The Global Association of Applied Behavioural Scientists

Philipp Spreer

Thilo Pfrang

Founder & CEO, behamics

2023 OVERALL WINNERS

2023 Overall Winning Entry

  • If you had to summarise your submission into a “TL;DR” what would you say (use one or two sentences)?

    Avoiding returns is a triple-win case: retailers, customers and the environment benefit in equal measure. With BE and AI, we create dynamic interventions that effectively avoid millions of returns at the moment of decision.

  • What distinguished your entry from the rest of your work in your view?

    The combination of technology and BE to solve a problem of fundamental importance is something we find particularly exciting.  

  • Did your win change anything for you?

    The teams at behamics and elaboratum are working very hard on the spearhead of what is possible. The award was therefore an extremely positive reinforcement for our work. Also, our customers can now assess our level of ambition even better. 

  • What real-world changes have been implemented as a result of your research? Are you seeing the results replicated at a larger scale?

    We have attracted a number of new e-commerce customers who now use our findings every day to avoid returns that would otherwise have produced massive costs and ecological disadvantages.

  • Looking back at your winning submissions now, is there anything additional that you'd like people to know about why it stands out to you, or why the research was/is important to you?

    It was only later that we suddenly realised that we had conducted the world's largest returns experiment and built perhaps the most important data set on the real volume of returns.

  • What advice would you give to others who might take inspiration from your entry and plan their own interventions?

    Customer behavior is not an exact science. The leverage lies in a deep understanding of needs, clever segmentation and consistent validation.

  • What advice would you give to future award entrants?

    True innovation and formidability can only be achieved in a team: look for partners and don't be discouraged if success doesn't come immediately.