Checking the small print: an ethnographic approach

Have you noticed an increase in the price of your broadband or mobile phone contract? Did you read the small print when you took out the contract?  If you didn’t, our research for Ofcom about in-contract price rises research suggests that you are not alone.

Although we all like to think we behave rationally, our behaviour is influenced by a variety of cognitive biases and mental shortcuts. This can make researching people’s behaviour challenging (as discussed in our previous blog here). When we received a brief from Ofcom wanting to explore consumer journeys in relation to mobile and broadband contracts, and to understand the extent to which people took into account inflation-linked in-contract price rise terms in their decision making, we therefore knew that we couldn’t rely purely on what people told us they did. We needed to explore decision-making behaviour in a way that replicated as far as possible the real life context in which people conduct their research.

We did this by asking people to complete individual exercises related to choosing contracts, before taking part in focus groups where we discussed these price rise terms.

We chose a digital ethnographic approach to explore customer journeys: we asked people to record their screens as they went through the process of choosing a mobile or broadband contract, and to talk us through their thoughts as they did so. We wanted to see whether or not people commented on, or even noticed the small print in relation to in-contract price rises (spoiler alert, they did not!), rather than ask them outright whether they were a factor in decision making. When we later convened participants in discussion groups, we could refer back to people’s videos. This gave them ‘permission’ to acknowledge inconsistencies, irrational aspects, and other thought processes that they may have been reluctant to admit to in case they undermined how they (and their decisions) were perceived, had we started off by asking them to explain their decision making processes and simply asked how and when in-contract price rises were factored in.

This research study confirmed to us the importance of ensuring that we don’t always take what people say at face value, especially when it comes to behaviour. We will always endeavour to design approaches that allow us to explore what people actually do, not just what they say they do.

If you want find out more about the research you can read the full report here.