Changing Behaviour: New Technology creates New Habits

While the principles of behavioural psychology remain constant, consumer habits have been completely reinvented over the past few years.

Twenty years ago, the majority of consumers might have said they would never put their credit card details online. Now we’re paying bills from our smartphones. We let strangers drive us home in an Uber, and trust other people into our lives via Airbnb or Airtasker. Every transformational product demands a shift in behaviour, one that may go beyond what we thought were socially accepted norms. Because once we’ve done it, we realise how easy it is.

Drawing on insights from ADMA’s recent ‘Neuro-influence' whitepaper, we cover five shifts in consumer behaviour that have emerged as a result of the increased use in technology...

1. We’re more impatient - We want everything to be fast and easy.
2. We know more about our options - From comparison sites to social media influencers, we can now access a bottomless source of information about every product and experience in the world.
3. We’ll trade data for convenience - Despite declining trust in institutions, consumers are surprisingly willing to give up their data for a relatively small exchange – such as a gold badge in an app-based game.
4. We expect 24/7 access to curated content - Technology and global competition are the two biggest drivers of change in media consumption. There has never been so much choice, or fragmentation, in how to reach our audience.
5. However, we sometimes feel overwhelmed - Despite these shifts, consumers are also increasingly fatigued by so much product choice.

If you’ve ever spent hours searching an online retailer just to find a black t-shirt, you may have experienced this confusion of choice. Rather than wading through too much choice, consumers seek more authentic, spontaneous experiences. A sense of discovery and surprise. Or they may prefer to outsource more complex purchase decisions, such as insurance or home loans, to a comparison site.

This overwhelm leads us back to something Matthias Heid of Berlin-based AI agency Wunder dubbed ‘the emotion economy’, writing “After ten years of automation, mass emails and retargeting, (experts) attest to the consumer’s fatigue. The emotion economy is now increasingly about building a trusted relationship with the customer.” If we fail to build that relationship, consumers will depend more and more on algorithms to curate and make those choices for them – and we will end up in a commoditised market where the only meaningful difference is price.

For further insights relating to changing consumer behaviours, download the recent ADMA Neuro-influence whitepaper today!

Drawing on the insights of ADMA’s ‘Consumer Analytics & Insights’ Think Tanks held in Sydney and Melbourne, the ADMA Neuro-influence whitepaper discusses changes in consumer behaviours, and the ways marketers are using neuromarketing and cognitive behaviour principles to tap into the subconscious to respond to those changes. Download Neuro-influence whitepaper