monkey to the front counter. Not exactly an occasion you&rsquo;d rush to share on your Instagram feed. The cashier might even raise his eyebrows as you tumble the pints onto the counter.
Now picture tapping and swiping your way to order not three but FOUR pints on Gopuff, and having them dropped on your doorstep minutes later. No judgment, embarrassment, or hesitation &ndash; just pure enjoyment.
And yet, if the Gopuff team were to gather a quorum of young consumers in a traditional setting, such as a focus group, they&rsquo;d insist that ordering from Gopuff is simply more convenient and time saving; in other words, they&rsquo;d cite the rational, plausible reasons for their engagement with this behavior.
<h3>Social aspect of behavior is key</h3>
But the social aspect of the behavior is much more accurate as to they WHY of the behavior. To wit, Gopuff actually sells more pints of ice-cream in a given order than traditional retailers. All of this is an excellent demonstration of the fallibility of our perceptions as to the causation of our own behavior. Said plainly, from the brain-science perspective, human beings are incapable of explaining WHY we do (or don&rsquo;t do) things.
And yet, most market research techniques continue to ask them to do so. Regardless of methodology, most marketing science asks people what they like, don&rsquo;t like, want more of, want less of, and so on. And while research respondents try in earnest to provide accurate answers, they&rsquo;re actually providing highly-filtered narratives, alibis, and perceptions. In other words, they&rsquo;re reporting what they THINK they think.
Neuroscience, leveraging decades of past research, seeks out more durable (and often subconscious) measures of the true factors that explain, and even predict human behavior.
<h2>Observation 3: behavior is predictable</h2>
This statement is a third-rail for many. And neuroscience does not proport to amount to ESP, predicting whether a shopper will turn left or right; choose Coke over Pepsi, etc.
Rather, this definition of predictability relates to the durable aspects of human behavior. Most everyone can relate to the experience of walking around a corner and being startled by someone unexpectedly appearing. When this happens, what does the person who&rsquo;s startled do? You know the answer intuitively &ndash; they jump, flinch, or otherwise physically recoil from the unexpected surprise. This is predictable.
Likewise, there are <a href="https://alpha-diver.com/understanding-system-1-and-system-2-thinking/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">predictable lenses</a> through which a person views everyday decisions, including purchase decisions.
<ol>
<li>The PRACTICAL lens &ndash; making decisions based on knowledge and comparing options.</li>
<li>The SOCIAL lens &ndash; making choices based on tribal knowledge and collective social agreement.</li>
<li>The EXPERIENTIAL lens &ndash; personally exploring and discovering new, exciting experiences.</li>
<li>The INSTINCTUAL lens &ndash; simply following natural impulses to do what feels good in the moment.</li>
</ol>
Just as hiking with a map still requires endurance and effort, it takes some work to identify and quantify which of the above is driving consumer behavior within a given context &ndash; but they&rsquo;re surely present. And, when you&rsquo;re studying a marketspace with an established model of WHY people behave in the ways they do, business building discoveries become a much more reliable and enjoyable endeavor.
The intersection of <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/behavioral-science/applied-neuroscience-outpaces-the-growth-rate-of-the-industry-by-3x">neuroscience</a> and human behavior offers potent guidance in serving consumers better as marketers create more effective activations. Teams need not chase the shiny objects of highly-technical approaches &ndash; whether AI, eye tracking, EEG, biometrics, or the like. And, while neuromarketing is simpler than many perceive, it does require discipline in changing bad habits of many legacy marketing research practices.

In her recent <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-12/how-inflation-is-shrinking-food-portions-at-domino-s-burger-king-restaurants">Bloomberg article</a>, Leslie Patton provided a great overview of &lsquo;shrinkflation&rsquo; &ndash; the common practice of down-sizing portions in order to maintain, or even slightly increase, pricing; a practice that many in the consumer goods and food/beverage space are pondering.
And based on our longitudinal, neuroscience-based data, this common practice is exactly the wrong move. As Patton points out:
&ldquo;Consumers suspect&nbsp;a bit of foul play, assuming that eateries aren&rsquo;t being straightforward.&nbsp;About 56% of U.S. diners say they would be more willing to pay a little extra if restaurants clearly explain why prices are rising&hellip;&rdquo;
This pricing shell game is a mistake for two reasons:
<ol class="ol1">
<li class="li1">Even as prices climb, the majority of consumers will continue to buy the best experience vs. the lowest price.</li>
<li class="li1"><a href="https://alpha-diver.com/consumer-behavior-trends/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Consumers perceive</a> three components of &ldquo;cost&rdquo; &ndash; and the price of a product is only one element (and often the least important).</li>
</ol>
<h2>What is an &lsquo;Inflationaire&rsquo;?</h2>
We continue to see in our data a phenomenon we&rsquo;ve dubbed the &lsquo;Inflationaire&rsquo; mindset. In short, the compulsion to buy what one wants, when one wants it, to make oneself feel emotionally better, even in the face of climbing prices and potentially shrinking resources.
<div class="su-pullquote su-pullquote-align-right">&ldquo;[P]rice is only one element of perceived cost.&rdquo;</div>
In other words, the stress and pressure of <a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/research-methodologies/inflation-reveals-the-need-for-better-insights">inflation</a> (not to mention all the other scaries out there) are compelling many to behave more like millionaires than penny-pinchers (or at least free-spenders in categories where they can afford to be). And for consumers who are buying based on rewarding, emotionally-valuable brand experiences, the bait-and-switch of shrinkflationary tactics is a major betrayal.
<h2>Appealing to the Inflationaire mindset</h2>
This leads to the other core human truth in these inflationary times: price is only one element of perceived cost.
As many retailers and brands wheel, deal, and otherwise try to manage mounting costs with a purely price-minded approach, winning brands will leverage the&nbsp;other two &ndash; and generally more influential &ndash; components of perceived cost: simplicity and transparency.
&nbsp;
<div class="post-related-post">
<h3>Related</h3>
<h4><a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/market-research-trends/how-to-remain-competitive-in-a-context-of-rising-raw-material-prices-and-rising-wages">How to Remain Competitive in a Context of Rising Raw Material Prices and Rising Wages?</a></h4>
</div>
&nbsp;
Think of simplicity this way: remember in high school math, those infernal story problems? &ldquo;Train A leaves from Cleveland going 56 miles per hour. Train B&hellip;&rdquo;
Solving this problem requires a lot of mental effort, concentration, and thought power. And I&rsquo;ll go out on a limb and say that mental challenges like this are not a lot of fun.
&ldquo;If a 12 pack of 12-ounce cans is $5.69, and a 2-liter is $3.29&hellip;&rdquo; Yikes. Math-city.
The Inflationaire mindset is less concerned with the contents of their wallet than with the mental&nbsp;work required of managing climbing prices. Make it simple on them, and your brand will win.
This brings us to the third component of perceived cost: transparency. As reported by Kantar&rsquo;s J. Walker Smith, stress and anxiety are at an all-time high.*
And the perception that once-trusted brands are pulling a fast one via shrinkflation is anything but transparent.For the Inflationaire mindset, fear of getting ripped off is just as salient as the absolute price point. How can your promotions, communication, and digital activation assure consumers that you&rsquo;re on the up-and-up, and above the sleight of hand being used by competitors?
Yes &ndash; consumers are feeling pressure, but most will remain willing to spend on:
<ol class="ol2">
<li class="li1">Rewarding experiences that&hellip;</li>
<li class="li1">Balance actual price with simplicity and transparency in navigating climbing prices.</li>
</ol>
&nbsp;
*This is based on Walker&rsquo;s comments/slides from the <a href="https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/rec/WN_3d2CoEjUQ5qqEZApAnhOmA?meetingId=T0cQqm0dXoDfap21CYqNr7kwvVbSbR55fYy633Ey2Z42x3XKY_Rq5mt7FKLZzkh8.ymcFWJuvvfS724Zl&amp;playId=&amp;action=play&amp;_x_zm_rtaid=Wpah1YrnTyK97pz5iKZcwA.1656542701957.aeb444fdde22673df1c8df23b2be2889&amp;_x_zm_rhtaid=104">Insights Association Town Hall Webinar</a>, March 11, 2022, where we co-presented.

Not long ago, I was talking with a Wall Street analyst who covers the CPG space. He mentioned that the C-suite leaders he meets with are collectively (and urgently) pondering how to navigate the &lsquo;black swan&rsquo; period that basically comprised the last couple of years.
My response was that the first step is to recognize that the past couple of years hasn&rsquo;t been all that out of the ordinary.
&ldquo;WHAT?!?&rdquo; But this has been &ldquo;unprecedented&rdquo;, &ldquo;everything has changed&rdquo;, and we&rsquo;re into the &ldquo;next normal&rdquo; &ndash; and so on.
<div class="post-related-post">
<h3>Related</h3>
<h4><a href="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/market-research-predictions-for-2022-part-1">Market Research Predictions for 2022 (Part One)</a></h4>
</div>
Yes, the last couple of years have been the weirdest. But it turns out that when you apply neuroscience to help explain what we&rsquo;ve all been experiencing, the pandemic et al. have merely accelerated us toward a predictable cultural phase.
In other words, everything didn&rsquo;t change. It just sped up a bit. And the cycle has been occurring for decades (and certainly longer). So while recent history has certainly&nbsp;felt dramatic and black swan&ndash;esque, our cultural cycles are actually pretty predictable.
A few high points:
<ul class="ul1">
<li class="li1">In the early 2000s, the events of 9/11 accelerated us into a highly &lsquo;tribal&rsquo; mindset&rsquo;: We banded together against a commonly-perceived threat.</li>
</ul>
<ul class="ul1">
<li class="li1">In the late 2000s, the financial crisis catalyzed a &lsquo;rebel&rsquo; mindset: Out with the broken conventions of old, and let&rsquo;s blaze a different path (i.e., &ldquo;Millennials&rdquo;).</li>
</ul>
<ul class="ul1">
<li class="li1">Now, the pandemic has accelerated us into an &lsquo;exploratory&rsquo; phase: We&rsquo;re discovering new, rewarding, and personalized ways of living.</li>
</ul>
As the 2020s continue to ramp up, what does it mean for those of us who make our living trying to serve the needs of consumers? Here are three &ldquo;so-whats&rdquo; to keep in mind as &rsquo;22 gets underway:
<ol class="ol1">
<li class="li1">Consumer perception will tend intrinsic (me) versus. extrinsic (us):&nbsp;Look for the introspective signals in your data. Do people refer to themselves, or others? Are they truly worried about personal consequences or are they worried about social consequences?</li>
<li class="li1">The early adopters will be listened to: Those who adopt new behaviors will be looked to with particular openness, and prompting behavior change will be especially feasible in the years ahead. This is not limited strictly to guiding an influencer strategy, it&rsquo;s about driving innovation that serves the &lsquo;pioneers&rsquo; within their social tribes and empowers them to drive adoption.</li>
<li class="li1">Experience will matter more than facts or results:&nbsp;From <a href="https://alpha-diver.com/shopper-marketing/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">strategy </a>to product design to claims, focus on what it&nbsp;feels like to engage with your brand. Stop asking research respondents to tell you what they think, what they&rsquo;ll do, or what they want. Focus on how current solutions (and potential innovations) make them&nbsp;feel. The feels are the true currency of behavior change within this phase of exploration and discovery.</li>
</ol>
So take some comfort knowing that, while it has certainly been crazy, it&rsquo;s been crazy before. And we&rsquo;ll not only endure, but discover the new and better in the years ahead.
&nbsp;
<h4>References</h4>
The Alpha-Diver research approach is built from three primary fields: 1.) systems neuroscience, 2.) evolutionary psychology and neuro-diversity, and 3.) emergent neurocognitive network dynamics.
The approach reflects the current state of the field in neuroscience and psychology. Key influential works include:
<ul>
<li class="p1">Hale, TS. &ldquo;A distributed effects perspective of dimensionally defined psychiatric disorders: and convergent versus core deficit effects in ADHD&rdquo;. Frontiers in Psychiatry (2014) 5: 1-16.</li>
<li class="p1">Mesulam M-M. &ldquo;Large-scale neurocognitive networks and distributed processing for attention, language, and memory&rdquo;. Ann Neurol (1990) 28: 597&ndash;613.</li>
</ul>
In addition, T. Sigi Hale, PhD, discussed this framework alongside author Paco Underhill and Wall Street Analyst Nik Modi in a capital markets <a href="https://www.alpha-diver.com/post/from-behind-the-walls-of-academia-emerges-a-new-view-of-consumer-understanding">virtual conference</a>. He further reviewed this model in discussion with Priscilla McKinney in her well-known <a href="https://podcast.littlebirdmarketing.com/priscilla-and-sigi-hale-ph-d-get-all-neurosciencey">podcast</a>.
&nbsp;
A version of the preceding article was originally published on <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/posts/hunterthurman_neuroscience-activity-6879058119633240064-h-61">LinkedIn</a>.

Amazon will soon rule the world and all physical goods (and most digital services) will be delivered within 1-hour of order. Right?
It can feel this way if you&rsquo;re a brand that makes and/or sells anything to anyone under the age of&hellip; well, anyone. And though it&rsquo;s futile to attempt to be faster or cheaper than Amazon, many brands see those as the only viable strategies. While out-Amazoning-Amazon is a fool&rsquo;s errand, reframing your strategic worldview opens new horizons of hope and business potential.
Using the lens of neuropsychology, it turns out there&rsquo;s a lot more to the cognition of decision-making than simply the conventional definitions of &ldquo;price&rdquo; or &ldquo;convenience.&rdquo;
An analogy: imagine you could peer into someone&rsquo;s mind&hellip; you&rsquo;d see a little boardroom table, around which are seated 4 members of the board. As the person moves through her day, a year, her life, the 4 board members in her mind take turns assuming the &ldquo;chair&rdquo; of the board; that is, one of the 4 will steer the ship based on whatever&rsquo;s going on around the person.
<h3>The 4 Motivations</h3>
This is a simple explanation of the 4 Motivations that drive human behavior, and the crucial role of context in diagnosing&mdash;and predicting&mdash;what someone will think, buy, and recommend.
The 4 board members (aka the 4 Motivations), in their simplest form:
<ol>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">Think&nbsp;</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">Assimilate</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">Experience</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">Win</li>
</ol>
So taking these somewhat abstract Motivations, and envisioning them in real-life contexts&hellip;
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">When the person is doing their taxes, Think moves to the chair of the board.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">When they&rsquo;re deciding where to eat dinner with friends, Assimilate likely drives decision making.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">When choosing personal care products, perhaps Experience calls the shots.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">Planning their personal investment strategy, Win may take center stage.</li>
</ul>
These 4 Motivations emerge from a wealth of research and data publications by neuroscientists and psychologists on university campuses all around the world. And just as they simplify human behavior, they can empower brand practitioners to address what actually matters in predicting and driving behavior.
So back to our Amazon conundrum, and all of those who are trying to figure out how to matter to young consumers seemingly bent on ordering anything and everything with a tap of the cursor.
In our work, my team and I regularly measure the 4 Motivations that drive consumers, along with the 5 Costs that hinder them, across various populations in the U.S. and around the world. As such, we maintain a database, captured via mobile implicit measurement.&nbsp;
Drawing from that database, we see a &lsquo;signal&rsquo; that sheds fresh perspective on how to zig where Amazon zags, and it reveals that the real currency of value among Millennial and Gen Z consumers is not money, or ease &ndash; it&rsquo;s time.
<h3>The Value of Time</h3>
In the broadest sense, younger consumers feel a time cost. So, non-conscious questions flowing through a person&rsquo;s mind &ndash; and being evaluated by those 4 little board members in her head:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">If I do this, what will I have to give up doing?</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">If I decide to buy this, will it be worth the time invested?</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">Will I be able to enjoy this without feeling rushed?</li>
</ul>
And herein lies the key to competing with Amazon: as quick as ordering via Amazon is, from a cognitive perspective, it&rsquo;s actually somewhat time intensive.
This is because the problem with Amazon relative to time is that it assumes you know what you are looking for. Amazon, as with virtually all eComm user experiences, is essentially just the front-end of a database. It&rsquo;s the Google search pane, with more window dressing around the sides.
Imagine if Amazon were a restaurant&hellip; Imagine sitting down, and the server asks, &ldquo;what would you like?&rdquo; &ndash; but you haven&rsquo;t seen a menu. You&rsquo;d probably say, &ldquo;well what&rsquo;s good here?&rdquo; at which point he&rsquo;d say &ldquo;oh, we have everything &ndash; just tell me what you want!&rdquo;&nbsp;
Frustrating, right? If you knew you wanted a cheeseburger, that would, in fact, be the quickest way to get it: when he asks what you want, you blurt out &ldquo;cheeseburger&rdquo; and, voila, it appears.&nbsp;
But that&rsquo;s not the reality in many dining contexts, nor is it a reality for many shoppers in various categories. Similarly, a grocery shopper generally is not thinking &ldquo;I want to obtain the following 13 ingredients in specific proportions,&rdquo; he or she or more accurately thinking &ldquo;I want something for dinner.&rdquo;
This is the convention that Amazon (and just about any other eComm site) perpetuates:&nbsp; type your query in the box, and we&rsquo;ll fetch it for you.
However, the reality of human cognition &ndash; whether online or in the real offline world &ndash; is that the brands that win will make buying them less time-intensive; in other words, they let your audience search in the way their brains are most naturally pre-disposed.
In other words, you don&rsquo;t have to be faster than Amazon. Or more convenient. You can win by making each millisecond of shopping engagement count in the ways your shoppers&rsquo; brains are naturally making decisions.&nbsp;
<h3>The Mental Boardroom</h3>
This brings us back to the mental boardroom, and the 4 Motivations. To empower decision making, in the way that &ndash; deep in their pre-conscious minds &ndash; is perceived as &ldquo;less time costly,&rdquo; you&rsquo;d provide the right kind of information, in the right way that lets THEM easily find what they seek (even when they don&rsquo;t consciously recognize what they want).
<table>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>Think</td>
<td>Assimilate</td>
<td>Experience</td>
<td>Win</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Give them words &amp; comparative data.</td>
<td>Give them a tribal endorsement.</td>
<td>Give them an immersive 5-senses experience.</td>
<td>Empower them with something others can&rsquo;t have.</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
&nbsp;
So, if a young consumer were to be seated in the imaginary Amazon restaurant, and was asked &ldquo;what would you like?!&rdquo;, their pre-conscious brain likely begins cycling through one of four loops:
<ol>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">Have I read all the choices and can now make an informed, rational decision? (Think Motivation)</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">Did I find a popular &lsquo;listicle&rsquo; that identifies the top foods in town, based on the experiences of people like me? (Assimilate Motivation)</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">Have I looked at, smelled, touched, and tasted all the options and can ensure I&rsquo;ll have a satisfying sensory experience? (Experience Motivation)</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">Is there a secret menu that will grant me a unique food experience to which not everyone is privy? (Win Motivation)</li>
</ol>
Depending on which of these lenses your consumer is using, you&rsquo;d make dramatically different choices on everything from<a href="https://alpha-diver.com/innovation_brand_strategy/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> brand strategy</a>, to the use of verbal vs. visual communications, to claims, to design execution. In other words, you&rsquo;d be able to hand her the ideal menu to make decisions that feel natural and effortless.&nbsp;
Stop worrying about the merely obvious hurdles of speed, ease, and convenience. Focus on what really matters between-the-ears by providing your audience with the decision-criteria that actually removes the perceived barrier of time &ndash; and watch young consumers form a line out the door.
&nbsp;
For more information, you can access the full whitepaper at <a href="https://thriveplan.com/besci-segmentation/origination-story">Thriveplan</a>.

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