Navigating Consumer Trust, Frictions, and Behavior

For the Consumer Reports Capstone team, this past sprint has been all about generative research and synthesis. Since we returned from the kick-off meeting with the Consumer Reports (CR) team at their New York headquarters, we have dug deeper into CR as a firm, their goals and the needs of their stakeholders, their main one being — the consumers.

Fig. 1 Affinity Mapping: Synthesizing Secondary Research Findings and Kick-Off Meeting Notes

Big Picture Themes and Concepts

Upon our return, we conducted a Walk the Wall and Affinity Mapping session to synthesize our secondary research and the information we gained from our session with the CR team. From these exercises, we distilled our project down to some big themes and concepts that we need to validate and keep in mind as we move forward —

1.The trust consumers place in a product or service is shaped by two key factors: authority bias and social proof.
Through our secondary research and discussions with the CR team, it became evident that the advent of the Internet and its interactive platforms has triggered a cultural and generational shift. This shift has diminished the significance of traditional institutional authorities such as Consumer Reports, while concurrently elevating the impact and significance of social influencers and individual consumers who share their reviews and recommendations online.

This finding led us to the following How Might We (HMW) statement: How might we find balance between CR’s existing institutional objectivity and the personability of social proof to maximize influence and establish trust?
This is a delicate balance that we will need to strike as we design our product/service.

Whilst exploring consumer trust, we conducted a bodystorming activity and synthesized our findings in a conceptual model we called, “The Consumer Journey of Trust” (Fig. 2). The model shows that there are 3 touchpoints in the consumer journey where trust is required:

Touchpoint 1: Choosing Information Source
Trust is required when choosing what information source to go to pre and post purchase of a product. Consumers need to trust CR to choose it as their primary source of information over indirect competitors like Amazon or direct competitors like Wirecutter.

Touchpoint 2: Trusting Information Provided
Consumers need to trust the information that the CR product provides

Touchpoint 3: Trusting Action
Consumers need to trust the CR agent to act on their behalf

We realized that consumers progressively relinquish more power to CR as they navigate this journey, highlighting the critical importance of trust at each touchpoint.

Fig. 2 The Consumer Journey of Trust (Consumer Reports vs Amazon)

2. Consumers encounter added friction when accessing a CR agent and the service it provides
Upon analyzing the consumer journey of CR in comparison to Amazon, we identified a higher level of friction for consumers in the CR process as opposed to the smoother experience with Amazon. This is primarily due to the fact that Amazon not only sells products but also provides information on them to consumers through reviews and product descriptions directly on its platform. This accessibility makes it more convenient for consumers to access information from the Amazon product page. In contrast, CR introduces an additional point of friction, as consumers cannot directly make purchases on the CR platform; they must leave the Amazon environment to gather information from CR.

This presents an opportunity for us: we must work towards reducing the existing frictions that exist before, during, and after the purchase of a product in our design solution.

Fig. 3 A Different Conceptual Model Synthesizing Friction in the CR Consumer Journey

Research Plan and Method Map

After discussing these high level concepts and considerations, we created a research plan to move away from the abstract and ground our project in reality. The following method map summarizes the first phase of our generative research. We plan to gain insights on these questions by Spring break.

Fig. 4 Method Map for Research Phase I

Guerrilla Research Findings

Over the weekend, we initiated preliminary guerrilla research to address specific inquiries outlined in our Method Map. Through an AEIOU observation exercise and interactions with 13 individuals at various locations (Apple store Genius Bar, Bank ATM, T-Mobile store, Target), we identified key findings:

1. Consumers generally don’t proactively review privacy policies or terms of use until an issue arises. They only seek information when there is a problem.
   Opportunity: Is there a way to inform consumers of their rights before problems occur?
2. This tendency results in consumers approaching businesses with numerous unique/edge-case scenarios that require human intervention.
3. Individuals express a preference for human interactions over interactions with bots, citing efficiency and a desire for “human connection.”
4. Consumers find accessing terms and services challenging due to their “non-negotiable,” “overly technical,” and “dense” nature, leading to a sense of helplessness or apathy.
   Opportunity: How do we make people care? Could meeting them at the moment help with this?
5. As a result, consumers often rely on word of mouth and a company’s reputation as an alternative to reading terms and policies (“I’ve heard this blender company has a great warranty policy” “I looked at a Reddit/forum to see what other people are saying”).
   Opportunity: Can we gather and validate common complaints, obscure policy ramifications and edge-case scenarios through crowd-sourcing, and then present this curated information to consumers in their pre- and post-product purchase journey?
6. Despite this, consumers harbor implicit fears about the implications of agreeing to terms when signing up for a service or purchasing a product (“I should be reading the terms, but I don’t,” “What if I am signing away my life when I press agree”).
7. Interestingly, certain consumers mentioned that they actively read the terms and policies of airline companies. We assume that this behavior stems from the nature of flights as expensive and high-stakes purchases with frequent possibilities of complications. In such instances, reviewing terms and policies may help consumers secure substantial benefits. This assumption has led us to formulate a new hypothesis: Consumers are inclined to invest time and cognitive effort when the potential for significant rewards exists. Therefore, incentives play a crucial role.

Next Steps

In the upcoming sprint, our goal is to deepen our understanding of the questions, findings, and opportunity areas we identified in our preliminary round of research. We plan to conduct semi-structured interviews, directed storytelling sessions, and heuristic evaluations, with a particular focus on examining existing terms and policy pages. A specific evaluation of policy pages of airline companies would be interesting to explore in our next sprint.

(note: The work and knowledge gained from this project are only intended to be applicable to the company and context involved and there is no suggestion or indication that it may be useful or applicable to others. This project is not intended to contribute to generalizable knowledge and is not human subjects research.)