Did you ever have an imaginary friend? If so, you already have a leg up on this week’s episode. Chances are you created a mental model of your imaginary friend and could predict with 100 percent accuracy how they might react to a given situation.

A mental model is a detailed creation of an imaginary customer that helps you determine how a real-life customer might react to a given situation. However, unlike the imaginary friend, science and data develop the imaginary customer, not creativity.

As we conclude the Masterclass Series about the intricate world of Customer Experiences and the myriad factors that shape customer behavior from a behavioral science perspective, today’s episode pulls everything together. We discuss why you should create mental models of imaginary customers to understand why your real-life customers do what they do.

Traditionally, advertising professionals crafted detailed fictional personas, like an imaginary friend from childhood. Then, they targeted their messages to these fictional customers to hone their brand messages. Today, marketers continue this practice by segmenting customers into groups with specific characteristics, creating a persona that represents the group, and tailoring messages for each persona.

AI presents an intriguing opportunity to enhance this approach, enabling AI to predict customer responses by accurately simulating real-world behavior. This practical application holds immense promise.

However, relying solely on intuition is inadequate for constructing precise mental models. A wealth of data is necessary to uncover the underlying motivations and psychological triggers of customer behavior.

Understanding the context in which customers make decisions is another critical element of creating effective mental models. Factors such as current emotions, memories of past experiences, and the situational context can significantly influence decision-making. Also, we discuss how Daniel Kahneman’s two-system model from "Thinking, Fast and Slow" explains the interplay between rational and intuitive decision-making processes.

This final installment of our Masterclass Series underscores the significance of customer personas or mental models in comprehending and anticipating customer reactions to diverse marketing strategies. Our discussion emphasizes the criticality of incorporating comprehensive data into these models to ensure accurate predictions of customer reactions, particularly in the context of incentives. The discussion also highlights the challenges of integrating such data into AI models.

In this episode, you will also learn:

• The historical development of customer personas in advertising

• The potential future role of AI in creating and predicting customer personas

• The limitations of relying solely on intuition for customer behavior predictions

• The significance of memories and emotional drivers in customer decision-making

• Why nutrition labels did little to encourage obese people to make better food choices

• The impact of situational context on customer choices