Empirica invests heavily in developing next-generation methods based on the latest research in consumer behavior, psychology, and cognitive science.
Why are these new approaches relevant to today’s consumer and market research projects?
One of the biggest challenges in traditional market research has always been breaking through consumers’ “willing-and-able barrier.” Academic psychologists and market researchers have long known that their techniques are basically only as good as people’s introspective abilities and people’s willingness to disclose their thoughts. This is not to say that people lie in surveys or make up stories in focus groups – but human behavior is so complex that sometimes we really don’t know why we do some things. Furthermore, people may be motivated to alter their self-reported attitudes based on wanting to portray a certain image or persona. Thus, traditional tools sometimes only reveal the tip of the iceberg.
Empirica offers a full range of next generation tools that are based on recent advances in cognitive and social psychology and allow us literally to bypass the “willing and able” barrier. Using these tools, we can map attitudes, emotions, and beliefs that operate outside conscious awareness and that often play a large role in driving purchasing decisions and other social behaviors.
Our researchers have extensive experience with these methods and have published peer-reviewed articles using them in top academic journals. These tools include lexical decision tasks, implicit association tests, and the affect-misattribution paradigm, among others. We use a sophisticated online platform that allows respondents to complete these tests over the web, wherever they are located around the world. Here is a sample of specific research questions that can be answered using these next generation techniques.
- What are people’s unconscious, or “gut-level”, attitudes towards your brand, service or product? Are these attitudes different from their conscious attitudes?
- Does a given message create change at this deeper attitudinal level, or only at the more superficial, conscious level?
- How accessible, or top-of-mind, is your brand relative to competitors? Are you inside or outside the consumers’ automatic consideration set? Does a specific message or advertising campaign successfully alter your brand’s status on these dimensions?
- What are the non-conscious purchase drivers and motivations for your brand, service or product? Are these being effectively leveraged in your advertising and communications?
Empirica has extensive experience with these techniques, including publications in peer-reviewed academic journals:
Quinn, J., Pascoe, A., Wood, W., & Neal, D. T. (2010). Can’t control yourself? Monitor those bad habits. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 36, 499-512.
Govan, C. L., & Williams, K. D. (2004). Changing the affective valence of the stimulus items influences the IAT by re-defining the category labels. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 40, 357-365.
Please contact us if you’d like us to show you how these next generation approaches can help you uncover a new side to your consumers’ attitudes and behaviors.
