Editor's note: Hunter Thurman is president of Alpha-Diver, a neuroscience market research firm.
People are not all the same and neither is their behavior, even for very specific product categories. But it’s not totally subjective, either. If you’re planning segmentation this year or have a segmentation in-hand that’s turning out tough to activate against – or simply want to figure out how to drive buy-rate and penetration for your brand – you need to uncover which of the four human drivers correlate with your category. This will assist in revealing how to position your brand and communicate to consumers for maximum behavior-driving. Neuroscience provides four drivers which are durable, predictable and explain why people act the ways they do in a given context (like a category, phase of the purchase journey or shopping channel). 1. Rational: Pursue information via reading labels, comparing options and deciding for themselves which decision makes the most logical sense (this is usually how most of us think we make decisions).
To successfully serve this motivation, brands need to:
An example of a brand serving the rational driver can be found at www.rxbar.com:
The repeatable tenets to nail a rational strategy:
2. Social: Pursue alignment via the wisdom of the social group to endorse/approve a decision (or brand).
To successfully serve this motivation, brands need to:
The repeatable tenets to nail a social strategy:
3. Exploratory: Pursue new discovery, meaningful personal experiences and sensory-based decisions.
To successfully serve this motivation, brands need to:
The repeatable tenets to nail an exploratory strategy:
4. Instinctual: Pursue winning and standing out from the pack via gut instinct and satisfying impulses.
To successfully serve this motivation, brands need to:
The repeatable tenets to nail an instin...