For a long time, the dominant belief among philosophers, scientists and economists was that humans – and their decision making – are driven predominantly by ratio, and this was no different in marketing research. While we now understand that human behavior is complex and requires a multi-dimensional approach, ‘think’ activities are still an important part of the research mix – they allow to grasp the perceptions, opinions and attitudes people can easily express.
‘Think’ activities mainly focus on capturing system-2 processes, or those consumer decisions which are taken more deliberately and consciously (in contrast to system-1 processes which are automatic and unconscious). With the rise of Behavioral Science, popularized by the work of Daniel Kahneman, the value of those methods that focus on system-2 through self-reporting was under scrutiny, the underlying rationale being that human decision makers have little or no access to the processes behind their choices.
However, sometimes we really need to know what consumers think, know and believe, as these internal states are strong predictors of their behavior. Observational data may help us derive that a consumer was unhappy about their recent experience as they stopped spending money. But it might be faster, easier and better to simply ask them. In fact, academic research has revealed that we are more reliable witnesses of our lives than assumed. Hence, still today, there are good reasons to ask people questions and not solely rely on behavioral data.
One of the most common ‘think’ activities is ‘questioning’, literally asking consumers questions which they can answer by indicating an answer option, typing their answer or even by uploading an image or video. Although a very common activity, questioning can be done in creative ways, like we did for AB InBev as part of their yearly strategic initiative coined ‘iWeek’. iWeek is a (yearly) one-week innovation event, centered around the generation of ideas which then gets tested overnight with target consumers. This allows the team to iterate the ideas generated the previous day. The overnight testing doesn’t only serve as a stage-gate approach; it also contributes to understanding how each idea could be further improved.– resulting in a compilation of consumer feedback for each of the ideas. For the AB InBev team, it was really powerful to submit their ideas at 7PM and get polished results and recommendations first thing the next morning.
Jake Kirsch, VP Innovation at Anheuser-Busch
Next to questioning, we can distinguish five more activity types within the ‘think’ level: choice-making, reviewing, storytelling, interpreting and discussing. For more on how to apply these in your insight community work, download our bookzine ‘The power is in the mix: think, feel, do and make’.
Human behavior is a complex interplay between actions, cognition and emotions. In this bookzine, we showcase how to choose the right blend of ‘think’, ‘feel’, ‘do’ and ‘make’ research activities for the right business challenge.
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To meet changing consumer needs in a category with more choice than ever before, Anheuser-Busch overhauled their product development process in 2018. iWeek, A-B’s annual strategic innovation initiative with people centricity at the core, has evolved over the past 3 years, yielding exceptional results.
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