Behavioural Science at Walnut Unlimited
The UCL BIS society hosted a seminar with two amazing speakers working at Walnut UNLIMITED.
Who is Walnut Unlimited?
Walnut UNLIMITED is known as “The human understanding agency“. This
essentially means the agency specialises in market research, providing valuable insight for a diverse clientele. Walnut employs market research approaches to learn about people’s thoughts and feelings, as well as understanding the mechanisms which underlie these processes. For example, the agency might be approached by a client that wants to launch a new product and is interested in knowing how to ensure its success and their consumers’ engagement. The agency then helps the client gain a genuine competitive advantage through the application of their Behavioural Science methodology, rooted in learnings adapted from the academic study of human decision making.
Apart from conducting social research within the public sector, Walnut has a truly broad selection of clients, including those based in retail, technology, and finance, as well as brands dealing with fast-moving consumer goods. The main difference between the work of Walnut and academic research is that the agency’s research employs a more commercially-focused approach. This approach blends data science, neuroscience and behavioural science to allow their clients to make better-informed business decisions grounded in consumer insight.
The types of research methods the company makes use of include the traditional ones taught at university level, such as polls, quant surveys, focus groups or in-depth interviews. In addition to these, Walnut also employs other unique and exciting methods that are biometric and psychological, making use of facial coding, reaction time testing or skin galvanic responses. To find the right mix of subjects for research, Walnut has a recruitment team able to construct groups that fit the unique requirements of different projects.
What did we talk about at the seminar?
An interesting point the speakers, Becky Miles (Research Director) and Alex
Baines (Senior Research Executive) raised during the talk was about a major
challenge they face within their work, which is the process of guiding choices in an ethical way. When Walnut’s researchers work with their clients, an ethical dilemma often arises due to two clashing ideas that guide their work. In the seminar, Becky and Alex described this issue through the idea of a chart with two axes — one axis represents the amount of choice given to members of the public or consumers in general. For example, if a person is given too much freedom to make a choice, they might be overwhelmed by the amount of information they are expected to comprehend while on the other hand, restricting them too much might cause them to feel like their autonomy is taken away, leading them to feel that they do not have an option they truly want to go for. The other axis encompasses the space that is between the interests of the client they are working for and their consumers’ interests. While in the public sector these interests are usually aligned, there is often an issue of these goals opposing one another when working with clients from the private sector. The best way to guide people’s decisions is therefore not always clear and Walnut strives actively to reach an equilibrium between these four points.
Becky and Alex proposed that the ideal behavioural science approach to solving this issue is Libertarian Paternalism. This term encompasses the idea that when a person is guiding someone else’s decision, they want to offer them as much liberty as possible while simultaneously framing choices such that outcomes align with their best interests — essentially acting like a parent that has their child’s best interests in mind. Through this approach, clients are given a reasonable range of choices while the person guiding their decisions nudges them towards what will benefit them the most.
Following this, another interesting point raised within the seminar was about the so-called enemy of applying behavioural science ethically, which is Sludge. This occurs when strategies based on behavioural science are exploited in order to covertly guide people to act against their own best interests. Many people realise the great implications behavioural science can hold for humans as a whole, and while these are generally positive, awareness should still be spread about the ways in which it can be misused so that people can place trust in companies such as Walnut to use behavioural science for their own benefit and prosperity. The seminar was incredibly valuable in highlighting the great potential behavioural science has in our lives while stressing the importance of using it in an efficient and ethical way. Interestingly, Becky and Alex stressed that not a lot of people in
market research knows what behavioural science is, and when used in discussions the term is generally “thrown around“ as a buzzword, which is why talking about the field and its far-reaching application should be one of the main items on our agendas.
We thank Becky and Alex for joining us and for the informative and thought-
provoking seminar that they’ve given.
Read about Becky and Alex:
Becky Miles is an experienced Research Director at Walnut and works primarily with clients in the retail sector. She has worked with some of the largest retail brands in the UK and has extensive experience in unpicking the customer journey, from fashion to grocery to luxury products. She loves to get under the skin of how consumers behave and feel through a combination of research methodologies, blending behavioural science techniques with more traditional research approaches to deliver impactful insight.
Alex Baines has worked at Walnut for three years now, as a market researcher specialising in behavioural science. Her interest in this area came about following a BSc in Experimental Psychology, and an MSc in Strategic Marketing, both of which lent themselves well to studying human decision making in a commercial context. She has worked with many clients, in different sectors and across various methodologies, but is particularly passionate about the relevance of human behaviour in resolving client challenges.
