Why it works

To achieve our mission, we have three key analytical tools and two key pools of knowledge that we use to find out what our clients need to do to succeed in the marketplace and demonstrate the expected benefits.

Motivational Science

The ability to predict the likely returns from your marketing budget

We use data from all the sources you have available – both internal and external – to provide you with a full understanding of all the factors that are influencing buyer decision-making and quantify their relative importance so you can see the implications for your future sales performance.

This includes all the Rational and Emotional considerations that lead someone to decide whether to choose your brand today, tomorrow or forever more thereafter. These drivers are captured in one word – RAAVE® – and it summarises the five key drivers that enable us to reliably predict brand choice and loyalty. This fully predictive framework is shown below:

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1. Principle 2. Process 3. Tools

1. RAAVE® – our guiding principle

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The Human Mind

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Rational

Price Drivers

The right price that perfectly matches consumers’ value perception of the product or service – not too high for what is on offer, not too low to appear unbelievably cheap

Distribution Drivers

A measure of the availability of the product or service to be easily purchased, either through retail or other channels.

Media Weight Drivers

The relationship between the weight of media investment, in total and by media channel, and sales performance.

Promotional Drivers

The impact that promotional programmes have on both short-term and long-term sales.

Emotional

Perception Ratings

A measure of the strength of consumer affinity with our brand compared to competitors

Perceived Quality

The measure of the way in which consumers rate the ‘value’ of your product or service compared to your competitors.

Loyalty Ladder

Measuring the differences in conversion rates from awareness through trial, conversion and loyalty.

Share of Wallet vs Preference

The relationship between the measure of consumers’ Effective Net Preference for your product or service and its resultant share of their category purchases.

Short, medium and long-term improvements in volume, revenue and profit

The Mind and RAAVE®

Conventional economic theory assumes that customers are rational, value-maximising, cost-minimising and socially isolated individuals with stable preferences. We disagree.

In reality, customer decisions are strongly influenced by context: their purchasing behaviour varying over time and subject to social influences and emotions. If we all bought cars on the basis of traditional economic theory, we would all be driving a Toyota Prius. But we don’t. We buy cars on the basis of “I want one”.

You are lost while driving and need to make a couple of quick-thinking decisions. Should you continue straight or pull over? Ask for directions or figure it out on your own? Your mind is running through all these options trying to determine what the best solution is. So, what part of the mind is in charge of that final decision?

The mind is split into two hemispheres – the right and the left, both having specific functions. The left-mind is responsible for rational thought processing, logical sequencing, and analytical considerations. The right-mind helps out with creative thought, intuition, and looking at the big picture. Right-mind left-mind functions work together to create a complete human mind, which plays a large role in the decision making process.

Psychologists have long known that emotional associations and evaluations guide our decisions. Emotions consciously and unconsciously reduce the complexity of decision making, creating automatic evaluations that help us towards a decision.

And if we feel positive about a brand, it is likely that we will be prepared to pay more for it than for a brand that we feel less well disposed towards.

All of us are aware from our personal experience that the way that we feel at any at any particular moment can cloud our judgment. Psychologists refer to these as ‘hot states’ – emotional states that increase our desire for instant gratification by making those thoughts that are associated with current needs over-ride all other thoughts that might restrain our behaviour. It is the reason why whenever we go into a supermarket feeling hungry, we end up buying food that wasn’t on our shopping list.

We tend to underestimate the effect that hot states have on our behaviour. Most people would predict that they will practice safe sex but this often doesn’t happen when we find ourselves in a hot state.

We are creatures that live very much for the present and often we lack self-control. Given a choice between instant and delayed reward, we are biased towards a decision that will benefit us now. We are hopeless at deciding on a course of action that will benefit us in the future if an alternative choice will benefit us immediately – even if this benefits us less.

This is the principle behind Motivational Science. Understanding the circumstantial and attitudinal factors that come together at a particular point in time to determine the actions people are likely to take. In short, people inherently consider “What’s wanted?”; “What’s possible?”; and then decide: “What’s best?”.

Our RAAVE© model reflects this approach and makes it actionable – so you get to know how well you are going to win: in the mind, and in the marketplace.

2. Process

Fully predictive framework

Our flexible approach ranges from providing pure consultancy advice to designing, implementing, and running operational decision support systems. The principle is the same – reviewing what information you have to be able to assess the relative strength of your proposition in the marketplace from the buyer’s perspective and, from that, predicting future usage and revenue. A proven process you can rely on, as you can see from our case studies and testimonials.

Typically, the data we pull together comes from sources you probably already have but have never assembled in quite this way and for quite this purpose.

We make the data actionable, so it has more impact for your business. And If there are information gaps, we help you fill them. The real value add we bring is that we build the predictive models – whether formal via data science techniques, or informal via common-sense understanding of your market.

Like our philosophy, our solutions include all the benefits of AI in using data most efficiently whilst adding all the benefits of RI – Real Intelligence – which human insight delivers.

3. Tools

To support our clients, consultants, and analysts we have a range of proprietary tools that help us tackle the task in-hand.

Analytical Tools

OMAR

Our model of how media spend influences buyer decision-making

RAMOS

Our AI tool for rapidly modelling & predicting buyer behaviour

Fountains of knowledge

THOR

Our library of over 500 previous market modelling case studies

EXCD

Our Database of Experiential Campaign Effectiveness

Whatever size your database is we are able to support you

We use industry-standard statistical analysis software platforms that have been tried and tested over many years (such as SAS, SPSS, WPS and others) and we are adept at combining disparate data sources – in fact, it is one of our strengths.

We are not systems-provider dependent and the databases we build combine whatever data is needed (and from wherever it sits) in order to understand customer attitudes and behaviours. We are interested in measuring the user’s engagement with your brand across five key dimensions as shown below and we create an insight database that enables us to model how that engagement relates to actual transactional behaviour.

We then have the expertise and the analytical products to mine that data effectively – including mining analogue data such as pictures, Tweets and videos – to understand what the users of your goods and services are thinking and what they might be looking for next.

The result is a recommendation on your best course of action and the ability to simulate the impact of alternative marketing decisions you might take. So you can be wise before the event, not after it.

To find out more about our services please contact us for a no-obligation meeting at any time.