The same but different

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One of the most valuable contributions consumer research can make is to probe the remarkably different effects on consumer behaviour that may be obtained by presenting the same seemingly objective information in different ways.

In the UK and the US, a car’s fuel efficiency is typically presented in miles per gallon. In other words, what distance you may drive for a given unit of fuel. This has significant unintended consequences on consumer perception of fuel efficiency.

It means that, at first glance, replacing a car that does 15 miles to the gallon with one that does 25 seems no more significant a decision than replacing a car that does 50 miles to the gallon with one that does 60. Yet, the first is proportionately far more important than the second – for both the environment and the motorist’s wallet.

In other parts of the world, by contrast, the measure used is litres per 100 kilometres; this arguably presents a much more accurate and proportionate portrayal of fuel consumption. Yet we are completely unaware, for the most part, of the profound biasing effects that these two different formulations (distance/fuel versus fuel/distance) may have on our thinking and actions.

When I first bought a sat nav, I very quickly learned that it made very little difference to the estimated time of arrival whether you drove down a motorway at a perfectly legal 68mph or wellied it at 85mph. I noticed that the duration for which I would have to break the speed limit to shave a couple of minutes off my journey was simply too long to be worth the candle. By contrast, there was an enormous difference in arrival time between travelling at 30 and 45mph.

Using the analogy of miles per gallon, it occurred to me that if speedometers had been differently calibrated to display minutes per mile instead of miles per hour, our driving behaviour since the invention of the automobile might have been entirely different. In that parallel universe, James Dean could still be alive.

Here’s the thing. We assume numbers are cold and objective, but they aren’t. We impose our perception on them, unwittingly. Psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer has written wonderfully about this, pointing out that natural frequencies are much preferred to percentages when presenting probabilities. He has also found that many doctors will nod at being told that a virology test is “99.7% accurate” without asking what the false-positive rate may be. And he recommends that, in presenting rows of decimals, we must include all the values, even if they are zeroes – such as 1.278888 alongside 1.450000, not 1.45 – lest the shorter number will seem to our brains to be smaller.

How many markets, I wonder, are ruined by the fatuous and unmotivating metrics that are presented supposedly to aid objective comparison? The APR interest rate looks objective enough, but it woefully underplays the compounding effect, hence reducing the perceived cost of borrowing – and making saving look less attractive than it is.

Other sectors are just as confusing. Solar power is one area where, unless you have a degree in physics, you haven’t got a clue what on earth you’re getting for your money. The cost of panels is normally stated in terms of the number of years it takes them to repay their purchase cost. This looks bad. But expressed as an 8% annual return, it would look better than any savings product on the market.

Electric cars are sometimes ranked by the amount of time it takes to charge a battery from flat to full. Yet how often do we drive 300 miles on two consecutive days? For most of us, it’s perhaps twice a year or even less. The norm has been set around a completely abnormal behaviour.
The first lesson of marketing, in many ways, is that people are not much influenced by objective reality, hence research that assumes objective perception is always dangerous. Respondents may be reacting to the presentation of the facts, not the facts themselves.

Some time ago, bird researchers looked at parrot behaviour by showing the birds photographs of various types of fruit. The parrots’ reactions seemed bizarre, until, that is, someone pointed out that the photographs were – as all printed and televised pictures are – optimised for human colour perception. A photograph of a banana that looks yellow to a human might therefore look green to a parrot.

Human perception is like parrot vision. We don’t see what others think we should. And don’t get me started on pricing research. As anyone who’s bought overpriced tat at an airport shop can attest, the same thing can seem extraordinarily expensive or astoundingly cheap, depending on what mood you are in.

This article was first published in the October 2020 issue of Impact.