Author: George Cox, Associate at Insight Dojo
Which of these four dresses is the best quality? Please choose one, before reading on.
How did you decide? What was your mental process? How well do you think you could explain how your brain came to that decision?
If we were asking this question to respondents in a market research study, one might reasonably expect to obtain more or less the same number of people choosing each dress, since they are all identical. However when Richard Nisbett & Timothy Wilson conducted this experiment in the 1970s, the results were quite different - they found a systematic tendency to choose the rightmost dress.
What was even more surprising was that when they were asked, participants denied that the position of the dress had influenced their decision. Instead people cited impossible reasons for their choices, such as the quality of the garment.
Nisbett and Wilson took this as strong evidence to support their theory that ‘there may be little or no direct introspective access to higher order cognitive processes’. In other words that we are unable to tell how our own minds make decisions.
Although this experiment has received criticism (c.f. Newell & Shanks, 2014), it has been widely influential in the fields of psychology and market research. Nisbett & Wilson’s research forms the starting point for much of what is known today about whether we can access the underlying mental processes that guide our behaviour.
For marketers wanting to understand consumer behaviour, this research presents a well-known problem, illustrated by David Ogilvy’s quote: “The trouble with market research is that people don't think what they feel, don't say what they think and don't do what they say". Given the limitations of self-report measures such as interviews and questionnaires, what can researchers do to improve the quality of insight?
In addition to traditional market research techniques, there is now a diverse array of alternative methods available such as neuroimaging and implicit testing. Research designs that use a combination of tried and trusted methods, together with these newer techniques, can be highly effective.
Insight Dojo is pioneering the use of a new methodology called mouse tracking. This method involves recording consenting participants’ mouse movements as they choose between an array of options on a screen. By measuring differences in the ‘trajectories’ of mouse movement, we can gain an understanding of underlying mental processes and latent biases. This allows us to gain a deeper layer of understanding about consumer behaviour.
The MouseTracker (Freeman & Ambady, 2010) is at the forefront of a shift in cognitive psychology from the use of outcome-based measures such as reaction time, towards approaches that measure ‘response dynamics’. Thought does not occur in discrete steps, but as a mixture of grey areas that compete and coalesce, and update, right until the final behaviour occurs (for more, see ‘The Continuity of Mind’ by Michael Spivey, 2008). The data provided by the MouseTracker gives a window into these grey areas.
At Insight Dojo, we have found that the MouseTracker can add incremental value to our research, without disrupting tried and trusted methods. Much of the value comes from using it in the context of information provided by traditional market research methods. Including MouseTracker tasks in our qualitative research has given us richer insight in three key business areas: segmenting customers, identifying the competitive set for a product, and determining the latent motivations and barriers for a product's adoption.
We will be presenting our work on developing the commercial use of the MouseTracker at the ESOMAR Fusion conference in Dublin, in November 2018. Come and find out how it has influenced the strategy for a Europe-wide product launch, and how it is improving the value of the work we do – without breaking any eggs.
Insight Dojo will be introducing the MouseTracker at ESOMAR Fusion 2018 in Dublin this November.
George Cox is an Associate at Insight Dojo. Follow @coxapple and @insightdojo.
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For more about ESOMAR Fusion 2018: https://www.esomar.org/events/2018/fusion-2018/fusion-2018 programme#date20181115
References
Freeman, J. B., & Ambady, N. (2010). MouseTracker: Software for studying real-time mental processing using a computer mouse-tracking method. Behavior Research Methods, 42(1), 226-241.
Newell, B. R., & Shanks, D. R. (2014). Unconscious influences on decision making: A critical review. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 37(1), 1-19.
Nisbett, R. E., & Wilson, T. D. (1977). Telling more than we can know: Verbal reports on mental processes. Psychological review, 84(3), 231.
Spivey, M. (2008). The Continuity of Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
