How we used behavioural economics to help RBS understand the consumer buying journey

The puzzle

The Royal Bank of Scotland needed to take its understanding of consumer buying decisions to another level.

• How could they avoid any assumptions that would cloud their thinking?
• How could they get the deepest possible understanding?

The pieces

As part of an extensive buying journey project, we asked 148 consumers to keep an online diary for up to 6 months.

• Consumers recorded their efforts to decide on a variety of financial products and providers.
• The diaries revealed contradictions and changes of direction that consumers were often unaware of.
• Post-diary interviews allowed us to explore this apparently irrational behaviour.

The picture

Our analysis revealed multiple biases across a range of financial services product categories.

• The biases uncovered included regret aversion, status quo bias and mental accounting.
• To identify strategies to help change behaviour, we ran co-creation workshops with the bank’s teams.
• We devised strategies to tackle key issues with our “Bypass/ Leverage/ Tackle” (BLT) approach.