OBJECTIVE

Help a multinational research agency to harness behavioural science insights and methods in order to grow their offering to clients.

Specifically, the agency wanted to be able to better inform their many FMCG clients’ development of products and packs, by properly understanding:

• Key drivers of consumer purchasing

• How to uncover deep motivations, in order to inform potential new products

• How best to physically design products and packs

• How to evaluate prototypes in a way that goes beyond simple liking and purchase intent

SOLUTION

Detailed, yet clear, concise and actionable report which pulled out a range of specific opportunities across 3 broad areas - these were:

• Consultancy (no primary research)

• Qualitative Research

• Quantitative Research (including experimental approaches)

In order to provide the largest possible range of opportunities, the report drew on findings from areas of psychology such as social psychology and theories of personality, in addition to behavioural science; the report drew on a wide range of academic journals, as well as books and public sources.

KEY PSYCHOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS

Among many opportunity areas was the potential of individual-differences approaches such as consumer personality; this provides a proven framework for researching purchase behaviour, understanding deeper needs to inform product development, and effectively evaluating products.

Consultancy and primary research opportunities in packaging included a focus on understanding and testing how visual cues such as design, shape, size and colour subtly yet significantly affect consumer attention, perception and behaviour; for example, one study based on the concept of framing revealed people tended to avoid the largest or smallest packages from within a beverage range.