A selection of articles and essays on consumer behaviour, research, and decision-making.
While no longer updated regularly, this archive reflects some of the themes and thinking behind Philip’s work.
Look More Attractive Instantly!
Does one of these pictures look more attractive to you? Read on to find out why. Often marketing people will spend a lot of time and money getting the right person associated with their product. Although the science behind why this is impor…
Marketing Influence: Beating the Competition!
Sometimes people are just plain wrong. Take the decision of the UK and US governments to invade Iraq because they believed that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. Whatever the arguments for and against the action that was taken, the ju…
Why Your Market Research Will be Wrong
Has market research ever been wrong? Of course it has. Pretty much everyone I know who has any experience of using market research has had some experience where it didn’t turn out to be right. Marketing history is littered with famous…
War! What is it Good For? Not Memorable Advertising
A vast amount of money spent on advertising and lots of energy (and quite a lot of spending) goes into media planning. And yet, as is so often the case, the focus is all to often on the conscious mind. Planners look at things like viewing f…
Should You Surprise Your Customers?
When you deal with a range of products day in and day out it is understandable that you might want to dream up ways of surprising your customers. Rather than confront them with the same old lines of products, how about adding in something t…
Have You Had Sex Recently? The Problem with Words
I realise it’s a bit forward of me to ask, but I really need to know: have you had sex recently? In the business of market research you have to be prepared to ask all kinds of things and it’s surprising what people will talk to …
Market Research: Belief in a Pseudo Science
Probability is an interesting thing. It’s relatively easy to evaluate the probability of a particular event happening but, when it comes down to it, we humans are much more concerned with our own experience. If we experience an unlike…
Why You Don’t Want Your Marketing to be Noticed
You spend all that money on marketing because you want people to notice you, right? If you had the choice between knowing that 50% of your target market had seen your ad and 10% had seen it you’d be crazy not to want the higher figure…
Another Blow to Focus Groups and a Tip for Salespeople
I’d love to be able to tell you that I’m going to write this article about focus groups and I don’t care what you think, but that wouldn’t be true. If you think back over the conversations you’ve initiated rece…