Motivation Backcasting: Uncovering the Emotional Truth Behind Consumer Decisions
Most customer journeys start with a trigger to purchase. Or do they? We think you need to start with a deeper question: why did they care in the first place?
At Embark, we believe that if you want to understand what drives behaviour – and more importantly, how to change it – you can’t start with behaviour. You have to start with motivation. But motivation doesn’t live in click through responses or in CRM data. It hides in context, in memory, in emotion.
That’s where Motivation Backcasting comes in.
What Is Motivation Backcasting?
It’s our proprietary approach to uncovering why customers make the decisions they do – by guiding them backward from a real, lived experience to the underlying emotional need it fulfilled (or didn’t).
Think of it like this: instead of asking what people want, we ask them to tell us a story. Then we rewind that story – chapter by chapter – until we hit the moment they decided it mattered.
Using one-on-one interviews, we layer in a motivation framework (the 6 Human Needs, developed by Cloé Madanes and Tony Robbins) to help decode the emotional DNA of their decisions. These needs – Certainty, Variety, Recognition, Connection, Growth, and Contribution – help us identify not just what customers are seeking, but why it matters to them personally.
Regressive Storytelling: Mapping the Journey Back to the Moment That Mattered
Here’s how it works in practice.
We ask participants to recall a specific recent experience – a trip, a purchase, an interaction. Something real and tangible. Then, using regressive storytelling techniques, we move back through the experience: what they expected, what they noticed, what they would change.
We’re not just looking for friction points or positive moments. We’re looking for meaning. Because one customer’s frustration with waiting in line might reflect a desire for Certainty, while another’s could reveal a craving for Recognitionor Connection.
This matters. A lot.
Because the same product or service can meet multiple motivations – or none. And the same experience can be felt very differently, depending on what a customer was hoping to get from it.
Why Motivation Alone Changes Everything
Through this approach, we’ve discovered something important: knowing what goes wrong in the customer experience isn’t enough to prevent churn. You also need to know what they hoped for.
For example, in one project, we used Motivation Backcasting to track the full journey of a churned customer – from the trigger that brought them in, to the moment they left. While we identified points where the experience faltered, none of these alone were deal-breakers. The real issue was that their deeper motivation – the emotional outcome they were expecting – was never met.
This is why we start with motivation. It gives context to every moment that follows.
From Motivation to Meaningful Change
Motivation Backcasting doesn’t just give us better insight. It gives us better strategy. It helps:
Identify emotional hooks that resonate in brand and marketing
Pinpoint unmet needs that contribute to dissatisfaction or churn
Reframe the value proposition in a way that aligns with what customers truly want
And most importantly, it brings humanity back into the boardroom. It elevates insight beyond metrics and into meaning.
Why It Works
Because it’s built on the foundation of our core belief: the truth is human ®.
When we stop treating customers as data points and start seeing them as people – with contradictions, tensions, aspirations, and needs – we unlock commercial opportunities that numbers alone can’t see.
Get in touch if you’d like to know which emotional need you brand is fulfilling and how this is impacting their customer experience with you.