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In 2020 we published a piece of research called Decoding Decisions: Making sense of the messy middle that helped explain how shoppers navigate the complexity of the web — or the “messy middle” as we called it. We started out by exploring “internet street”: online shopping reimagined as a digital high street, with every storefront, every product, and every point of view and opinion immediately at your fingertips. Over the course of detailed literature reviews and simulated shopping experiments, we became more familiar with the behavioural science underlying our decision-making, eventually proposing a model formed around two closely related loops: exploration — an expansive mindset; and evaluation — a reductive mindset.
The reason for grounding our research in behavioural science was simple: people were foraging for information long before the internet existed, and long before there were streets. Many of the mental shortcuts our ancestors used when searching for their next reliable source of food turn out to be the same as those we now apply when figuring out where to buy our next pair of trainers. Abundant choice and limitless information have made both physical and digital environments “messier”, but the cognitive tools we use to navigate them have endured.
Since publication, we’ve received a lot of encouraging feedback from marketers and a lot of follow-up questions. In particular, people want to know how to apply behavioural science in their real-world campaigns and properties. Brands want to understand more about how media and technology can help them show up across all the touchpoints of the messy middle, how behavioural science can inform their content and creative, and how product and retailer brands interact. And they also want to know how these insights can be put to work at scale, so that every customer interaction is enriched and improved by an appreciation of how and why people make the purchase decisions they do.
To answer these questions — and more — we set about simulating three specific environments: Search, content, and online points of sale. We chose these three spaces because they represent places where marketers have a significant degree of control, and therefore the ability to experiment, iterate, and try new things.
As in our original research, our insights are derived from a combination of literature reviews, observational studies, and rigorous survey-based experiments. And once again, we’ve partnered with behavioural science experts The Behavioural Architects to validate and inform our work.
If you’re already familiar with our original research, you can skip to the next chapter. But if you’re new to the messy middle, you can find a quick recap below.
**Revisiting the messy middle **
The messy middle is a complicated place. An environment of abundant choice and limitless information. And it’s getting more complex every year as people are introduced to new modes of communication, new means of finding information, new forms of entertainment and expression, and — of course — new products and services to buy and new ways to buy them.
Shoppers are pretty complicated too. What they want can be a moving target, with intent to buy one product often ending with the purchase of something completely different. And all of this is governed by motivations that are hard to explore without the conscious mind inventing postrationalisations.
In our model, the messy middle sits between the twin poles of trigger and purchase, and against a backdrop of exposure which represents all of the existing perceptions and feelings a shopper has about the brands, retailers, and products in a category.
We codified the messy middle as two looping mindsets: exploration and evaluation. Shoppers can cycle between these mindsets as many times as they need or want, exploring available products and brands before evaluating the suitability of a smaller set of choices.
If none of those products or offers turns out to be quite right, they simply seek more information and options. And if a purchase is habitual or impulsive, they might skip the messy middle altogether. Finally, once a decision and purchase is made, the shopper’s subsequent experience with the product and brand becomes part of their background exposure, ready for the cycle to start again.
We identified a set of mental shortcuts and rules of thumb that people typically employ while moving through the messy middle. In the course of validating these findings we ran observational studies and simulated shopping experiments across multiple categories in over 20 countries across the globe. This process revealed a powerful set of common principles that illuminate how shoppers navigate the tangled web between trigger and purchase before ultimately deciding what to buy.
Inspired by our research, we ultimately recommended three key strategies for marketers operating in the messy middle:
**New developments in the messy middle **
In times of economic uncertainty, consumers are forced to do more with less, to search harder for value, and be more vigilant with the household budget. And marketers now face a similar challenge, often working under budget pressures while being tasked with improving (and proving) ROI to deliver profitable growth. In this context, understanding more about how people make decisions could offer a critical competitive advantage. Our insights are equally applicable to established and challenger brands, equipping marketers with ideas and inspiration so they can help shoppers navigate and exit the messy middle. And in the process make their brand and product more likely to be chosen.
A new generation of advertising tools and solutions, an increasing number of them powered by artificial intelligence (AI), promise to make implementation and scaling much easier. In the context of digital marketing, AI will allow brands to anticipate individual consumer needs, enabling them to better connect new customers with relevant content, across channels, and in real time. But it’s important to remember that while AI will be an invaluable partner, it isn’t a replacement for marketers’ knowledge and experience. What will continue to set great marketing apart is the human ingenuity, insight, and intelligence behind it.
This new report focuses once more on insights into the messy middle of purchase decision-making: the space between trigger and purchase. This may make it a richer source of insight for the performance marketer than the brand marketer. But that isn’t to suggest that brands aren’t crucially important to decision-making. Our research shows that leading brands are able to retain a meaningful share of consumer preference even when real-world or invented competitor brands offer vastly superior propositions. In other words, brand continues to be one of the strongest heuristics impacting consumer choice.
There are many routes through the messy middle and each one is different. But while the combination of exposure, trigger, and path is unique to each shopper, our research shows that there are important commonalities in how people search for information, assess competing propositions, build confidence about a product, and ultimately choose where they are going to make a purchase.
The role of marketing in the messy middle then becomes a story about reaching people where they are and boosting their confidence. It’s about being present and having broad coverage to maximise customer connections across as many relevant opportunities as possible, using creativity to build brilliant assets that help close the gap between trigger and purchase, and crafting compelling propositions that influence the products consumers choose to buy and where they buy them.
In our original report we introduced the notion of “supercharging”, by which we meant boosting a proposition with insights derived from behavioural science. In this report, we illustrate that by also “supercharging” their Search results, their owned content, and their presence at points of sale (the places consumers make purchases), marketers can improve ROI and growth, and make a strong case for increased investment.
In 2020 we published a piece of research called Decoding Decisions: Making sense of the messy middle that helped explain how shoppers navigate the complexity of the web — or the “messy middle” as we called it. We started out by exploring “internet street”: online shopping reimagined as a digital high street, with every storefront, every product, and every point of view and opinion immediately at your fingertips. Over the course of detailed literature reviews and simulated shopping experiments, we became more familiar with the behavioural science underlying our decision-making, eventually proposing a model formed around two closely related loops: exploration — an expansive mindset; and evaluation — a reductive mindset.
The reason for grounding our research in behavioural science was simple: people were foraging for information long before the internet existed, and long before there were streets. Many of the mental shortcuts our ancestors used when searching for their next reliable source of food turn out to be the same as those we now apply when figuring out where to buy our next pair of trainers. Abundant choice and limitless information have made both physical and digital environments “messier”, but the cognitive tools we use to navigate them have endured.
Since publication, we’ve received a lot of encouraging feedback from marketers and a lot of follow-up questions. In particular, people want to know how to apply behavioural science in their real-world campaigns and properties. Brands want to understand more about how media and technology can help them show up across all the touchpoints of the messy middle, how behavioural science can inform their content and creative, and how product and retailer brands interact. And they also want to know how these insights can be put to work at scale, so that every customer interaction is enriched and improved by an appreciation of how and why people make the purchase decisions they do.
To answer these questions — and more — we set about simulating three specific environments: Search, content, and online points of sale. We chose these three spaces because they represent places where marketers have a significant degree of control, and therefore the ability to experiment, iterate, and try new things.
As in our original research, our insights are derived from a combination of literature reviews, observational studies, and rigorous survey-based experiments. And once again, we’ve partnered with behavioural science experts The Behavioural Architects to validate and inform our work.
If you’re already familiar with our original research, you can skip to the next chapter. But if you’re new to the messy middle, you can find a quick recap below.
**Revisiting the messy middle **
The messy middle is a complicated place. An environment of abundant choice and limitless information. And it’s getting more complex every year as people are introduced to new modes of communication, new means of finding information, new forms of entertainment and expression, and — of course — new products and services to buy and new ways to buy them.
Shoppers are pretty complicated too. What they want can be a moving target, with intent to buy one product often ending with the purchase of something completely different. And all of this is governed by motivations that are hard to explore without the conscious mind inventing postrationalisations.
In our model, the messy middle sits between the twin poles of trigger and purchase, and against a backdrop of exposure which represents all of the existing perceptions and feelings a shopper has about the brands, retailers, and products in a category.
We codified the messy middle as two looping mindsets: exploration and evaluation. Shoppers can cycle between these mindsets as many times as they need or want, exploring available products and brands before evaluating the suitability of a smaller set of choices.
If none of those products or offers turns out to be quite right, they simply seek more information and options. And if a purchase is habitual or impulsive, they might skip the messy middle altogether. Finally, once a decision and purchase is made, the shopper’s subsequent experience with the product and brand becomes part of their background exposure, ready for the cycle to start again.
We identified a set of mental shortcuts and rules of thumb that people typically employ while moving through the messy middle. In the course of validating these findings we ran observational studies and simulated shopping experiments across multiple categories in over 20 countries across the globe. This process revealed a powerful set of common principles that illuminate how shoppers navigate the tangled web between trigger and purchase before ultimately deciding what to buy.
Inspired by our research, we ultimately recommended three key strategies for marketers operating in the messy middle:
**New developments in the messy middle **
In times of economic uncertainty, consumers are forced to do more with less, to search harder for value, and be more vigilant with the household budget. And marketers now face a similar challenge, often working under budget pressures while being tasked with improving (and proving) ROI to deliver profitable growth. In this context, understanding more about how people make decisions could offer a critical competitive advantage. Our insights are equally applicable to established and challenger brands, equipping marketers with ideas and inspiration so they can help shoppers navigate and exit the messy middle. And in the process make their brand and product more likely to be chosen.
A new generation of advertising tools and solutions, an increasing number of them powered by artificial intelligence (AI), promise to make implementation and scaling much easier. In the context of digital marketing, AI will allow brands to anticipate individual consumer needs, enabling them to better connect new customers with relevant content, across channels, and in real time. But it’s important to remember that while AI will be an invaluable partner, it isn’t a replacement for marketers’ knowledge and experience. What will continue to set great marketing apart is the human ingenuity, insight, and intelligence behind it.
This new report focuses once more on insights into the messy middle of purchase decision-making: the space between trigger and purchase. This may make it a richer source of insight for the performance marketer than the brand marketer. But that isn’t to suggest that brands aren’t crucially important to decision-making. Our research shows that leading brands are able to retain a meaningful share of consumer preference even when real-world or invented competitor brands offer vastly superior propositions. In other words, brand continues to be one of the strongest heuristics impacting consumer choice.
There are many routes through the messy middle and each one is different. But while the combination of exposure, trigger, and path is unique to each shopper, our research shows that there are important commonalities in how people search for information, assess competing propositions, build confidence about a product, and ultimately choose where they are going to make a purchase.
The role of marketing in the messy middle then becomes a story about reaching people where they are and boosting their confidence. It’s about being present and having broad coverage to maximise customer connections across as many relevant opportunities as possible, using creativity to build brilliant assets that help close the gap between trigger and purchase, and crafting compelling propositions that influence the products consumers choose to buy and where they buy them.
In our original report we introduced the notion of “supercharging”, by which we meant boosting a proposition with insights derived from behavioural science. In this report, we illustrate that by also “supercharging” their Search results, their owned content, and their presence at points of sale (the places consumers make purchases), marketers can improve ROI and growth, and make a strong case for increased investment.
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