Part Three of our Consumer Energy Information research, Talking to consumers about energy bill reduction, details findings from the qualitative phase of a larger research project exploring the best way to communicate with energy consumers about bill reduction and energy-saving strategies.
This qualitative research was designed to do three things:
1) test hypotheses developed through previous research with households and small businesses
2) provide a deeper understanding of the beliefs, attitudes and behaviours of identified audience segments, and
3) test messaging designed to drive consumer action on energy-saving practices.
We conducted the research with households (informed by online discussion forums involving 120 household participants), and small businesses (informed by online discussion forums with 47 small business participants).
Key findings
- Households want to hear how they can control their costs through reducing their use. But they also want to know what drives their energy costs (i.e. certainty). From a message framing perspective, we recommend combining ‘control’ and ‘certainty’.
- Small business owners are time-poor. They need simple, clear, and easily accessible information about measures to reduce their energy bills.
- Household consumers want short, to the point messages, and they want to hear about driving environmental impact (although cost remains the big driver for action). The phrase "a small change can make a big difference" resonated across all household audience groups.
- For small business owners to take action, energy-saving measures must have a clear return on investment (ROI) and cost-saving outcome.
The research also provides segmentation models for household and small business energy consumers:
- Household energy consumer audience segments: What next (18%), Make it easy (20%), Don't leave us behind (23%), Why bother (16%) and Not a problem (23%).
- Small business energy consumer audience segments: Can't do much (32%), Costs too much (43%) and Doing everything possible (25%).
