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Unlock the Drivers Behind Every Purchase
Revealing What Matters Most to Consumers – Purchase Decision Hierarchy
Consumers make quick, often subconscious decisions about which product to choose. If your brand doesn’t align with what truly matters to them you risk losing their attention and their purchase. Misjudging these priorities can lead to wasted resources, irrelevant messaging, or poorly positioned products that fail to connect.
Our Purchase Decision Hierarchy (PDH) combines behavioural science and implicit testing to uncover what truly drives consumer choice, not just what people claim matters.
Clarity on What Really Matters
Understanding what drives consumer choice unlocks sharper positioning and smarter communication.
Mindlab’s Purchase Decision Hierarchy (PDH) maps how people weigh priorities, from instant, emotional reactions to rational evaluation, revealing the mix of drivers that influence every purchase.
Armed with this insight, you can focus on the messages and features that truly move consumers to choose you.
What the PDH unlocks
Our implicit testing approach reveals the key trade-offs, values, and motivations shaping real purchase decisions:
Key Purchase Drivers
Identifies the attributes consumers prioritise most, whether intuitively (quick, gut-driven choices) or after thoughtful consideration.
Trade-Offs and Preferences
Reveals which attributes consumers are willing to compromise on and which are non-negotiable, helping tailor brand messaging to real consumer needs.
Segmented Insights
Breaks down preferences across different consumer groups, revealing unique segment-specific drivers that support targeted positioning and product development.
To turn these priorities into messages that truly land, our Optimising Messaging solution builds on PDH to identify what will resonate. And when you want to understand the motivations driving these choices, we can add qualitative depth via chatbot conversations or traditional interviews.
How Colgate moved beyond surface-level insight with PDH:
Colgate had long relied on traditional self-reported methods to create their Purchase Decision Hierarchies (PDHs), which mapped the factors driving consumer choices.
However, over time, it became clear these methods weren’t capturing the complexities of real behaviour. Insights were often shallow or overly simplistic, failing to explain the nuances behind why people made their decisions.
The Challenge
Frustrated with this gap, Colgate approached us with a clear need: they wanted a methodology that could go beyond what people said to uncover what truly drove their choices. It wasn’t just about understanding the “what”; it was about getting to the “why.”
The Result
To address this, we explored innovative methods that reflected actual behaviour, eventually landing on a more dynamic, interactive approach that better mirrored the complexities of decision-making in the real world.
Mindlab have been a great sustainability research partner to us this year, we’ve been on a rich and insightful learning journey together. The fact that we’ve just embarked on a second-round study is testament to how valuable this work has been. Thank you Mindlab!
Bianca Woolley | Global Marketing Sustainability Lead | Innovation | Diageo
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