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Consumer.ology
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Consumer.ology has been
named by
Amazon UK as one of
their top ten best business books of 2010
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Click here to read
an extract
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“Consumer.ology is a refreshingly iconoclastic skewer
through the heart of traditional market research methods and reason. Graves’ peppering
of psychological theory with pithy anecdotes of misguided consumer successes and failures is bound
to at once ruffle feathers and get heads nodding within marketing and innovation
circles.”
Blake H. Glenn,
Senior
Inventor, ?What if!
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"Consumer.ology is a rich digest of insights on consumer psychology. It
should be essential reading for marketers and general managers, and carefully hidden away from
anyone whose livelihood depends on market research."
"... will send a shiver down the spine of the research
industry..."
Alan Giles, Chairman, Fat Face and
Associate Fellow Saïd Business School, University of
Oxford
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"A good read for
anyone interested in the psychology of group behavior or the validity of market research methods as
well as for those in the business sector trying to introduce new products to the public."
Library Journal
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"Fascinating stuff." Steve Wright, BBC
Radio 2
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"Graves does more than just show marketers the error of
their ways. He shows them a path to better insight." Director Magazine
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****
"Homo sapiens, "knowing man", we call ourselves, and it's true that
by animal standards we know a great deal. But in the most mundane, colloquial sense, we don't
know what we want - out of our life, careers, relationships or the things we buy. Why ask us
then? asks Philip Graves in this withering critique of market research "science" which,
however, much ritual and jargon it may dress them up in, presents us with questions we're
simply not equipped to answer. We're all consumers and the mysterious ways in which we make the
myriad daily decisions are well worth examining. Consumer.ology is primarily aimed at a
business readership but there's thought-provoking stuff in here for the rest of us."
Michael Kerrigan, The Scotsman
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"... I should hate this book, and so should most of my
research colleagues (but)... I love this book and would recommend it to anyone conducting market
research."
Katie Delahaye Paine (The Measurement Standard)
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Consumer.ology:
The Market Research Myth, the Truth
about Consumers and the Psychology of Shopping
- Leading expert in consumer
behaviour
- Offers a unique, real-world and
practical approach for evaluating why we buy what we do - and often don't buy what market
research says we will
- Uses a range of case studies and draws on the latest psychology and
neuroscience to expose the reasons that market research can't
work
- Controversial in dismissing the
conventional approach as false and misleading and sure to attract the attention of both the
marketing world and market research industry
Market
research is a myth. Philip Graves, one of the world's leading experts in consumer behaviour,
reveals why the results of the typical market research campaign are completely unreliable. Whether
it is company executives seeking to define their corporate strategy or politicians wanting to
understand the electorate, the idea that questions answered on a questionnaire or discussed in a
focus group can provide useful insights on which to base business decisions is the cause of product
failures, political blunders and wasted billions.
Consumer.ology exposes some of the most expensive
examples of research-driven thinking clouding judgement, experience and evidence - from New Coke to
General Motors, from Mattel to the Millennium Dome - and instances of success through ignoring
research, such as Baileys and Dr Who. It also shows organisations the tools they should be
using if they want to understand their customers.
Using
his unique AFECT approach, a set of five criteria to evaluate the reliability of any consumer
insight, Graves asserts that it's time for a fresh approach that embraces this new understanding of
human behaviour. Along the way, he reveals why the current practice of market research is a false
science, why we often don't buy what we say we will, and how to undersand consumers better than
they do themselves. After reading Consumer·ology business leaders and politicians will never look
at market research in the same way again.
Consumer.ology is published by Nicholas Brealey Publishing. Further details
will appear here as the book becomes available in other
languages.
Also available from
a large number of other book retailers around the world including:
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