Key research findings highlight a disparity between customer attitudes and behaviors

Why customers behave differently to how they think

Why customers behave differently to how they think

As marketers you work hard to understand your customers. Their likes, dislikes and most importantly their behaviors.

And yet the irony is that often customers don’t even know themselves. That is, they say they will do one thing, but in reality their behavior is different.

It’s something that Leadfamly found in its latest report Actions Don’t Align to Intentions. Following on from consumer research that we carried out earlier this year in conjunction with YouGov, the idea was to see how stated customer behavior (as collated in the YouGov consumer survey) differed from actual customer behavior (collated from the Leadfamly platform).

And we found that there was a clear difference between what customers say and do.

Understanding the say/do gap

The say/do gap exists in many areas of life and there are three reasons for it – we have good intentions that go awry in practice. So for instance we say we’ll resist the sugary treats in the pantry. But the doing part is something else and suddenly there’s an empty wrapper in front of us and chocolate on our lips. Whoops.

We may overpromise or be overly enthusiastic. Or we give the desirable answer - that is what we feel we should say, over the true one that we actually believe.

And yet in our most recent report, we saw a different perspective on the say/do gap. Instead of being over-ambitious or over-enthusiastic in their answers, we saw that consumers were conservative in how they thought they behaved (the results of the YouGov report) compared to how they actually behaved in practice (the results of the platform analysis report).

The overarching theme was that in almost every instance customers were more willing to share data, and more likely to engage in marketing strategies that involved game mechanics than they imagined.

The challenge for marketers is navigating the say/do gap

So if consumers are behaving differently from what they say, then how are marketers supposed to understand them if the consumers don’t understand themselves? To be honest it’s this difference that inspired our new report.

The YouGov survey proved a number of proof points (all positive thankfully) that showed that game mechanics work in marketing. But we knew that our platform data, and the experience of our many clients, showed that they were even more powerful. It showed that, presented with the right value exchange, fueled by game mechanics, customers will open up and share more than they think.

And so we looked to compare the data to understand the differences.

Three key differences

1.) They share more sensitive data than they think

One of the biggest behaviors that we were able to prove in the comparison was that consumers aren’t as protective of their key sensitive data as they might think. In the YouGov survey we had asked customers how willing they would be to share their post code in a gamified marketing campaign.

Just over a third said they would. Yet in the platform data their actions proved that they were much more likely to, with more than half of players sharing their zip code in a registration form when engaging with games in marketing.

2.) They are more willing to click on a gamified ad

Our survey also asked about the willingness of customers to click on a gamified ad than a standard one. In the YouGov study consumers said they were 56% more likely to click on a gamified ad than a standard ad.

And yet the results of a global media agency partner of Leadfamly’s shows that CTR (click-through-rate) can be as much as 70% higher than a standard ad.

3.) Consumers want to earn their reward

One really interesting thing that we saw in both the YouGov data and our platform data was the idea that consumers want to earn their reward and valued it more as a result.

This was proven by the fact that more than half of respondents said a prize or voucher was more valuable to them than a coupon that everyone receives. When we looked at our platform data we found that the registration rate for skill games – where consumers had to use a little more effort to win than a luck game – was higher.

Consumers want to share

The analysis of playable marketing in action proves that consumers are more willing to share than they thought.

And it means that marketers can collect all sorts of information. Indeed our clients have collected some very unique – and useful – information from their clients using our games in their marketing campaigns. This ranges from the year they graduated to their TikTok username or favorite hiking area.

They do this because consumers love to engage with play. And it means they will engage with your marketing. We’ve proved it. To find out more, check out the new report in full.