It looks likely that Behavioural Economics is going to be the flavour of 2012.

Books on BE are bestsellers, agencies are being established with BE at their core, and market researchers have started pleading with the industry to grasp the opportunity it presents. 

Here is a useful article that outlines some of the reasons why it will change what we offer: better questions, group behaviour, ‘non’-decisions, lab experiments and possibilities. There is a debate about how we can make this too complicated and technical but the results of behavioural experiments produce such immediate wow moments, the benefits are obvious. I love this one from Kahneman’s Thnking, Fast and Slow, neatly summarised in this review article:

In an experiment designed to test the "anchoring effect", highly experienced judges were given a description of a shoplifting offence. They were then "anchored" to different numbers by being asked to roll a pair of dice that had been secretly loaded to produce only two totals – three or nine. Finally, they were asked whether the prison sentence for the shoplifting offence should be greater or fewer, in months, than the total showing on the dice. Normally the judges would have made extremely similar judgments, but those who had just rolled nine proposed an average of eight months while those who had rolled three proposed an average of only five months. All were unaware of the anchoring effect.

I like how this article starts – it is frustrating to hear these ideas that researchers have known for decades being positioned as revolutionary: that people are ignorant of their selves, they don’t make rational decisions even though they like to think they do, they are heavily influenced by others and how you ask a question will change the answer you get.  But we need to start talking in plain English about how Behavioural Economics can be used.

‘Anchoring effect’ is intuitive but ‘disposition effect’ just means that people prefer winning to losing and try getting your head around ‘Prospect theory’. 

It's likely that my prediction is influenced by all the buzz around the concept but - to be rational for a moment - BE plays to market researchers strengths and it gives us a solid, credible framework.