Tom H. C. Anderson - More Than Market Research

Anderson Analytics’ Tom H. C. Anderson and Holly Morrel Discuss Psychology in Marketing 

Dr. Holly Morrell
Senior Consultant Psychology
Anderson Analytics, LLC

Marketing Research isn’t just about statistics, it also very much about psychology. Expertise in the field of psychology is not useful only in qualitative research and survey design, but even some of Anderson Analytics’ more data driven projects, such as large scale text mining studies, often incorporate a psychological component.

Anderson Analytics is very lucky to have some top notch talent in the field of psychology working to perfect our methodology and make our insights more actionable. In this economy it is especially important not to make the wrong business decision. Understanding the role psychology plays in consumer behavior is therefore critical.

Over the next few months I plan to pose a few questions about psychology in market research to one of our newest team members, Dr Holly Morrell.

While Holly is a specialist in quantitative and qualitative research design and statistical analysis, she also has comprehensive training in clinical and health psychology, and is skilled in using psychological theory to assess, interpret, and predict human behavior.

Holly earned her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Texas Tech University, where she also earned her M.A. She completed her pre-doctoral clinical internship at the University of California, San Diego and the VA San Diego Medical Center. She earned her B.S. in Psychology from the University of California, San Diego, specializing in psychological theories of psychopathology, cognitive processing, and recognition memory.

She has worked as a private and university-based consultant in research methodology and statistics for the past seven years, in addition to teaching courses in methodology and statistics at the graduate and undergraduate level. She has actively directed research in diverse domains of psychological science over the past 10 years, including cognitive, behavioral, social, clinical, and perception psychology. Furthermore, she has extensive clinical training and experience in diagnostic interviewing, objective personality assessment, and neuropsychological assessment.

TOM: For those of us who are more from the quantitative/mathematical side of the discipline, I believe that it is important to get a brief introduction to psychology and marketing before getting into more specific issues. Therefore my first question is, why is psychology essential for effective marketing?

HOLLY: Consumerism at its most fundamental level is a decision-making process, and decisions are not made in a vacuum. Early psychological explanations of decision-making said that people make a rational choice based solely on the pros and cons of each alternative. After decades of research, newer theories recognize that it is not quite that simple: there are also automatic (or subconscious, if you will) and emotional processes at work. For example, take something the well-known case of the mere exposure effect - you are likely to prefer something more if you’ve seen it more often, even if you’re not aware that you’ve seen it before (e.g., Zajonc, 1968). Why do people respond this way? Psychological research suggests that perceptual fluency is at the root of this phenomenon. The basic idea is that when you’ve seen something before, it is easier for your brain to recognize and process that object, and people like things that take less mental effort to process. So, if someone shows you a painting multiple times, but so quickly that you don’t even remember seeing it, you will prefer this painting to others you haven’t seen before. What does this mean for marketing? Increasing perceptual fluency of a product is one way to increase consumers’ positive feelings toward your product, and therefore influence their purchasing choices.

Consider another example that highlights the importance of emotions in customer relations. Imagine that a customer calls with a service complaint. Something has gone wrong, and you need to fix it. How you deal with the complaint has important implications for the customer’s loyalty to your company, which in turn influences whether or not that customer will stay with your company and recommend it to others. You know this intuitively, but what is really going on behind the scenes? A recent study shows that trust, positive emotions, and negative emotions play a significant role in consumer loyalty (DeWitt, Nguyen, & Marshall, 2008). More specifically, if the consumer believes that s/he was treated justly, then s/he will trust your company more and feel more positively toward your company. As a result of increased trust and positive emotions, the customer will feel more loyal to your company. If the customer believes that s/he was treated unjustly, then a decline in trust and an increase in negative emotions predict a drop in customer loyalty and increase the chances that the customer will cut ties with your company.

Of course, the effects of psychological processes such as emotions on marketing go far beyond these simple examples, which provide only a brief taste of what psychology can offer. The underlying point is that there is a wealth of psychological research that can be directly applied to marketing strategy; it opens windows into the cognitive (that is thought-based) and emotional processes of consumers. It can provide novel and exciting ways to reach consumers, from targeting the most appropriate consumers to employing emotion-based strategies to effectively market a particular product. It offers the tools to truly “know your audience.”