People have tendency to overestimate the importance of personality and values, and underestimate the role that circumstances play in human behaviour. In practice, what we notice, how we perceive things and how we feel about them are shaped by the context in which we encounter them.

Consumer research frequently overlooks context entirely. If you assume that people’s preferences are more or less fixed, it makes sense that asking a question would result in someone retrieving them. Simple!

Inconveniently, the evidence shows that people often work out what they want during the process of choosing. Which means, if you want the most accurate insights, you need to represent both the context and action of making a choice. Not simple!

Without doubt, the best way of doing this is with a live trial. Put whatever you want to evaluate into the place people will encounter it and see what they do. This is lovely in theory, but in practice can be challenging for all sorts of reasons: you need to create finished material, secure regulatory or legal approval, involve retailers… and it limits how much you can explore.

Fortunately, at Shift we’ve developed techniques that sprinkle just enough context into research. It turns out, you don’t need too much. At least, not too much in the form of material to show a respondent. For example, think back to something you purchased from a supermarket recently, say breakfast cereal. Can you recall what brands were either side of the brand you purchased? Can you remember what category was on the opposite aisle? Do you remember the colour of the flooring? The chances are that you can’t because this information is inconsequential to the decision.

What matters is where you are, how you’re feeling, and what information becomes salient during the moments of purchase. We have special interviewing techniques that recreate the first two contextual elements. The third we can cover with stimulus material. This conveys the elements that will be interpreted through each respondent’s memory; through the experiences and associations that are triggered (often unconsciously).

If, in the environment in question, price is implicitly associated with quality, that will emerge. If there is a receptiveness to POS communication highlighting a new product, we can understand why and how. If a habitual purchase means there is little engagement with the category, we’ll know about it. Best of all, because we aren’t having to build a new display each time and create the products we’re testing, we can explore multiple alternatives using the prompt of a 2D visual.

Ultimately, context is often the reason that what people say differs from what they do. Humans are poor at factoring in future contexts; we’re seduced by the thought that how we feel in a moment reflects something fundamental and enduring. At Shift we’re careful to make sure our insight work doesn’t fall into this trap and that are more likely to predict actual behaviour.