Emotion and Reason in Consumer Behavior: Chapter 2: Emotion and Reason

Posted on 28 March 2012 by robertjneal

Affect has clear implications in marketing and it’s important to understand its role in human cognition. Chaudhuri seems to endorse Zajonc’s view which Chaudhuri characterizes as the view that affect precedes ratiocination. He then lists the following characteristics of affects: (a) they are primary, (b) they are basic, (c) they are inescapable, (d) they are irrevocable, (e) they implicate the self, (f) they are difficult to verbalize, (g) they may become separated from content and still remain. Chaudhuri states that the import of affective reactions are that nearly all of our experiences have an affective component. For instance, we do not just see ‘a sunset, but a “beautiful” sunset’ (p. 27).

Next Chaudhuri explicates his own list of important characteristics of emotion. They are that (1) emotions can never be wrong, (2) emotions are global, (3) emotions are fundamental, (4) emotions are fast, catchy, and memorable, (5) emotions are permanent, and (6) emotions are independent of rational cognition.

What Chaudhuri is likely getting at with (1)[1] is that persons can never be mistaken about their emotions. He is endorsing the infallibility of self-knowledge. Something like “[w]hen one carefully, attentively employs the mode of knowing unique to self-knowledge, one will not form a false belief about one’s own [mental] states” (Gertler). This is important because once an affect has been experienced, it seems more difficult to persuade someone that the affect was an inappropriate response than if they made some mistake in reasoning, i.e. lacked all the relevant evidence or made an error in the reasoning process. For instance, if an ad makes a consumer sad, he’s certainly not wrong that he’s feeling sad and convincing him he shouldn’t have been sad isn’t a straightforward task. After all that ad elicited that emotion in him; he didn’t make some judgment to feel sad about the content of the ad.

For claim (2)[2] Chaudhuri cites the Ekman and Friesen (1975) study that demonstrated six universal emotions. He also infers from Buck’s claim that emotions are nonsymbolic that emotional marketing can be culture neutral. For example, the Coca-Cola polar bears and the Nike swoosh are understood in the US and in Japan. It seems like Chaudhuri considers emotions to be global and reason not global in the following way: symbolic communication is culture dependent and nonsymbolic communication is culture neutral[3].

It’s not entirely clear what Chaudhuri means when he says, (3), emotions are fundamental. The literal interpretation is that emotions are a necessary part of any experience. However, he seems to be getting at something like emotions being an intuitive response that happens before ratiocination. That is, emotions obtain first and influence the reasoning about the experience we’ve had.

Chaudhuri’s characteristics of emotions (3), (4), (5), (6) share similar qualities. Emotions are fast, (4), and fundamental, (3). Emotions are catchy, memorable, (4), and permanent, (5). Emotions are permanent, (5), and can come apart from rational cognition, (6). Chaudhuri supports these characteristics with articles by Zajonc and others. According to (3), (4), (5), and (6) emotions are more favorable than rationality for a couple of reasons.

First, persuasion for, say, a product via reason can be overridden or undermined by reasons against using that product. For example, if a laundry detergent claimed that it cleaned clothes better because of some new chemical X and a competitor or news flash came out and said chemical X was bad for clothing then the reasons for the laundry detergent would be undermined. However, if the laundry detergent was preferred for some emotional reason, say a national hero endorsed the product, then even reasons against the product might not be sufficient to undermine the emotional appeal of using the product.

Another important reason is that the affect associated with the product can come apart from the reasons associated with the product. So, even after you’ve forgotten the benefits of buying organic you might still reach for the organic apples first because of the positive affect you’ve associated with buying organic products. Combined with the assertion that emotions are quicker to obtain and more memorable than reasons makes this a very powerful point for marketers.

  1. [1] Chaudhuri emphasizes that emotions are true, but it seems like he mistakenly takes this to be a consequence of Buck’s more plausible claim that emotions are non-propositional and thus cannot be false. That is, emotions have no truth value. But notice that if they have no truth value, then they can be neither false nor true. ↩
  2. [2] Of course he can’t mean simply that emotions are global in that all persons are capable of emotions since all persons are capable of reason as well and thus reason would be global in the same way that emotion is. Instead, Chaudhuri seems to mean that emotion is global in some distinct way and I take it that he means that certain emotions can be elicited using cultural-neutral communication. ↩
  3. [3] Although he doesn’t make it explicit, his view must be that only certain type of emotions are global in this way since he holds that “prosocial feelings are not independent of cognition” (p. 32). Thus the global emotions would be basic emotions such as love, pride, and pity (p. 31). Eliciting an emotion such as national pride will likely be different for, say, China as compared to the United States. ↩
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Emotion and Reason in Consumer Behavior: Chapter 1: Introduction

Posted on 17 March 2012 by robertjneal

Chaudhuri starts his introduction with some uncontroversial points. Namely that advertising can evoke both emotional and rational responses. Furthermore, the responses of the individual are the result of other factors such as environment, genes, and individual characteristics such as attitudes, perceptions, personality, and needs.

Next Chaudhuri wants to clarify what he means by emotion and reason. He does this by claiming that emotion and reason are two distinct but complimentary ways of gaining knowledge (p. 2). To buttress this claim he cites two well known figures. First, he quotes William James who said “I know the color blue when I see it, and the flavor of a pear when I taste it…but about the inner nature of these facts or what makes them what they are I can say nothing at all” (p. 22). This Chaudhuri takes to be knowledge by acquaintance or emotion. Reason, he says, is knowledge by description. To this point he references Bertrand Russell who said that his “knowledge of a table as a physical object…is not direct knowledge. Such as it is, it is obtained through acquaintance with the sense-data that make up the appearance of the table” (p. 73-74). From this Chaudhuri states, “[t]hus, the brain appears to involve two functionally different ways of knowing” (p. 3).[1]

To further illustrate the distinction between emotion and reason, Chaudhuri discusses the communication of these concepts. He says that emotion is communicated spontaneously and reason is communicated symbolically[2]. Importantly he says that spontaneous communication is possible without symbolic communication, but symbolic communication can never occur in the absence of spontaneous communication. So, when spontaneous communication occurs it activates the emotional part of the brain and may be accompanied by symbolic communication which activates the rational part of the brain. However, when symbolic communication occurs it must be accompanied by spontaneous communication and thus the emotional part of the brain is always activated, even when the form of communication is primarily rational.

Chaudhuri then draws out three forms of emotion based on research by Ross Buck. They are: Emotion I (EI) which consists of physiological responses, Emotion II (EII) which is spontaneous expressive behavior, and Emotion III (EIII) which is the subjective experience of the individual. I want to briefly focus on EIII. Chaudhuri states that this form is what he refers to as affect and that there are different types such as “joy, sorrow, fear, envy, anger, pride and so on” (p. 5). He then goes on to say that EIII is what he previously referred to as “knowledge by acquaintance”.[3]

After discussing Buck’s forms of emotions, Chaudhuri talks about two different psychological views on emotion. First is the psychophysiological view. This is the view that emotion is the result of the visceral and skeletal response. The other view is the psychosocial view. In this view emotion is derived from the environment and the stimulus. In his words the psychophysiological view is that arousal is a sufficient and necessary condition for emotion, but in the psychosocial view arousal is necessary, but not sufficient.

Chaudhuri thinks both views might be right. Consider Bucks three types of emotions outlined earlier. It might be the case that the psychophysiological view refers to emotions of one form and the psychosocial view refers to emotions of another form. Chaudhuri also tries to reconcile the conflicting findings for each view by appealing to the knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description distinction.[4]

Chaudhuri then devotes the remainder of the chapter to MacLean’s triune brain concept. This is the idea that our brain is literally made up of three regions: (1) a reptilian region remaining from our evolution from reptiles, (2) a paleomammalian region remaining from our evolution from early mammals, and (3) a neomammalian region.[5],[6]

  1. [1] Notice that it’s not Russell’s view that knowledge by acquaintance is emotion and knowledge by description is reason. ↩
  2. [2] This, along with some of the other views on emotion, Chaudhuri borrows heavily from Ross Buck’s work. ↩
  3. [3] So “knowledge by acquaintance” consists of emotions such as joy, sorrow, fear, etc. Now recall the quote from William James that Chaudhuri took to be an example of this. “I know the color blue when I see it” (p. 22). This type of knowledge is an affect. But what sort of affect can it be? Is knowing the color blue something like joy? Sorrow? Fear? If not then it looks like we should throw out some part of what Chaudhuri has been developing up to this point and I contend that it should be the knowledge distinctions as conceptually identical as emotion and reason. It doesn’t strengthen the view. Rather it weakens the view because it introduces dubious claims. ↩
  4. [4] It becomes clear at this point that Chaudhuri is attempting to reconcile the tension between all of the views he’s presenting. But to do so it looks like he’s going to have to present the views superficially. Upon a close look it’s clear that the views are just incompatible. ↩
  5. [5] This view has been discredited. So, I won’t talk more about it. ↩
  6. [6] Overall Chaudhuri is looking to fit his and the other researchers’ research into a comprehensive cognitive science or psychological view. Unfortunately, he strings together a handful of loosely related ideas to give the appearance of a comprehensive view, but it just doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. He completely misses what the distinction between knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description is, he inconsistently tries to incorporate the distinction into Buck’s forms of emotion, he fails at reconciling the psychosocial and psychophysiological views in a coherent way, he frequently mentions the left-brain/right-brain distinction with no support for his use of it, and then he purports that the dubious triune brain theory has some explanatory power. ↩
  • Chaudhuri, Arjun. (2006). Emotion and Reason in Consumer Behavior. Burlington, MA: Butterworth-Heinemann.
  • James, Williams. (1890). The principles of psychology (Vol. 1). New York: Henry Holt.
  • Russell, Bertrand. (1912). Problems of Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press.
Posted in Book, Cognitive Science, Marketing, Precis, Psychology | Leave a comment

Value Metrics over Behavior Metrics: An Example from HP TouchPad

Posted on 23 August 2011 by robertjneal

Earlier this year I wrote a post, How to Hire a User Experience Designer, that emphasized the importance of value metrics over behavior metrics. That is, that a novice UX designer focuses on simply changing behaviors, such as conversion rates, instead of focusing on creating value, such as increasing revenue. A more advanced UX designer will recognize that increasing the conversion rates, ceteris paribus, is only one way of, say, increasing revenue.

This week we found an example in traditional advertising where behavior metrics and value metrics came apart. Ace Metrix came out with a report on the effectiveness of tablet TV ads and Peter Daboll, CEO of Ace Metrix, noted “that each of the tablet ads in our Top 10, which also included Blackberry and HP, did very well, and scored above the norm.”1 In fact, two of HP’s spots scored in the top 10 most effective ads.

If behavior metrics are correlated with value, then HP must be in a great position, but it’s not according to other news out this week. According to the New York Times, the only way HP was able to move units was by decreasing the selling price by 80%2. Here’s how the New York Times put it:

“Hewlett-Packard finally found a way to get shoppers to buy its TouchPad tablet — a steep discount — but not until after it had pulled the plug on the device because of poor sales.”2

Just a friendly reminder that behavior metrics and value metrics aren’t always correlated. Of course, it’s sometimes easier for those of us in digital advertising where we can track user behavior better in the purchase funnel, but it’s an important lesson nonetheless. If you’re only focusing on behavior metrics you might have to “pull the plug” when they don’t translate to value.

1. “Samsung Produces Single Most Effective Tablet Ad This Year, According to Ace Metrix.” Ace Metrix. 18 August 2011. Online.

2. “The TouchPad Finally Sells — At 80% Off.” New York Times. 21 August 2011. Online.

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More User Research

Posted on 17 June 2011 by robertjneal

We’re conducting another survey and need your help. This time we’d like to know about any experiences you’ve had considering or getting a tattoo. Please fill out the survey here, http://bit.ly/kcAypF, so we can improve future tattoo canvases’ experiences. Remember, sharing is caring! Thanks for your participation.

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User-Centered Marketing + Google Analytics + Website Optimizer

Posted on 17 June 2011 by robertjneal

It’s important to measure the results of any marketing campaign. Goals should be defined and the appropriate data should be captured to measure against those goals for both small changes and large. Likewise, when doing a study or experiment, the appropriate data needs to be captured to verify your findings. Often my work is a user-centered marketing campaign that’s run like a science experiment. Consequently, we often need to push the limits of Google Analytics to measure our data and of Google Website Optimizer to set up the tests.

I want to walk through a particular type of effort I recently put forth. The study had the following characteristics

  • It tested the priming effect and the rejection then retreat principle
  • It was an a/b test with a/b elements on multiple pages
  • The expectation was that the conversion rate would increase
  • The expectation was that the average revenue per transaction would increase

Google Website Optimizer

Normally an a/b test works by having one page with one element that is being changed. For example, if Google were doing an a/b test they might change one element on their home page. In this imaginary case the wording on the search button is changed.

 

However, Google Website Optimizer doesn’t make it easy to perform an a/b test that spans multiple pages. One easy way to do it is to copy and paste the pages and on the base page, the a/b code sends the user one way or another.

I have a few concerns with that approach:

  • I take the URL to be a relevant part of the test
  • It’s less maintainable
  • Your users can share the test page with their friends

Instead, I prefer to have A/B elements on multiple pages. Now, you might be thinking that this should be a multivariate test, but it’s not. For instance, you might want to test the color of an element through a purchase process. That’s an A/B test, but not supported by Website Optimizer’s standard A/B tests.

To accomplish this, I did the following. First, I put this in the utmx_section for the experiment pages:

<!-- Don't do anything-->

You’ll also need to put the control script on all experiment pages. Then, in Website Optimizer I added the following as the variation code:

<script>
var row = document.getElementById('controlGroup');
row.style.display = 'none';
var testRow = document.getElementById('testGroup');
testRow.style.display = '';
</script>

I have the controlGroup and the testGroup elements in both pages, where the controlGroup is displayed by default and the testGroup hidden. So, when Google replaces my “Don’t do anything’ comment with the script above, it toggles the display of the two elements. The reason I implemented this strategy is that, while the elements are conceptually the same on both page, they aren’t identical. Thus, I cannot allow Website Optimizer to replace the elements in both pages with the same code. That is, leveraging this technique allows me to have different content on both pages in the flow.

One shortfall of Website Optimizer is that it only allows you to measure the conversion rate. I also need to measure the average revenue per transaction as well as segment my audience.

Google Analytics for A/B Tests

With Google Analytics’ custom variables, you can get a lot of data for your experiment. All you need to do is store one custom variable with one value for the control group and one value for the test group. Here’s how I implemented it:

<script type="text/javascript">
var combination = 'Control';
if (utmx('combination') == 1) combination = 'Test';

var _gaq = _gaq || [];
_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-XXXXXXXX-X']);
_gaq.push(['_setCustomVar', 1, 'Combination', combination, 2]);

_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);
</script>

This code replaces your normal tracking code for Google Analytics. I haven’t played with the ordering too much, but I believe the code needs to be after the tracking script for Website Optimizer. Using this code, you will have one new custom variable in Analytics named Combination with two values: Control and Test. (Click Visitors, then Custom Variables in the menu)

Combine this with your other segments, for example, custom country segments and you can track revenue, products purchased, transaction data, and much more.

Posted in experiments, google analytics, google website optimizer, testing | Leave a comment

UX Design and the Mind (UX Design + Persuasion)

Posted on 8 June 2011 by robertjneal

This is an old presentation I gave at Phoenix Design Week 2009. It’s been getting a lot of attention lately, so I thought I’d share it here. Unfortunately the presentation wasn’t recorded, but I plan on doing a screen cast soon. Let me know what you think.

UX Design And The Mind (UX Design + Persuasion)
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User Research

Posted on 7 June 2011 by robertjneal

We’re working on a new project related to coffee shops and we need your help. We have a short survey that we’re using to gather some user data. Please take a short minute to fill out the survey here: http://bit.ly/jRthlZ. Please share this with your network of friends and colleagues as well. We’ll keep you apprised of the progress for this project as we move forward. Thanks again!

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Persuasion Patterns on Facebook

Posted on 31 May 2011 by robertjneal

I ran across a facebook page recently that leverages a lot of persuasion (or influence) patterns. The page is Being Conservative. This page uses a surprisingly large number of persuasion patterns to influence users to take action. First, it often follows Dr. BJ Fogg’s Behavior Model. Second, it uses most if not all of Dr. Robert Cialdini’s influence patterns.

First, notice the low cost of liking. Unlike a brand, the person isn’t committing to liking much other than something consistent with their personality. This is a great way of building a community on facebook. Don’t ask users to like Keebler, ask them to like fudge stripe cookies, or just cookies. Still, have a page for your brand, but similar to a mobile app, don’t be afraid to have multiple pages for more focused engagement. In the case of Being Conservative, persons are liking the fact that they are conservative and consequently are being marketed to quite successfully.

bj fogg's behavior model

The motivation for showing their support for conservative views already exists. This page offers a trigger to like being conservative with a very low cost. That is, it’s very easy to do. Once the user likes the page, the organization continues to produces content that is consistent with their users’ motivations and with a low cost. They consistently ask the users to like that content thus putting a trigger in the user’s path. Combined with some of the influence patterns found below, they have developed a strong persuasive architecture.

Persuasion on facebook isn’t new. I was on the review board for Dr. Fogg’s Psychology of Facebook book in 2008 that included many articles on this very subject. However, it’s rare that you see explicit uses of persuasion. The following patterns on Being Conservative are straight out of Dr. Cialdinin’s Influence: Science and Practice.

Notice (1) that the organization is putting out a message that they know their fans will like. Other times they encourage their fans to like it and they generate tens of thousands of likes and thousands of comments. However, those don’t directly translate into a ROI. But using the principle of commitment and consistency they ask the fans, one day later, to purchase a shirt that has that very message on it.

This pattern has been found to be highly effective. In 1966 psychologists Jonathan Freedman and Scott Fraser published a study where they asked homeowners to put obnoxiously large and unsightly sign in their yard that said “Drive Carefully.” Understandably the conversion (or compliance) rate was rather low, 17 percent. However, the researchers were able to get the conversion rate up to 76 percent by changing one simple variable. For the group that converted at 76 percent the researchers simply added an additional call to action a couple of weeks earlier. This time the call to action has a much lower cost. They asked the homeowners to put a small sticker in their window that said “Be a safe driver.” Almost all of the homeowners asked, agreed to put the sticker in their window. Then, two weeks later when asked to put the obnoxious sign in their yard, the researchers were able to attain the 76 percent conversion rate. This commitment and consistency principle has been shown in other studies and is clearly seen in the persuasion patterns in Being Conservative’s facebook strategy.

(2) “TODAY ONLY” for the t-shirt sales? Why would the organization limit t-shirt sales to one day? According to the scarcity principle it’s to trigger an action. Namely, the purchase of the shirt. And in conjunction with the commitment and consistency principle it allows the organization to leverage this principle while the fan’s previous consistent act, liking the post with the same quote, is still fresh in their minds. While the Internet seemingly makes anything you want available at any time of the day, the scarcity principle is often employed by online marketers to trigger an action. It’s a powerful and consistently fruitful persuasion pattern.

Also, notice (3) that they are using an image that many conservatives hold in high regard. Here, the organization is implementing a strategy that instantiates the liking principle and the authority principle. Research shows that persons are more likely to perform a call to action when it’s requested by or associated with someone who is attractive, similar to them, and/or familiar. By leveraging authority figures, social media friends, and other conservatives (page fans), Being Conservative is able to implement this persuasion pattern in a big way.

Persuasion patterns are often implemented unintentionally for surprising gains. However, a well designed user experience should have conscious patterns in place to help the users act in a way that’s consistent with their motivation. It’s our job as user experience designers to understand our users’ motivations and to provide them with the triggers that best allow them to act in accordance with those motivations.

Posted in facebook, persuasive psychology | 4 Comments

How to hire a user experience designer

Posted on 19 March 2011 by robertjneal

So many people are billing themselves as user experience designers nowadays. It’s reminiscent of the late nineties, and unfortunately even today, where everyone was a web designer or web developer. So how do you know if you’re hiring a suitable user experience designer?

It is actually somewhat straight forward, though it depends on the reason(s) you have for hiring her. If you’re hiring her to work at your international interactive marketing agency then what you need from her is substantially greater than if you’re hiring her to consult with you on your small business e-commerce site.

Luckily, in 2004 Scott Hirsch, Janice Fraser and Sara Beckman came out with a great research article, Leveraging Business Value: How ROI Changes User Experience published by Adaptive Path. This article does a great job of breaking down the different stages of user experience expertise. The stages can be matched to the needs of your organization and what resources, mainly budget, you have available. Here are the stages that Adaptive Path found user experience designers fall in:

  • Stage 0:

    • “On-time, on-budget is the baseline metric for success, but that does little to evaluate the project’s contribution to business success. As companies advance, success is understood in terms of the value that a project has delivered…In the earlier stages of the model (’0′ and ’1′), it may be that an overly complex process is unnecessary because the level of investment is too small to warrant costly analytics, or the Web strategy may be so simple that success is easily realized. However, it is more likely that organizations can recognize increased value by adopting a more complex (re: thorough) means of assessing user experience value — and thereby setting up an ex-ante process for recognizing possible projects and prioritizing those projects based on expected returns.” (Hirsch 27)

  • Stage 1

    • “As companies progress, decisions about which projects to pursue are based on more strategic, value-based criteria. The shift from intuition-based decision making to behavior-based decision making has important cultural implications for the organization [and ux designer], because it introduces rational criteria that can be measured. More-advanced companies [and ux designers] have transparent, rigorous process for comparing projects.” (Hirsch 27)

  • Stage 2-4

    • “The most advanced stages (’2′ through ’4′) make a more and more compelling case for ex-post analysis for the purpose of assigning accountability, measuring success, and advocating for resources. At the later stages, companies [and ux designers] can use ROI to aggregate project data after a portfolio of projects has been implemented…A small firm with a Web site that serves mostly a marketing support function may have little or no need for a full-blown project valuation process that utilizes such ROI calculations.” (Hirsch 27)


Leveraging Business Value, p. 28

Of course the smaller the budget and the less access to existing metrics you have, the lower the stage of user experience designer you need. If “on-time and on-budget” are what’s important, then a stage 0 user experience designer, who operates off intuition might be sufficient. However, if you have the budget and you need to be able to prove the success of the project to your company, then you really need at least a stage 1 user experience designer who can show definitive behavior changes. Of course, user behavior and value do not always correlate. Behavior metrics look like this:

  • Conversions
  • Visits
  • Facebook Likes
  • Facebook Engagement

Stage 2 user experience designers will work with you to alter your users’ behaviors in line with your value metrics. Notice though, that for a user experience designer to do this your organization will either already need value metrics or will need the budget to determine these values. Value metrics look like this:

  • Each lead generated is worth $1
  • A qualified visit is worth $0.10
  • An unqualified visit is worth $0.01
  • A qualified email address is worth $0.05

Stage 3 and 4 user experience designers are rare as individuals, but if you are hiring a user experience consulting firm or agency of record, they should be able to provide you with a strong analysis of the success of the project and work with you to identify other projects within your organization that can benefit from user experience design. And at this stage the benefit the user experience designer is talking about is an adequate return on your investment and not simply behavior changes.

How can you tell what stage your candidate is at?

Make sure you ask the right questions. Ask your candidate about previous projects he’s worked on, about why you should hire him and about his approach. If he says that his approach is based off his n-years experience with something or other and his past successes were on-time and on-budget, but doesn’t offer any other metrics, then he’s most likely a stage 0 candidate. If he speaks more to affecting behavior metrics and his past successes seem to hinge on behavior metrics like conversion rates, visits, and engagement, then he’s probably a stage 1 candidate. However, if the candidate is able to tie in business value directly to the user experience design then he is more likely to be a stage 2 or 3 candidate. The depth of his answers will help you determine how well he is at selecting valuable metrics to target, analyzing the success of the project and using the ex-ante metrics to inform and decide upon future projects. Always be sure that he is able to give concrete examples and he’s not just repeating something he read on a blog that morning.

Is that it?

No, but it’s a great start. A question we’ve left out of this is how effective the strategies the user experience designer employs are at affecting user behaviors. If the UX designer doesn’t understand the principles that make their strategies effective, then they won’t be able to identify new opportunities. Instead, they’ll only be able to enact the same strategies over and over again, until they read some blog article with some neat new trick. We can break this criterion down into stages of experience too, but that will have to wait for another blog post.

Need help with your organization’s user experience? Contact me today!

Hirsch, Scott, Janice Fraser and Sara Beckman. Leveraging Business Value: How ROI Changes User Experience. Adaptive Path, 2004. Online.

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Why focus marketing dollars on platform integration?

Posted on 13 March 2011 by robertjneal

bj fogg's behavior model

For decades psychologists and self help writers have focused on motivating people to do things like save money or lose weight, but it turns out most often it’s the case that you cannot change someone’s motivation. Instead of focusing on one requirement for behavior, i.e. motivation, BJ Fogg gives us a behavior model that helps us understand the role of motivation and allows us to understand how to alter a person’s behavior. To do this we need to place low cost triggers in the path of the person. Costs include cost in time, resources, effort, etc.

Why are established platforms good for marketing campaigns?
Established platforms like facebook, youtube and mobile devices like iPhone and iPad provide lower cost to the user for initiating behaviors than, for example, a behavior to visit your website. The cost is lower because the user doesn’t have to commit as much to performing just that behavior. Of course this only work if the user has a routine of going to that platform.

Consider an offline example. Terrence receives two ads in his mailbox. The first is for a product from a new producer of energy drinks at Wal-Mart where Terrence goes every week to purchase groceries. The other ad is for the same new energy drink, but at Sweet Bay grocery stores; a store Terrence has never visited. The cost for Terrence in the first ad is lower, because (1) he has a routine of going to Wal-Mart so he does not need as much motivation to go as he would to a new store and (2) if he doesn’t end up purchasing the item, the trip might still be salvaged since he knows about other purchases he can make there. The 2nd point is important because if you’re trying to get a person to make a purchase of a new product at an unfamiliar store, they have to commit to making the purchase before leaving the house, whereas if the place is familiar the commitment doesn’t need to be as strong. They could do other things while they’re there.

Bringing this back online, consider the user who gets an email for a new product or service and the email (or notification) comes from either facebook or the email comes directly from the vendor. Which email is likely to be opened (behavior 1)? Which email is likely to be acted on (behavior 2)? Why? It’s not just the familiarity, but the low cost in acting on it, i.e. the user can do other things on facebook and this call to action might even be a good excuse to do that. In addition, the user already has a routine that includes acting on emails from facebook.

Many companies large and small are already on facebook. If you’re not you probably should be. If you are, be sure to consider the likelihood you’ll get your users to perform the desired behaviors by leveraging the platforms. For instance, suppose you’re launching a new feature for your interactive marketing strategy. Should it be hosted on your website or your facebook page or a mobile device? It depends on your users, the desired behaviors and other factors like the underlying technology, but understanding how to alter a user’s behavior in a desired way is an important factor in the decision to leverage one platform over another.

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