Obviously, whether something is actually bought or not is of direct and undisputable relevance in studying consumers. But there are many other ways to gauge whether a product may be bought, a proposition is considered worthwhile, or a brand will be recommended. Depending on the question that is asked, we use the following tests, that are typically distributed online, using large sample sets (N> 200 to N>1000).
The traditional way to ‘get inside the consumers’ mind’ is to simply ask questions. It is by now well established that asking for future intentions is of very limited value in predicting actual consumer behavior. Asking for behavior of the past, experience with existing products or any other knowledge that people can retrieve from autobiographical memory is however still worthwhile.
Net Promotor Score (NPS)
An intriguing way of interviewing about past experience with a product or brand is to ask to what extent (on a 1-10 scale) people would recommend it to someone they know. A so called Net Promotor Score can be calculated by subtracting all 1-6 scores from 9-10 scores. NPS has been shown to predict future company growth, and to be associated with an emotional evaluation coming from medial prefrontal cortex. We use NPS mainly as a benchmarking tool.
Enriched Implicit Association Mapping
A variety of techniques are available to measure the implicit (unconscious) associations people have with certain products, people, or categories. Most well-known is the implicit association test, developed by Harvard University. We developed an enriched version, where we quantify to what extent particular associations are relevant for behavior (e.g buying), preference (e.g NPS), or any other external variable.
Brain Guided Interpretation
Motivations typically are post-hoc explanations for behavior that has been executed and determined by the brain, so that people are often better and more objective in finding motivations for the behavior of other people than of their own. We exploit this by presenting brain data to people, asking why ‘other people’ would respond with the recorded emotion (e.g. disgust), or ask people to pinpoint the moment in time (of e.g. a TV commercial) where ‘other people’ might feel this emotion.
Approach Avoidance Test
Instead of asking for the intention to buy (which is typically not predicting actual buying behavior, unless the product is already known), we measure the unconscious intention to ‘reach out’ for the product by doing an Approach Avoidance Test. Subjects have to pull or push a lever as fast as possible, while being primed with products or ads. Speed and strength of pulling or pushing reveal the unconscious tendency to ‘want’.
Willingness to pay for a particular product is difficult to establish using open questionnaires, in particular with new or unknown products. We use a variety of auction or relative pricing paradigms to get at the exact price elasticity of a product, so that you can price for maximal profit.