TORONTO – Consumers sometimes make terrible decisions that are not even in their own interests – and it’s always been very difficult for companies to cope with that.
All companies are in the business of changing people’s behaviour, said Professor Dilip Soman (pictured), professor of marketing at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management during his presentation made at the CTAM Broadcaster Forum, and generally speaking people are bad at making decisions because they don’t always act in their own best interests. People can be irrational or lazy when it comes to making decisions, Soman added. If given too many choices, people often choose not to choose and simply go with the same thing they always do – or look at what other people are doing, Soman said.
Professor Soman’s presentation focused on managing said customer choices. He is author of The Last Mile: Creating Social and Economic Value from Behavioral Insights and an expert in behavioural economics. Corus used Dr. Soman’s work in its submission last year to the CRTC’s Talk TV proceeding. He also spoke at Banff last year.
When it comes to managing TV viewers’ decisions, he added peer-based recommendations will be the biggest influencer in the future. Regarding the discussion about TV subscribers possibly wanting to order by show rather than channel, Soman said: “Do people prefer shows or channels? What do they want? I say they want neither, they want conversations. That’s what they want. And so everything that they choose has to be an input into a conversation. You can get people to watch any show or any channel by convincing them that everybody else is doing it.”
With regard to customers who want to switch brands (or channels in the case of TV subscribers), highlighting the losses associated with switching brands will likely influence customers to stay with the brand they already have, Soman said.
He also cautioned against relying too much on market research based on surveys asking respondents about their future decision plans because people often don’t follow through.
“Any market research done by asking people what they think they will do is by definition not good. It’s not good 
because there’s always going to be a gap between what they say they will do and what they do,” Soman said.
