Behavior Drivers

STEP 1 - QUANTIFY THE BEHAVIOR DRIVERS

It is part of human nature to form an Overall Evaluation of a product, service, or a supplier in general before buying something, accepting a job, or investing in a company's shares:

The ValueMetrix methodology supported by the VMx software - see the Appendix below - quantifies these relationships, weighting the various components against each other. It estimates how changes in impressions, experiences, and alternatives are likely to impact on stakeholders' "Next Time" behavior.

As the impacts typically differ between stakeholder segments, it is essential to collect both survey data and facts per stakeholder segment, as a minimum based on gender and age but preferably also including other relevant background data. This also makes it easier to find the best ways to get a message across to these stakeholders.

The approach is an extension of the macroeconomic methodology originally developed for national Customer Satisfaction indices, today applied in the US, Sweden, and in many other countries.

Here is a short description of what we do to quantify the Behavior Drivers:

Who do you want to influence?

The first step is to define the stakeholder category that you want to influence...

What is their Desired Behavior?

... then you need to decide which behavior you want to influence with explicit focus on "Next Time", what the stakeholders preferred previous time must not be the focus when evaluating the Value of Actions ...

What could be their Behavior Drivers?

... and list all the potential drivers of the Desired Behavior, preferably by interviewing face-to-face representatives from the selected stakeholder
category...

Organize a tentative Analysis Structure

... to facilitate building a good questionnaire, use the input from the stakeholder interviews plus your own experience to draw a tentative analysis structure and draft the questions that you think would catch the stakeholders' attitudes correctly...

Build a questionnaire

... then specify in detail the questions that you want to use in the questionnaire but don't include too many questions - respondents may be reluctant to answer more than just those questions that they really care about themselves, otherwise they may quit as soon as they feel that the questions don't concern them personally...

Prepare the questions in local language plus in English

Always prepare the questionnaire both in the local language plus in English to facilitate discussions about the results with colleagues and supporting consultants. The ValueMetrix software is built to directly generate output in either language. We have examples in our files in the eight languages symbolically described with these eight flags!

Collect the survey data

... once the questionnaire has been finalized, use the data collection firm of your preference - ValueMetrix' analytical software can apply predefined macros in such a way that the data are converted into the format that the VMx software has been built to handle...

Do the Cause-and-Effect analyses

... when you have responses, the VMx software uses factor analysis to confirm that the assumptions about the Behavior Drivers are correct and then it uses structural equations and so called Partial Least Squares (PLS) for the optimization of the results to arrive at scores and the impacts of score changes that are as reliable and correct as possible...

Draw the Analysis Structure to illustrate the Behavior Drivers

When the analysis is ready, the VMx software can generate many types of output, such as draw the structure and facilitate the interpretation using colors and the width of the arrows to show the strength of the Behavior Drivers for the selected stakeholder segment.