Don’t listen to your customers, and let me tell you why.
People assume they are perfectly rational, but they are not. If you work in marketing, you likely think people’s preferences outweigh all the irrational motivations in their environment. That’s wrong because behavioural psychology has shown social norms, loss aversion, present bias, and more drive our decision-making as much as or more than classic time and money considerations.
And according to behavioural scientist Kristen Berman, avoid these 3 questions when trying to understand consumer behaviour as a marketeer.
Don’t ask these 3 questions:
1) ⏪Asking about the Past: When you ask people about their past behaviour, people answer what they think everybody else will answer. “Did you ever text and drive? Of course, I didn’t.”
2) ⏩Asking about the Future: When you ask people about their future, they imagine their ideal selves. So they will answer around their ideal self, not their present self. “Would you eat an apple if we started serving them? Definitely, I never eat junk food anyway.”
3) 🤨Asking about the Why: People generally choose the easiest option (or the default option). However, we assume we are entirely rational when we have been asked a question like why
Study what people do, not what they say.
Emre Guney 