Belief Elicitation Research

An empirical approach for improved messaging strategy

Social marketing and consumer advertising campaigns are more likely to be successful when they are built on a solid understanding of the factors that influence behavior. That is, in order for communications to influence behavior, the root causes of the behavior need to be targeted, and this requires insights about why people think what they think, feel what they feel, and do what they do. Gaining these insights is difficult because most people have a hard time discerning their motivations and explaining the reasons behind their behaviors. Belief Elicitation Research is a structured qualitative/quantitative approach to message development that uses state-of-the-art communications theory and practice to more reliably extract actionable insight necessary to build or improve communications strategy.

Belief Elicitation Research begins with an open-ended elicitation procedure, which can be in the form of interviews, online or F2F focus groups or a self-administered questionnaire.

Following data collection, responses are content-analyzed. After responses have been categorized, salient consequences, referents and facilitators or barriers are identified. Whether you are looking to create a stand alone ad, multimedia campaign, among a consumer B2B or at risk population, this method can help a campaign designer understand how a potential target audience may view and perceive your messaging. Results from the content analysis present a variety of opportunities for message design.

To evaluate the impact of using one or more of these marketing strategies, a final step involves use of a fixed-item questionnaire. Here, salient beliefs, identified during the elicitation exercise and content analysis, are quantified on a larger scale, allowing for more powerful and more accurate analyses.

Key Benefits and Features:

• Substantiated across a variety of behavior scenarios including consumer purchase behavior and health/lifestyle decision-making
• Grounded in social-cognitive and human behavior theory
• Open-ended elicitation study will provide you with terminology and words in the language of your target population – fundamental in the design of effective campaigns
• Identify what distinguishes those who currently do and do not engage in your behavior of interest