The Human Factor: Behavioural Planning for Marketers
Behavioural science is a multi-disciplinary field that draws insights from psychology, economics, sociology and other related fields to better understand human behaviour and the decisions we make. It helps us to identify what consumers do, why they do it, and most importantly how we can influence what they do.
Within marketing our ultimate job is to identify, understand, respond to, and influence consumer behaviour – to buy, to pay more, to download, to subscribe, to donate, or the many other myriad of decisions we want consumers to make.
Behavioural science is essential to this because it is the most rigorous, evidence-based information and framework we have for understanding consumer behaviour and how we influence it. Currently too much of our analysis is still flawed and often built on what people say they do rather than actually what they do.
Behavioural science acknowledges that our time and attention are limited, we are creatures of habit, and don’t have the mental capacity to process all of the information around us all the time. Decision making therefore, is impacted by a wide variety of factors.
Understanding our needs, attitudes, motivations, and decision making, and how they change within different contexts and environments, has huge implications for society, government, and business. Its principals are already being employed across both public and private sector organisations in disciplines such as product design, social policy, and HR.
Posterscope and Total Media have written this report to explore how different types of behavioural influences help us to better understand how we make decisions and to show how that learning can be applied to marketing planning to better influence consumers and build better marketing solutions.
