Do I really want what I think I want?

I am pretty convinced that the shiny new tablet PC I have been playing with in the shop around the corner from work will bring me a lot of satisfaction, just think of all the new things that I will be able to do…..and that new on-demand film service I signed up for at the weekend will make a real difference to the happiness of me and my family.  In fact a lot of the purchase decisions that I make are because I think they will make me more happy.   Indeed our quest for future happiness seems to figure particularly strongly in many technology purchases,  where consumers often make a huge investment in the happiness that a new device or service will bring them in the future.

Of course this will typically be relevant to discretionary purchases but the choices made within even non-discretionary purchases can be for this reason (e.g. by choosing this broadband supplier I will have greater peace of mind = happiness).

The difficulty comes, of course, when you find that you don’t actually like the item that you wanted so much.  Or maybe you like it but you don’t seem to like it as much as you thought you would.  This mismatch between ‘wanting’ and ‘liking’ has been called ‘miswanting’ and has big implications for technology markets.

So what causes this discrepancy between wanting and liking?  Surely in a rational world we would be well informed and sensible consumers that purchase rationally so we end up liking the things that we so desired originally?  Psychologists Daniel Gilbert and Timothy Wilson identified three ways in which miswanting can occur:

 Imagining the wrong event:  Research suggests that people tend to imagine a particular scenario for their ‘want’ and underplay alternatives.  So, I might imagine the purchase of a new tablet to be my passport into a new world of entertainment  .  However, I may then find the format of the new device does not really make any difference to my enjoyment of what I find to be pretty much the same content that could be accessed by my now abandoned  laptop.  So the very different scenario that I imagined was, in reality, at odds with reality.

Using the wrong theory:  There may of course be situations that we are more familiar with and we can predict how they will unfold.  However, even though we know precisely what ‘event’ will be waiting for us,  we can still end up liking the subsequent purchase less than anticipated due to our inadequate theories about ourselves.  So to use our tablet example, I may purchase a tablet because I think I want an entertainment device and consider I am happy to accept that the device will not be optimal for running Microsoft Office functions.  However, after a period of using the tablet I realise that I actually have to spend most of my time using  it for word processing and spreadsheets and only occasionally find time to watch movies.  My theory about myself and how I would use the device was therefore wrong, what I actually needed was a laptop that could do both.     There are many examples of this mechanism at play as my overgrown allotment and  lapsed gym memberships will testify.

Misinterpreting feelings:  When we are imagining a future event we will often have an emotional response.  I may consider that the new tablet PC will make me happier as I am able to video call my family.  That evokes a warm, pleasant emotion that I tend to consider will be the same emotion that I will feel when I am experiencing the video call.  The difficulty here is that the emotion that I experience when ‘wanting’ can be influenced be all sorts of factors – a TV advert, a good night out with friends, a promotion at work.  We are all aware of the dangers of supermarket shopping when hungry for example!  I may find that whilst it’s pleasant to talk to my family over my tablet PC I quickly realise that the format does not make any real difference to my enjoyment of the experience than an ordinary phone call. We cannot therefore always tell if how we are feeling about the future event is due to the event itself or other factors.  As such, it is easy to develop a mis-wanting,

And miswanting does not necessarily just have an implications for the way we think about things in the short term.  This is because we often overestimate the way in which things will impact on us in the long term (both positively and negatively).  So we tend to ‘over-focus’ on the impact of a new tablet on our future state of mind and give it a disproportionate influence on our predictions of our longer term happiness (above and beyond the myriad of other things that can influence our happiness).  But  the reality is that humans are extremely adept at assimilating new experiences so for any new device, service or experience is our reactions to them is typically not as enduring as we might expect.  So we can have a scenario where a significant level of wanting has built up that any experience is simply not going to deliver in the long term as we simply get used to the new device. The same principle applies to lottery winners and those who move to sunnier climates although knowing this does not stop me from wanting both of these!

So what does this mean for brands selling technology products and services to consumers?  There are clearly signposts for brands that wish to make a quick sale – encourage consumers to imagine a very aspirational setting for the use of the product, throw into the mix ideas for using it that appear attractive and set it all to some feel-good music.

And this may be fine if these are consistent with the way in which consumers live their lives but if not, there is a danger of creating a miswant.  In the longer term, creating miswants can seriously damage the brand as expectations that have been raised and then not fully delivered on will create a negative reaction.

The huge body of research on the ways consumers forecast their future happiness has a major implication for brands wishing to manage for long term success:

 understand your consumers’ needs.  This deceptively simple recommendation allows brands to effectively match the (often multifaceted) features and benefits of technology goods with the needs of target consumers.  In this way the risk of consumers experiencing miswants based on inaccurate predictions of the events or erroneous theories about themselves will be lowered (it is impossible to eliminate them altogether of course)

take care when interpreting consumer emotions related to your proposition.  These are highly vulnerable to the context in which consumers find themselves and as such it is possible to misinterpret whether the emotions that are being expressed in relation to the proposition will be pulled through to the actual experience

market your products and services in a way that is engaging with genuine consumer needs, rather than creating focusing on generating heightened emotional states.  This will help to eliminate the miswants brought about by consumers misinterpreting their feelings.

Of course, these recommendations tend to go against the flow of much of today’s sales and marketing practices but it’s important to remember that truly great brands are built on fantastic user experiences that are intimately shaped to meet the real needs of consumers. Market research has a critical role to play in generating an intimate understanding of consumer needs, perceptions and emotions and reducing the potential for miswanting.

And perhaps the miswanting mechanism may be actually at times be beneficial in technology markets  where devices are enabling new and unexpected behaviours.  What can happen is that the ‘anticipated events’ for the use of the device are way surpassed by the much broader portfolio of events that the device is actually able to deliver.  So, for example, when my colleague Ryan bought an e-book reader he thought it would just be a more convenient way to carry and read the usual sorts of books he purchased. What he actually found was that the e-book reader facilitated the discovery of new books and authors which means he now reads a lot more than he used to, a highly positive outcome for him. Perhaps miswanting can therefore operates in a disproportionately positive way when it goes in the consumers favour.

So whilst miswanting has dangers for brands maybe there is also the potential for technology brands to use the mechanism to their advantage to not only satisfy their customers but to delight them.

This article was first published on GfK’s blog.