Consumer Self-Determination

What it is

Self-determination theory, developed by Edward Deci and Richard Ryan, holds that people have three basic psychological needs: competence, autonomy and relatedness. Autonomy is the sense that a choice was your own. Consumer self-determination applies that idea to the relationship between a customer and a company.

Dholakia's longitudinal field studies, published in the Journal of Marketing Research, separated customers who had joined a firm on their own initiative from those the firm had induced to join. The self-determined customers showed more relational behaviour and reported more motivation to buy.

In effect

The same marketing action landed differently on the two groups. A reminder coupon, which customers read as controlling, had negative effects on the self-determined customers. Automatic enrolment in a rewards programme, which they read as recognition of their value to the firm, had positive effects. Customers who had been induced to join were less influenced by either.

For a firm, the implication is that customers who chose it freely are sensitive to being steered and responsive to being recognised. Nir Eyal's Hooked describes a similar reaction in product design, in the backlash when Quora introduced a feature that users experienced as imposed.

What it does not say

Consumer self-determination does not say that firms should never prompt customers. Dholakia's finding concerns prompts that customers read as controlling, and it applies most strongly to those who joined by choice.

The evidence is also limited in scope. The 2006 studies are field data from particular firms, and the marketing literature applying self-determination theory is broad but uneven. Of the three needs, autonomy has some of the clearest commercial evidence, and relatedness the least.

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