Posted
by Jessica Aguilar on Mon, Mar 25, 2019 Hensley Evans co-wrote this
blog post with Jessica Aguilar.
At long last, it has arrived.
No, not your Amazon package—it’s your doctor’s appointment. Whether it’s an
annual exam or an appointment with a specialist that took weeks or months to
secure, appointment anticipation brings about several different feelings and
behaviors for patients.
Above the surface, patients can
rationalize why they feel or behave a certain way, but below the surface, most
of their behaviors are automatic, uncensored and instinctual. The behaviors on
autopilot are known as cognitive biases. It’s important for marketers to
understand which cognitive biases are driving patient behavior so that
marketing efforts are orchestrated as a strategic response to activate or
mitigate each cognitive bias to meet behavioral and business objectives.
We researched cognitive biases
among patients in five global markets to understand key similarities and
differences. One such bias we dug into is confirmation bias, which provides
insight into how our preconceived expectations or preferences influence our
decision-making in new or ambiguous situations. For example, imagine that a
person holds the belief that tall people are athletic. Whenever they encounter
people that are both tall and athletic, they place greater importance on
evidence that supports what they already believe, and discount examples that
don’t.
In our research, we examined
the level of preparedness that patients in the U.S., Canada, U.K., Germany and
Italy typically exhibit when going into a doctor’s appointment and whether this
could be influenced by confirmation bias. Organically, patients in Germany,
Canada and the U.S. have a higher belief in preparedness before an appointment
than the more “laissez-faire” patients in the U.K. and Italy. But, if they
first were asked to write a couple of sentences about why patients should go to
the doctor’s appointment prepared to discuss their medication preferences,
Canadian, American and German patients showed statically significant
increases in their responses about their own behavior - Canadian patients were
5% more likely, U.S. patients were 7% more likely and U.K. patients were 14%
more likely to agree that they should prepare for that discussion with the
doctor. This tells us that these markets are more sensitive to confirmation
bias than Italy and Germany, and if they are provided with preconceived expectations
or preferences, they are inclined to change their beliefs and behavior!
If you’re a marketer in the
U.S., Canada, or U.K., then confirmation bias is active among patients in your
market, and in order to play into this bias you must:
·
Define your brand’s behavioral objectives for
patients. (For example, have patients request a treatment at the doctor’s
office.)
·
Ideate methods to instill preconceived
expectations among patients that reinforce or support the behavior you desire.
(For example, prompt patients to rationalize a treatment choice.)
·
Test messaging, creative and tactical
applications. (For example, provide patients with a doctor discussion guide
template where they input three reasons why they would benefit from a certain
treatment.)
In the end, not all patients or
markets are created equal. For example, if we want to ensure that patients
discuss their medication preferences with their HCPs, we can use confirmation
bias in some markets to influence this behavior, but not in others. Factors
such as prevailing cultural norms may predispose some patients to cognitive
biases. Overall, though, deciphering the cognitive biases that are at play
across markets can help marketers create a global strategy that plays into or
combats patients’ instinctual behaviors and helps them meet their marketing
goals.
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