How to get out of the messy middle?
Recently I came across Google’s report about the research they conducted on the buyer decision making process, which is a really interesting topic not only for marketers but also for us product people.
I really enjoyed reading the report and also found it quite insightful. Since I am working at an e-commerce price comparison company, it was even more fascinating to me because our users have lots of different options they can explore even without having to leave the page they are on.
That’s why I decided to write my next piece on this where I summarize the 100-page report in my own words. Throughout this article, we’ll try to answer the following question: “How do consumers decide what they want to buy and who they want to buy it from?”
According to the report, how people make buying decisions lies in the “messy middle” of the purchase journey. But what is really the “messy middle”?
Basically messy middle is the complex space between the trigger and purchase where customers are won and lost.
The loop describes the non-linear nature of decision-making process, with its unpredictable back and forth between exploration and evaluation. In the exploration mode users search information about products and brands to better understand what’s out there to fulfill their needs. Once they feel like they have enough information, they start evaluating their options to narrow them down and determine which one is the best for them.
Users loop between exploration and evaluation until they are ready to purchase. At some point they need to break the loop to get something out of this whole mess of abundant information and unlimited choice. This is where they use unconscious cognitive shortcuts to shorten, automate and simplify their decision-making process.
Here are the 6 cognitive shortcuts mentioned in the report that influence purchase decisions:
1- Category heuristics are shortcuts that help users make a quick and satisfactory decision within a given category. Basically users eliminate the attributes that are not valuable for them while deciding within a category and look for the ones that they are interested in. For example, our customers might be more concerned about the storage capacity (GBs) rather than the color when purchasing a smartphone.
2- Authority bias is the tendency to follow the opinion of an authority figure and be influenced by that opinion. This effect might be even more pronounced if the users lack the domain-specific knowledge. This explains why we see “expert dentists” all the time in toothpaste ads.
3- Social proof refers to the tendency to follow the actions of others when making decisions, placing weight on these actions to assume “the correct decision”. According to Spiegel Research Center’s report, today, nearly 95% of consumers consult ratings and reviews when making purchase decisions.
I always check the Google reviews before going to a restaurant, how about you?
4- Power of now, in other words, instant gratification, describes the fact that we tend to want things now rather than later. With the advancement of technology and the hurry of modern life we are more impatient than ever. We don’t even want to wait for a page to load more than 3 seconds, so it makes sense that we also don’t want to wait for days for the item we purchased to show up on our doorstep.
5- Scarcity bias, also known as fear of missing out, states that when a product or service is limited (by time, quantity or access) in availability, it becomes more attractive. We unconsciously assume things that are scarce are valuable and things that are abundant are not. Businesses just need to know when and how to show this scarcity to their customers because it might be harmful to present it during the exploration phase rather than the evaluation phase.
Have you ever booked a hotel room on booking.com right away just because it said “only 1 left on our site”, I know I did :)
6- Power of free describes the fact that there is something special about the price of zero. But why? It’s because it seems riskless since we don’t lose money and the word “free” makes us happy enough to make us decide irrationally. Behavioural economist Dan Ariely wrote about a study in his book Predictably Irrational, where they gave people the option to choose between two offers. One was a $10 Amazon gift certificate for free, the other was a $20 gift card available for $7. More people chose the $10 gift card even though the other option provided more value.
As the Turkish saying goes “Vinegar that is free, is sweeter than honey”.
On top of all these cognitive shortcuts, we also need to be aware of the power of showing up. It basically means that we have to be present when consumers are deliberating to take preference share away from a competitor brand.
Now, we know what the messy middle is and we have learned some of the cognitive shortcuts that affect customer behaviour. To get out from the messy middle and win customers, we also need to understand the evolution of behaviour on the internet.
The world is changing rapidly as Heraclitus said: “Everything changes and nothing stands still”.
This is also valid for internet, e-commerce and the users. Let’s see what data can tell us regarding the behavioural change of online users by searching for clues on Google Trends, which is a freely accessible search query exploration tool.
When the authors looked up the terms “best”, “cheap”, and “free” globally in English on Google Trends, they saw the following trend: the proportion of worldwide searches containing “free” or “cheap” had been in decline, where the proportion containing “best” had been increasing.
Similar long-term trends for “best” and “cheap” are also visible when we translate those terms into the native languages of many other countries. For example, for Germany:
This data shows that at some point, consumer interest in finding the cheapest item online was eclipsed by a desire to find the best. As the saying goes “buy cheap, buy twice”, we may just have learned that the cost of cheap is more expensive than a good one.
“If we look more closely at cheap and best, we can see that these are 2 different things where “cheap” is quantifiable and rational and “best” is more subjective and emotional. The precise value of “cheap” may vary between individuals, but it still carries a singular meaning which is simple. “Best”, on the other hand, can have a wide range of meanings, being applicable to value, quality, performance, popularity, and more which is complex.”
All these simply show us how consumer behaviour and decision-making are quite impulsive, intricate and dynamic.
So how to adapt to all these and get through the mess of the middle?
- Ensure your presence so that your product or service is strategically front of mind of your customers as they explore.
- Help your customers navigate and simplify decision-making by closing the gap between trigger and purchase, so that your existing and potential customers spend less time exposed to competitor brands.
- Don’t settle for selling something, but try to make the whole experience great so that the users can come back in the future.
- Be human-centered, data driven and agile to address these changes proactively.
If you enjoyed my take on the topic, I would definitely recommend you to read the full report linked below:
https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/_qs/documents/9998/Decoding_Decisions_The_Messy_Middle_of_Purchase_Behavior.pdf
You can also reach the Think with Google’s article about the report via the following link:
https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/intl/en-gb/navigating-purchase-behavior-and-decision-making/
References
Scarcity in UX: The psychological bias that became the norm
https://uxdesign.cc/scarcity-in-ux-the-psychological-bias-that-became-the-norm-3e666b749a9a
9 Ways Behavioral Economics Can Help Increase Conversion, Retention and ROI
Scarcity Bias (Behavioural Economics)
https://www.tutor2u.net/economics/reference/behavioural-economics-scarcity-bias
12 Cognitive Biases E-commerce Marketers Need to Know
https://www.neurosciencemarketing.com/blog/articles/cognitive-biases-e-commerce.htm#
Society’s Problem With Patience
https://medium.com/the-polymath-project/societys-problem-with-patience-a6b54a51b365
How Fast Should A Website Load?
https://www.hobo-web.co.uk/your-website-design-should-load-in-4-seconds/
Social Proof
https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/social-proof
9 Cognitive Biases That Influence Buyer Decisions
https://www.ventureharbour.com/cognitive-biases-influence-buyer-decisions/
10 common cognitive biases in consumer behavior
https://smart-online-marketing.nl/en/nudging/10-cognitive-biases-in-consumer-behavior
A list of the most relevant biases in behavioural economics
https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/
18 Cognitive Biases You Can Use for Conversion Optimization
https://cxl.com/blog/cognitive-biases-in-cro/
How to Market at Each Stage of the Buying Decision Process
https://blog.alexa.com/market-each-stage-buying-decision-process/
The consumer decision journey
The path to purchase journey
https://home.kpmg/xx/en/home/insights/2017/01/the-path-to-purchase-journey.html
