Trends Report

How People Choose

Get People To Do What You Want By Limiting Decision Stress

April 14th, 2015
Shar VanBoskirk, VP, Principal Analyst
Shar VanBoskirk VP, Principal Analyst
With contributors:
Sucharita Kodali , Carlton Doty , Anjali Lai , Collin Colburn

Summary

Marketers miscalculate how consumers make purchase decisions. Why? Because the rapid adoption of digital technology gives marketers a false sense of precision about how they predict consumer behavior and adds stress to people's decision-making processes. Humans are actually very irrational creatures; according to a Harvard Business School study, we make 95% of our purchase decisions with no active consideration at all. In this report, we use the primary dimensions that create stress for decision-makers — what's at stake and available time — to narrow choices into four key decision types. Get people to choose your brand by marketing to the critical influences for each type of choice. The results will provoke personal branding, one-to-moment marketing, and a decline — that's right, a decline — in advertising spend.

Want to read the full report?

Contact us to become a client

This report is available for individual purchase ($1495).

Forrester helps business and technology leaders use customer obsession to accelerate growth. That means empowering you to put the customer at the center of everything you do: your leadership strategy, and operations. Becoming a customer-obsessed organization requires change — it requires being bold. We give business and technology leaders the confidence to put bold into action, shaping and guiding how to navigate today's unprecedented change in order to succeed.