Expectations change how the same experience feels.
More quotes“What mattered when you chose?”
“Price, returns and friendly service.”
“What did you pay last year?”
Silence.
The respondent may be entirely sincere. Their answer reveals the story they can tell about choosing, which may differ from the influences operating at the time. Surveys create a demand for reasons. People rarely answer, “No idea; the name looked familiar and the form was short.” They supply respectable criteria, general attitudes or what a sensible consumer ought to value. The researcher converts these into percentages and grants them too much authority.
Ask about the concrete episode instead. What happened immediately before the choice? Which alternatives were visible? What information was checked? What was remembered without prompting? Pair the account with behaviour: actual fees paid, features used, sequence clicked, renewal accepted or cancelled. Behaviour also has limits. A click shows what happened under one set of constraints; it reveals little about motive or a future change. The disagreement between account and action is often the useful result.
A customer may genuinely care about service while choosing on familiarity because no service evidence was available. That suggests a different intervention from accusing them of inconsistency.
The next survey includes their abstract answer and their last actual decision on separate pages. Interviewers compare the two only after both are recorded. The silence following “What did you pay?” remains in the notes rather than being converted into a neutral score.