Question

Confirmation bias: how marketing takes advantage of this flaw

Answer 1

Confirmation bias: definition and explanation
Confirmation bias: day-to-day examples
5 ways to use confirmation bias in marketing
Bottom line: balance is the key
Take advantage of clichés and stereotypes
Appeal to customer issues
Show positive experiences
Take care of your current customers
Question your own hypotheses

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Confirmation bias: how marketing takes advantage of this flaw

Women do not know how to park, left-handed people are more creative than right-handed people and more and more people are meditating: no matter how absurd or obvious a statement may seem, the truth is that everyone has their convictions and it is not easy to get off the donkey. Surely you have already experienced it in the first person in discussions, for example, when someone clings to their opinion for many objective arguments that refute it. On a day-to-day basis, people tend to belittle or even ignore indications that do not match their world view, while at the same time they tend to focus on those that do support that view..

The mechanism that works in such situations is confirmation bias (in English, confirmation bias ). This cognitive bias distorts our perception of reality and ensures that we internalize information in a selective way and adapted to our preconceptions.

Index

1. Confirmation bias: definition and explanation
2. Confirmation bias: day-to-day examples
3. 5 ways to use confirmation bias in marketing
   1. Take advantage of clichés and stereotypes
   2. Appeal to customer issues
   3. Show positive experiences
   4. Take care of your current customers
   5. Question your own hypotheses
4. Bottom line: balance is the key

Confirmation bias: definition and explanation

Human thinking is far from objective. In fact, it is subject to various cognitive biases, that is, systematic failures that intervene in the regular processing of information..

Definition

Cognitive bias ( confirmation bias in English) is the tendency of people to favor and consider relevant information that agrees with their own beliefs.

The psychologist Peter Wason was the first to demonstrate the existence of this bias, in the 1960s, through various experiments..

In one of their experiments (the so-called problem 2-4-6 ), the participants had to find out which composition rule certain three-digit sequences followed. One of them was 2-4-6, which was shown to the participants first. They were then asked to propose sequence examples themselves, to which the organizers would answer whether they met the rule or not, so that the participants could find out the rule in question. Finally, the participants had to express the rule that they thought they recognized. The results showed, according to Wason, that the participants tended to propose only those combinations that confirmed the rule they had in mind.

In addition to this experiment, Wason performed others with which he was also able to confirm confirmation bias, such as the selection task or Four Card Problem , for example. In the following decades, research contributed many discoveries about this bias and, today, the term confirmation bias or bias confirmation is used to describe a wide range of cognitive and memory defects. Among them are some in the following areas:

• Obtaining information : only data that supports the assumption that you already have is taken into account (definition of the confirmation bias of Wason).
• Memories : Only information that agrees with your own opinion is remembered.
• Framing : the information is reinterpreted in such a way that it conforms to one's own conceptions.
• Verification : the possibilities of questioning one's opinion are avoided.
• Discard : data that does not support one's own preconceptions is discarded or belittled.

Confirmation bias: day-to-day examples

Psychologists have been researching confirmation bias and possible ways to get rid of it for decades, and rightly so, as this cognitive defect has potentially dangerous consequences.

Thus, for example, if a doctor believes that his patient is a hypochondriac, he could examine him only superficially and thus hinder the early diagnosis of a disease that could even be fatal.

However, there is no reason to look for such dramatic examples: just think about the way we usually consume news, ignoring information that does not agree with our convictions, also due to confirmation bias. For this emotional reason, the algorithms of social networks show us only those data that fit our vision of the world, for example. In the same way, resentments between political groups are stoked and it becomes difficult to tone down radical opinions.

Science does not doubt the presence of this bias. However, there is debate regarding the role it plays in the decisions we make. Gary Klein, for example, claims that there are central flaws in the research on this topic so far.

5 ways to use confirmation bias in marketing

Companies have long ago learned to take advantage of, and successfully, the tendency of people to stay true to their worldview and to unconsciously confirm precisely the ideas they already have. Your business could also benefit from these marketing tricks.

Simply put, it's all about figuring out what your potential customers' internal assumptions are and creating marketing messages that confirm them. In this way, you gain approval and trust and take another step towards the final purchase decision.

Take advantage of clichés and stereotypes

Germans make high-quality cars, French wines are very good, and Silicon Valley startups develop great technological advances: these are some of the clichés that inhabit people's minds and that influence economic sectors and brands .

If your company has a good reputation or your industry is the subject of positive clichés, don't hesitate to incorporate these concepts into your marketing strategy. People will be happy to believe these types of messages because they will fit, like pieces of a puzzle, into the public image of the company or the sector. Marketing is especially efficient when it draws on pre-existing positive ideas.

Appeal to customer issues

What happens if your company is not yet known or the public image of your sector is not exactly positive? In these cases, what consumers will have will be, at least, a need or problem to which your company hopes to provide a solution. Confirmation bias can also be useful in these cases: people want to believe that there is a solution to their problem and therefore tend to trust arguments that promise reasonable help in this regard.

The better you know the needs of your customers, the more clearly you can include them in your sales pitch and the faster you will attract them. However, the confirmation bias also works when customers are not yet aware of the scope of their need or problem: in your marketing strategy, you can mention it and thus confirm possible fears, and then offer the customer, at their most receptive moment, the right solution for your needs.

Show positive experiences

Through the network, customers have a difficult time evaluating the reliability of suppliers, but without trust, there is no purchase. It is precisely when customers are already interested in a product that they most notice, consciously or unconsciously, the signs that show them that the company in question is reliable and competent.

It is worth it, therefore, for you to get ahead of the customer's wish and publish positive testimonials or success stories that show that the product is worth investing in and doing business with your company. With this you will be giving the final push to whoever is interested so that they decide to buy your product.

Take care of your current customers

The larger the purchase, the greater the desire of customers to obtain confirmation post that have invested their money. There are many ways to offer it to you as a business - why not send a thank you email for your purchase that also includes helpful tips on how to use the product? Or maybe a discount on the purchase of a second product? Or even an additional gift included in the purchase package?

It doesn't matter if the purchase was made a long time ago, existing customer relationships are always worth investing in, especially when it comes to subscription models. Don't miss out on any opportunity to make a good impression on your clients. Mailchimp offers a good example of this strategy: every time a customer launches an email campaign, they are congratulated with a high five , so that they exit the application with a smile and feel satisfied with having chosen this service provider via email.

Question your own hypotheses

The tips we've presented so far encourage using confirmation bias for marketing purposes to make communication with customers more effective. However, many marketing departments forget that they themselves are not immune from this bias.

For this reason, the explicit or implicit assumptions on which the strategy itself is based should be regularly questioned, since it is very likely that the marketing tools are being used in such a way that the analysis confirms the hypothesis itself. Do not forget, therefore, to check the thesis opposite to the assumptions of the company and to try alternative ways of proceeding. One way to do this is, for example, with tests of two variants of type A / B.

Bottom line: balance is the key

Confirmation bias is an easy-to-understand cognitive flaw - we've all heard of bubble filters on social media, and we know how difficult it is to give up certain beliefs. However, the application of this bias in the field of marketing is not always so clear, contrary to what happens with the IKEA effect or the endowment effect . In any case, companies of all sizes have long consciously exploited the effects of confirmation bias for marketing purposes.

If you want to optimize your marketing strategy, you should take into account typical cognitive biases when designing the actions you will take. Other biases that are useful in this regard are the anchor effect, the selection bias, and the lure effect. The more variety of psychological mechanisms you understand and know how to apply, the more efficient will be the way in which you attract customers along the customer journey .

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