Tailoring information to consumer needs
In response to the complex and varied needs of households, Power Shift asked ACIL Allen to develop a framework for targeting energy services and programs, with policymakers in mind as a primary audience.
The result was the Supporting Households Framework, a sophisticated multidimensional consumer segmentation framework to help industry, community groups and government deliver highly targeted programs tailored to the diverse needs of households.
As Power Shift’s research found, there is no ‘one size fits all’ solution. No single website, single mainstream media TV campaign or solitary factsheet will reach and help every household.
To be effective, assistance and information must be delivered in a format and channel that suits the way consumers live.
The Supporting Households Framework outlines the choices a household can make that will help them manage their energy bill or their energy usage. Mapping households against their motivation, ability and opportunity to manage their bills produces nine different ‘household types’. Having understood where households can or cannot act, the Supporting Households Framework provides an indication of which tools and services are most likely to help that household.
Report — Supporting Households Framework
Demonstrating the value of consumer-led design
The benefits for policymakers and decision makers using the Supporting Households Framework is that they can:
- arrive at an evidence-based solution to consumer needs, which can be used to assess the likely effectiveness of different solutions or ideas;
- remove the `guesswork’ of what will or won’t work when giving advice or designing and implementing new tools and services; and
- put the needs and preferences of households at the front and centre of decision making and provide a common frame of reference for understanding how decisions are being made in the best interest of consumers.
A Policymakers Guide to the Supporting Households Framework was also developed to assist and support policymakers in using The Supporting Households Framework, to think outside the box and embrace a tailored consumer-centric approach through using the framework.
A Policymakers Guide to the Supporting Households Framework
To transform the innovative the Supporting Households Framework from the conceptual to the practical, the Power Shift project team engaged the energy community to develop real-life applications that could be used by policymakers, industry and community groups.
Resource and time constraints meant that we focused on delivering information tools (the first of the five categories of tools and services identified), but the Supporting Households Framework provides guidance on the full range of tools and services most likely to support consumers.
In June 2019, Energy Consumers Australia commissioned 89 Degrees East to develop exemplar resources and tools across four consumer groups, to showcase how the Supporting Households Framework assists with tailored communications from trusted sources/partners.
Those resources are able to be downloaded in PDF below – we are happy for those to be updated and used. Should you want them in Word version, please contact Energy Consumers Australia.
| TARGET GROUP OF CONSUMERS | FOCUS | DELIVERY PARTNER | RESOURCE |
| Low Income Households | Low income homeowners | Financial Counselling Australia | To hand out to clients:
To help financial counsellors To hand out with Energy Savings Kit
|
| Low Income Renters | Younger and first time renters | Tenant advice organisations | To distribute to renters
* Request B3-B6 from Energy Consumers Australia. |
| Older People | Low digital literacy skills and/or not engaged | Council of the Ageing | To support peer to peer training |
| Indigenous Australians | Regional and remote communities | Indigenous Consumer Assistance Network | To assist community workers
To give to households
|
