Trends Report

How People Choose

Get People To Do What You Want By Limiting Decision Stress

April 14th, 2015
With contributors:
Sucharita Kodali , Carlton A. 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.

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