Can you control your impulses? 

Can someone else? 

By Professor Sarah Xiao and Professor Mike Nicholson, August 2022

Research into consumer behavioural profiling and impulse buying led by Professors Sarah Xiao and Mike Nicholson has enabled companies to build new marketing toolkits, resulting in significant financial gains… 

 Did you decide to buy that new outfit on your own? Or were you subtly encouraged to do so? We all know by now that, more often than not, our choices are not our own — particularly when it comes to purchasing. Every day we’re confronted with persuasive messaging and attractive imagery about products and services as companies vie for our attention and our business. Whether through catchy jingles on radio adverts, flashy or aspirational images in window displays or magazines, or recommendations made by online marketplaces offering daily deals and bargains based on previous shopping habits, we’re influenced in our everyday and impulse purchases. 

To this latter example, as technology becomes more advanced, the ways in which companies can reach us and appeal to our tastes are getting increasingly smarter, from internet browsing history recording items we’ve viewed online and using that to tailor adverts across other web pages, to supermarket loyalty cards using data analytics to keep track of purchases and offer discounts on items that might be of interest. 

While some of it may sound rather devious, there’s a significant upside. As technology gets smarter, companies are able to tailor their advertising and marketing accordingly — ensuring that what they put in front of their consumers will address their needs as closely as possible. Meaning that, when marketers can get it right, there’s far less chance of consumers being bombarded with nuisance messages that don’t offer anything they might be interested in. Which, for anyone who’s been on the receiving end of poorly targeted adverts, would be a significant benefit.  

And, when organisations and retailers can get their marketing right, appealing to the right audiences with the right products and services in the right way, the result is usually a boost in sales and revenue and a chance for a company to profit and grow.  

It’s a win-win — but where to begin? This is the question that I, along with Professor Mike Nicholson, have sought to answer through our research.  

In aiding organisations to provide the best possible service for their customers, we’ve undertaken a number of collaborative research projects which explore the relationships between consumer behaviour, consumer profiling and the interventions made by retailers. The results of these studies have been instrumental for marketing agencies and companies to build new toolkits which have resulted in significant financial gains. 

There have been three key studies that have supported our work in this area. 

The first, 'Developing a shopping context-specific approach to marketing in retailing', explores how to map, characterise and integrate the different stages of a consumer’s journey, the context behind it, and the lived experience of the customer by analysing their use of various retail channels — traditional in-store shopping, online shopping on a computer and the ever more popular mobile sites.  

By combining each of these factors, we were able to develop a context-dependency approach which integrated the personal attributes of the customer (such as their attitude, their past experiences or their personality) with the influence of their social situation or physical environment, plus any triggers (promotions, flashy packaging or desirable brands, etc.) they may be exposed to during their purchasing.  

Adopting a behavioural approach to our work, rather than relying on a purely statistical analysis, allowed us to better understand, predict, and then devise ways of appealing to consumers in any given situation. By sharing these findings directly with industry, our work added real value to firms seeking to communicate with their customers in different situations. 

A further study, 'Identifying behaviour intervention for impulse buying in consumer journey', explored the effectiveness, or lack thereof, of the marketing tactics designed to encourage impulsive or unplanned purchases. To date firms have often found tactics such as these difficult to actually put into practice due to wide variations in outcome. The methods developed have therefore focused on applying behavioural science insights to target such tactics more precisely to appeal to the dominant behavioural patterns of consumers.  

Together, Professor Nicholson and I mapped a large number of the key factors and triggers known to increase impulse buying during the consumer purchase journey and associated decision-making processes. Through our work, we identified the important factors that marketing managers need to be aware of — the interacting effects of internal triggers (the consumer’s urges), external triggers (like adverts and promotions), and learned rules (such as herd mentality and social conformation) which influence consumer decision-making. By breaking this down we were able to offer clear guidelines for developing appropriate behavioural interventions (or 'nudges') for each stage of the shopping journey.  

Other studies we’ve embarked on have involved exploring the impact and potential to be gained from the ever-smarter Internet of Things when it comes to consumer behaviour, and even setting up lab-based projects within the Business School using sophisticated eye-tracking technology on consumers as they browsed websites whilst purchasing. Looking to the future of retail, a further study has explored how virtual reality technology can link consumer perception to reality in their decision-making process.   

The culmination of these efforts is producing marketing toolkits — simple, industry-focused guides, instructions and processes for businesses to use in their own marketing operations. Additionally, by working with companies like Procter and Gamble, IBM and numerous small and medium businesses in London and the North-East, we’ve been able to place our academic acumen directly at the heart of industry and see first-hand how better appealing to consumer behaviours can contribute to changes in the marketplace and people’s purchasing behaviour. 

The result of the research saw an increase in profits for companies by providing them with an improved approach to market research and new marketing toolkits that allow them to access potential clients in a scientific (evidenced) based way — linking academia to business practice to enhance work, life and opportunity for all.  

More information on Professor Sarah Xiao and Professor Mike Nicholson's research interests.