Advertising best practice, evidence and insights

What we know about consumer decision making

Article • WARC Best Practice, October 2019

Looks at the processes through which people make decisions, often sub-conscious, instinctive and driven by bias, and how to work with these processes effectively.

What we know about behavioural economics

Article • WARC Best Practice, September 2019

This article provides marketers with information and guidance about using behavioural economics (BE) to inform marketing strategies.

How to use behavioural science to build new habits

Article • Crawford Hollingworth and Liz Barker, WARC Best Practice, June 2017

This article explains the lessons from behavioural science about the formation of habits and lists six strategies that marketers can employ to build, maintain and disrupt consumer habits.

Fevikwik: Fix it or forfeit it

Case Study • Divya Agarwal, WARC Prize for Asian Strategy, Shortlisted, 2020

Adhesive brand Fevikwik used TV, digital and social media to drive behaviour change and increase brand scores on salience, likeability, and brand appeal in India.

Grab: Personalised Social Impact Reports

Case Study • Krshna Prashant, Sulin Lau, WARC Prize for Asian Strategy, Shortlisted, 2020

Mobile technology brand Grab used customer data in a new way to reframe and personalise its social impact activity in Southeast Asia.

P/S: The Adventure With King Leo and Friends

Case Study • Sang Lam, Anish Appukuttan, Soumya Ranjan Panda, WARC Prize for Asian Strategy, Shortlisted, 2020

Toothpaste brand P/S harnessed the power of AI to encourage kids to brush their teeth, increasing consumption and boosting growth in Vietnam.

Is your growth suffering from consumption amnesia?

Opinion • Benoit Wiesser, September 2020

What if your customers simply forgot they were previously loyal to your brand? What if they stopped purchasing your entire category? What if they had done so already? And what if, this was the competitive opportunity of a generation? There’s a commonly quoted figure, backed by solid research, that it takes 66 days to form a new habit or change behaviour.

Fashion consumers’ channel-hopping profiles by psychographics and demographics

Article • Stacy H. Lee and Sojin Jung, International Journal of Market Research, Vol. 63, No. 5, 2020, pp. 615-632

Omni-channel retailing has created different shopping paradigms, such as channel hopping, to meet diverse consumer expectations through various channels.

Turning brand exposure into e-commerce transactions: Five practical tips

Article • Charlotte Lo, WARC Exclusive, August 2020

With e-commerce uptake growing faster than ever, brands need to carefully strategize their e-commerce CX to convert interest into sales.

Why food brands should target promotion-minded consumers

News • 26/08/2020

Understanding the difference between promotion- and prevention-minded shoppers could help food marketers enhance their strategy across the entire path to purchase.

How food marketers can turn desire into purchases

Article • Stephen Whiteside, Event Reports, Ipsos 2020 Food Industry Summit, August 2020

Analysis by Ipsos, the research firm, shows that focusing on emotional cues across the purchase journey is important for food brands.

Advertisers should use both rational and emotional appeals

News • 21/08/2020

Advertisers should consider employing “both rational and emotional appeals” in campaigns rather than using arbitrary divisions between these messages, according to a study in the Journal of Advertising Research (JAR).

Decoding decisions: Making sense of the messy middle

Article • Research on WARC, August 2020

Looks at the mental processes that have been activated by the abundance of the web.

Navigating the ‘messy middle’ of online consumer decision-making

Article • Alex Brownsell, WARC Exclusive, August 2020

Research from Google and The Behavioural Architects decodes how decisions are made online.

The funnel alibi: Why brand building and activation should be undertaken simultaneously

Article • Ken Roberts, WARC Best Practice, July 2020

Examines whether upper funnel brand-building efforts, and lower level activation efforts, should be separated from one another, as is traditionally the case.

SAP: The Future of Marketing has Feelings

Case Study • Case Studies on WARC, 2019

German software corporation SAP launched the new category of Experience Management with a campaign that used psychographic targeting to reach its audience of business travellers.

Children’s influence on parental purchase decisions: Scale development and validation

Article • Vytautas Dikcius, Sigitas Urbonavicius, Vilmante Pakalniskiene, and Indre Pikturniene, International Journal of Market Research, Vol. 63, No. 4, 2020, pp. 449-467

The article concentrates on the delineation between children's participation and children's influence in a family purchasing process.

Psychological stress or growth will determine post-pandemic consumer behaviour

Article • Win Ee Chun and Dr Gemma Calvert, WARC Trends, July 2020

In the wake of COVID-19, research in the field of cognitive neuroscience may provide some helpful pointers on how consumer behaviour will evolve.

Nissan Altima: Bio-Colour

Case Study • Garrett Olexiuk, Bhaskar Bateja, Remie Abdo, WARC Prize for MENA Strategy, Entrant, 2020

Car manufacturer Nissan Middle East attracted younger buyers to its Altima marque by giving them an opportunity to personalise their car colour based on their DNA, improving the brand's tech credentials and boosting sales in the United Arab Emirates.

Emirates NBD: Every Step Counts

Case Study • Tahaab Rais, Tala Arakji, WARC Prize for MENA Strategy, Silver, 2020

Emirates NBD, a leading UAE bank, launched a reward-based initiative to help people improve both their financial and their physical health.

Reteaua de sanatate REGINA MARIA: Internet's Residency Exam

Case Study • SABRE Awards, Gold, EMEA, 2020

REGINA MARIA, a private healthcare network, discouraged Romanians from self-diagnosing on the internet and highlighted the importance of visiting a doctor by using Google to take, and fail, the exam that future doctors were taking.

How to connect and communicate in these challenging times

Article • The Behavioural Architects, June 2020

Shows how behaviours are changing during and after the COVID-19 pandemic and provides a behavioural road map for how to communicate today and in the foreseeable future.

Updating the Foote, Cone & Belding Grid: Revisiting the product classifications of the FCB Grid for online shopping and contemporary consumers’ decision making

Article • Hyuk Jun Cheong and Yunjae Cheong, Journal of Advertising Research, Digital First, June 2020

This article proposes an update of the Foote, Cone & Belding (FCB) grid, which has been one of the most popular product-classification schemes in advertising and consumer research since its conception in 1980.

A big, habit-changing moment is happening: here’s what you need to know

Opinion • Richard Shotton, June 2020

Research has shown that major life events can have an impact on micro decision making - the kind that affects brands, argues Richard Shotton. In 1859 Samuel Smiles released his book, simply called Self-Help .

Building shelf awareness: Quantifying radio’s last-minute influence for FMCG brands

Article • Mark Barber, WARC Exclusive, June 2020

A review of insights and best practice findings from Radiocentre and Shoppercentric’s research into the effects of radio’s last-minute reach of shoppers for FMCG brands.

Behavioural insight