Ignore them, researcher, for they know not why they do

Sainsbury's used to run a scheme called Brand Match.

You may well have used it: but if not, the way it worked is that after checking out you'd receive, along with the receipt, a print-out stating whether you'd just paid more, the same or less for branded goods than you would have done if you'd shopped at a competitive store(s) instead.

And if you'd paid more, the Brand Match chit would act as a voucher for the exact difference, deductible from your next Sainsbury's shop.

Psychologically, it was genius.

It satisfied the Prevention (avoid loss) motive by providing full reassurance that you weren't wasting money by indulging in the occasionally guilty pleasure of attending the mildly more middle class supermarket, and at humans' preferred level of effort expenditure - zero.

And on those occasions when you were due a rebate, it satisfied the Promotion (achieve gain) motive by delivering a mini fist pump moment for getting money back for choosing Sainsbury's when you'd have chosen it anyway, because it's the mildly more middle class supermarket.

As the rebate felt like free money, and the print-out small and easy to lose, at least this shopper would usually go and spend it immediately on something unnecessarily discretionary like chewing gum - so I'd give them their money straight back anyway.

But I'd walk out the store feeling in my limbic areas like a winner, and dead set on returning.

In short, they were wise enough to let me feel like I'd outsmarted them, thereby completely outsmarting me. 

It was a mini masterclass in the application of behavioural science.

But this April it was announced that Brand Match was to come to an end.

Apparently, the company had talked to its customers around the country and they'd told them that having lower regular prices was more important than Brand Match.

Which only brings to mind the axiom of the renowned cultural anthropologist and brand consultant Clotaire Rapaille when he wrote that "the only effective way to understand what people truly mean is to ignore what they say."

If one asks customers in any kind of formal research setting whether they'd prefer the money back/promotional scheme or everyday low pricing, they're likely to say EDLP each time, either because they aren't consciously aware of the psychological benefits of the scheme or because they are aware, but are damn well not going to reveal such private mental machinations to a room full of grumpy strangers.

Voting for everyday low pricing instead sounds rational, level-headed, responsible: the sort of comment sure to elicit mass head nodding and a highly comforting round of 'I agree with Alan'.

So it's not the respondents' fault for answering that way - it's the convenors of this sort of research for asking it that way.

They might do better to spend the money instead on a copy of Richard H. Thaler's wonderful recent book about the rise of Behavioural Economics, 'Misbehaving'.

In it, he talks about something he names 'transaction utility' - the perceived quality of the deal itself, and whether the individual felt like she got a good one. Classical economics would argue that this factor doesn't matter, but psychology tells us it makes all the difference in the world.

And while coupons and discounts and Brand Match type rebates provide bags of transaction utility, EDLP provides none - for by its very definition, there is no reference price provided against which to compare the price you're being asked to pay, and thus no opportunity to feel like you've 'won.'

Helping to explain why, when introduced by retailers previously associated with deals and offers, such a pricing policy, apparently, often proves disappointing in practice.

So it will be interesting to see whether Brand Match is gone for good or whether it will make a return, in at least some form, down the road.

But more so to ponder why it is that, in a world where...

A) we now know beyond reasonable doubt that most of what we do is driven by unconscious motives, and thus beyond our ability to accurately explain...

B) we have more actual behavioural data than we would ever have the time even to analyse...

...we continue to ask people why they did what they did in the past, or what they think they might do in the future, and give priority to their answers?

Or even why listening to our customers is still considered such a corporate badge of honour, when ignoring them (in the politest possible way, of course) might not only deliver more value to companies, but also to those very same customers themselves?