I was listening to a recent HBR IdeaCast titled, Strange-But-True Insights that was an amazing collection of groundbreaking research across industries and situations. One piece of research by Leif D. Nelson, a Hass School of Business professor at Berkeley, was particularly fascinating as it challenged a commonly held assumption in human behavior. Professor Nelson has spent the past few years looking into “consumer adaptation” which deals with how we react to certain stimuli including marketing messaging. One of his earlier works was titled, Interrupted Consumption: Adaptation and the Disruption of the Hedonic Experience. Not surprisingly in this study, he and fellow researchers, found that people tend to choose breaks in negative experiences and avoid breaks in positive ones.
 
Basically, we humans naturally attempt to intensify our positive experiences and mitigate the negative – really no big surprise. However, Nelson and colleagues argue that “consumers should insert breaks into positive experiences, but not in negative ones”. They explain this counterintuitive rationale with the following, “we argue that consumers will often fail to anticipate adaptation and the intensifying effect of breaks. We propose that consumers instead assume that breaks actually weaken the intensity of the experience. In other words, we argue that consumer’s preferences for breaking up experiences are often in direct opposition to the strategies that would maximize their enjoyment or minimize their suffering.”
 
In simple terms, they are saying – insert breaks into positive experiences because each ‘start-up’ of that experience actually mirrors and intensifies the original emotions and impact. These are positive adaptations. Further, we should as people and consumers not insert breaks in negative experiences as it just causes us to relive it over and over rather that dealing with it directly and in total.

Where Nelson and his colleagues work really engages is in a piece published in the Journal of Consumer Research in January, 2009 (Download). The essay is titled, Enhancing the Television-Viewing Experience Through Commercial Interruptions. Here is a verbatim summary whose insights are very counterintuitive:
 
“Consumers prefer to watch television programs without commercials. Yet, in spite of most consumers’ extensive experience with watching television, we propose that commercial interruptions can actually improve the television-viewing experience. Although consumers do not foresee it, their enjoyment diminishes over time. Commercial interruptions can disrupt this adaptation process and restore the intensity of consumers’ enjoyment. Six studies demonstrate that, although people prefer to avoid commercial interruptions, these interruptions actually made the programs more enjoyable (study 1), regardless of the quality of the commercial (study 2), even when controlling for the mere presence of the ads (study 3), and regardless of the nature of the interruption (study 4). However, this effect was eliminated for people who are less likely to adapt (study 5), and for programs that do not lead to adaptation (study 6), confirming the disruption of adaptation account and identifying crucial boundaries for the effect.”
 
Lots of academic language, I know. But in short, the authors are saying that consumers actually benefit by changes that challenge our adaptation processes so we are more stimulated. In effect, commercials break a pattern that contributes to overall pleasure and value of television-viewing. While I contend that consumers would prefer to watch an informative, entertaining and quality advertisement over one that does not deliver the same value, I cannot dispute Nelson and colleagues’ primary finding regarding the benefits of interruption. Very cool stuff and worthy of further research.

Jeff Swystun
Chief Communications Officer
DDB Worldwide

Posted on August 18, 2010 10:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)