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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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"I had the
pleasure of reading this book while travelling to the EMAC annual conference last month. It
wasn’t hard to keep the pages turning. This is a well-researched, lucidly written book that
will force the market research industry to address some fairly troubling questions about what
it does and how it does it. By implication, the academic research ‘business’ is in the firing
line too, given that empirical data is often collected using the same techniques."
Professor John Fahy,
(www.JohnFahy.net)
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Consumer.ology: The Market Research Myth, the Truth about Consumers
and the Psychology of Shopping
- Written by a 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 for the Kindle and from a large number of other book retailers around
the world including:
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