Behavioral Analysis and Norms Diagnostic (BAND) Tool
MSA’s innovative tool for social norms assessment and research.
The Behavioral Analysis and Norms Diagnostic (BAND) Tool helps companies and organizations to identify and understand the social norms that shape economic behavior. BAND makes it simple to collect, digest and use customer feedback to prioritize products and processes that increase access, usage and customer satisfaction. We designed BAND to help private businesses and development organizations leverage MSA’s decades of insights from social norms diagnostics and applying systemic change assessments in complex contexts. BAND can help you to:
- Use the voice of your customers to identify, understand and drive desired changes in customer and institutional behaviors and norms.
- Prioritize investments and design high-impact products, services and business models targeting the most influential social norms. During the design stage, BAND can help you to determine how to effectively address challenges and enhance design of products, services and activities.
- Generate actionable insights throughout your process on the social norms that inform your customers’ behaviors, wants and needs. BAND helps you to understand the key social norms influencing how people understand and interact with your institution. BAND can also unpack the norms that drive behavior within your institution to drive organizational change.
Behavioral Analysis and Norms Diagnostic (BAND) Tool
BAND comprises of five phases (outlined below) that help teams to quickly identify behaviors, behavioral drivers, products and services as well as key behavioral influencers (i.e. potential partners) to create sustainable impact over time:
BAND in Action
MSA has applied the BAND tool across various sectors with companies and donors in Egypt, Palestine, Mozambique, Tanzania, Peru, Kenya, India, Bangladesh, Niger and Jordan. Our clients and partners have used BAND to deliver impactful change in sectors such as agriculture, construction and housing, retail, finance, workforce development and organizational change and business environment reform, among others.
For example, we rigorously applied and adapted the BAND tool when working with Habitat for Humanity’s Terwilliger Center for Innovation in Shelter. MSA used BAND in a design study across Peru, Kenya and India to understand how social norms affect market players’ design and purchasing decisions in the low-income housing market, and how these social norms constrain low-income households from making more optimal housing decisions to better their living conditions. The research outputs have allowed the Center to engage more successfully with the private sector on their product and service offerings; design activities that address deeply embedded social norms and market constraints; and recognize priority areas that had previously been unseen.
