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While no longer updated regularly, this archive reflects some of the themes and thinking behind Philip’s work.
Sneak Preview: When Is a Fact Not a Fact
One of the challenges with studying consumer behaviour is that the behaviour itself is incontrovertible, but the interpretation of that behaviour is often much more open to debate: what caused what? What can be inferred from what happened …
E-zine Story
Since we’ve been discussing stories with Kevin, I thought I’d share this one here. Readers of my Mindshop! E-zine will see it when they receive the next edition (sorry for the duplication, but you can comment on it easily here)…
Consumer Behaviour: Where’s the Reason?
I really appreciated all of the comments received in response to yesterday’s post and I wanted to pick up on one that, as a consumer behaviour expert, I found fascinating. It also was one of the last comments posted so people scannin…
The Consumer Need Myth and Why Customers Really Buy
You’d be hard pressed to find any marketing text book that doesn’t talk at some point about “consumer need”. It’s a simple enough concept: the products that will do best are those that meet a requirement that s…
Consumers: Reality is Over-rated Part iv
It seems from many of your comments about focus groups that many of you have experienced some of the problems I mentioned in relation to asking consumers about their perceptions. To be fair to focus groups I should point out that I was talk…
Consumers: Reality is Over-rated Part iii
Having suggested that perception is far more important that the reality of experience in determining consumer behaviour, you might think that finding out how a consumer perceives your brand is a useful exercise. And, of course, you’d …
Consumers: Reality is Over-rated Part ii
Judging from the replies yesterday, some of you are certainly familiar with the concept that customer perceptions may not tally with reality. Indeed, it’s fair to say that there are even a few cliches on the subject. And I’m the…
Consumers: Reality is Over-rated
When it comes to understanding consumer behaviour there’s a tricky conundrum; a consumer’s perception of a brand is far more important than the reality of their experience. But… You can’t trust people to account for their perceptions accura…
The Problem With Eyes
I read recently that a study has found that we don’t see things all the time. Brain activity has peaks and troughs (about ten per second) and when it’s in a trough we don’t see. Then there is inattentional blindness. You k…