Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy [Paperback]

Martin Lindstrom (Author), Paco Underhill (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 2, 2010

How much do we know about why we buy? What truly influences our decisions in today's message-cluttered world? An eye-grabbing advertisement, a catchy slogan, an infectious jingle? Or do our buying decisions take place below the surface, so deep within our subconscious minds, we're barely aware of them?

In BUYOLOGY, Lindstrom, who was voted one of Time Magazine's most influential people of 2009, presents the astonishing findings from his groundbreaking, three-year, seven-million-dollar neuromarketing study, a cutting-edge experiment that peered inside the brains of 2,000 volunteers from all around the world as they encountered various ads, logos, commercials, brands, and products. His startling results shatter much of what we have long believed about what seduces our interest and drives us to buy. Among the questions he explores:

Does sex actually sell? To what extent do people in skimpy clothing and suggestive poses persuade us to buy products?
Despite government bans, does subliminal advertising still surround us – from bars to highway billboards to supermarket shelves?
Can "Cool" brands, like iPods, trigger our mating instincts?
Can other senses – smell, touch, and sound - be so powerful as to physically arouse us when we see a product?
Do companies copy from the world of religion and create rituals – like drinking a Corona with a lime – to capture our hard-earned dollars?

Filled with entertaining inside stories about how we respond to such well-known brands as Marlboro, Nokia, Calvin Klein, Ford, and American Idol, BUYOLOGY is a fascinating and shocking journey into the mind of today's consumer that will captivate anyone who's been seduced – or turned off – by marketers' relentless attempts to win our loyalty, our money, and our minds.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Through extensive and expensive research, Lindstrom provides an adequate primer on what neuroscience studies can tell society—particularly marketers—about how selling (and more important, buying) works. Whether considering the roles of sex, religion, product placement or contradictions in consumer habits between what they say and what they do, Lindstrom explores how brain-scan studies reveal an avalanche of information about what works and what doesn't. Though the information is intriguing, Lindstrom's disregard for the potential abuses of such information (such as marketers purposely manipulating people to buy products that are harmful, of which there is a proven track record) makes his enthusiasm suspect. Don Leslie provides a good voice for nonfiction material, using a congenial tone with good emphasis to keep the listeners engaged. His gentle but deep voice creates the impression of an older person imparting knowledge upon the youth, which may also lend some authority to the text. A Doubleday hardcover. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

Review

"A page-turner"
-Newsweek

" Lindstrom dishes up results, alongside a buffet of past research, with clear writing and deft reasoning."
-Fast Company

“Lindstrom … has an encyclopedic knowledge of advertising history and an abundance of real-world business experience”
-The Washington Post

“Martin Lindstrom, the boy wonder of branding, tells that the future of shopping is all in the mind”
-The Sunday Times (UK)

“Shatters conventional wisdom”
- CNBC

"...brings together a great many strands of research to build a fascinating case. The writing is snappy and the book’s a page turner"
-BBC Focus Magazine

“Lindstrom's research should be of interest to any company launching a new product or brand”
-USA Today

"Lindstrom...has an original, inquisitive mind...His new book is a fascinating look at how consumers perceive logos, ads, commercials, brands, and products."
-Time

“When someone tells you that a book is a "page-turner," you probably think of the latest top-list best-seller. Now you'll think of Buyology….Pick up a copy of this book and get one of those highlighting thingamajiggies before you fix your ad budget for the new year. "Buyology" is definitely money well-spent.”
-The Eagle Tribune


“An entertaining and informative tome”
-The Seattle Examiner


“Why do rational people act irrationally? Written like a fast paced detective novel, "Buyology" unveils what neuromarketers know about our decision making so we can buy and sell more insightfully."
- Dr. Mehmet C Oz Professor of Surgery, Columbia University, and author of YOU -The Owner’s Manual

“Move over Tipping Point and Made to Stick because there’s a new book in town: Buyology. This book lights the way for smart marketers and entrepreneurs.”
-Guy Kawasaki, Author of The Art of the Start

"Martin Lindstrom is one of branding's most original thinkers"
-Robert A. Eckert, CEO & Chairman, Mattel, Inc.

“Lindstrom takes us on a fascinating journey inside the consumer brain. Why do we make the decisions we do? Surprising and eye opening, Buyology is a must for anyone conducting a marketing campaign.”
-Ori Brafman, author of the bestselling book, Sway

"Full of intriguing stories on how the brain, brands and emotions drive consumer choice. Martin Lindstrom’s brilliant blending of marketing and neuroscience supplies us with a deeper understanding of the dynamic, largely unconscious forces that shape our  decision making. One reading of this book and you will look at consumer and producer behavior in an entirely new light.”
-Philip Kotler, Ph.D., S. C. Johnson & Son Distinguished Professor of International Marketing, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University

"A riveting read. Challenging, exciting, provocative, clever, and, even more importantly, useful!"
-Andrew Robertson, CEO & President, BBDO Worldwide


Lindstrom can be a charming writer. He has an encyclopedic knowledge of advertising history and an abundance of real-world business experience


From the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Crown Business; Reprint edition (February 2, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385523890
• ISBN-13: 978-0385523899
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.7 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (217 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,007 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #2 in Books > Business & Investing > Marketing & Sales > Marketing > Research
  • #7 in Books > Business & Investing > Marketing & Sales > Consumer Behavior
  • #8 in Books > Business & Investing > Marketing & Sales > Advertising

More About the Author

When he was a kid growing up in Denmark, Martin Lindstrom had but one thought in his life: Lego. He was, to put it simply, obsessed with Lego. He hand-built and slept on a Lego bed. He dressed in Lego's colors. He even turned the family garden into his very own Legoland creation, a miniature village complete with bonsai trees, scooped out canals, and dozens of houses and ships constructed entirely out of LEGO.

Then one bright summer's day in 1982, ambitious 11-year-old Martin Lindstrom opened Legoland's doors, optimistically anticipating hoards of visitors from near and far. Not a single person showed up.

Aware that something more than mere brilliant design was needed to attract visitors, young Martin suddenly had a flash of inspiration: he would advertise! He promptly persuaded the local newspaper to run an ad, and sure enough, the following week 131 people streamed through the garden gate. Including two lawyers from LEGO, who very politely informed Martin that if he persisted in using the name 'LEGOLAND' he would be guilty of trademark infringement. That's when he first realized the seductive power of marketing and advertising.

So Martin decided to open his own advertising agency, which he succeeded in doing a couple of months later, at the ripe age of 12. And thus, a lifelong relationship with marketing and brands was born.

After selling his agency in 1988, Lindstrom attended the Academy of Advertising before joining international giant, BBDO. In 1994 he went on to form the groups first interactive agency; BBDO Interactive, and three years later he founded BBDO Interactive Asia Pacific, both agencies growing to become the largest Internet solution companies in their respective regions. By the age of 30, Lindstrom had become one of the most respected names in the industry.

He has since spent 300 days on the road annually sharing his brand of wisdom and pioneering methodologies through speaking engagements and his role as trusted advisor to countless high profile companies, celebrities and royal families.

In 2009, amidst the rubble of the economic meltdown, Lindstrom opened a new chapter. Disheartened by much that he had seen on the front lines of the branding wars for the last two decades, he decided to turn the spotlight inward, and reveal all he'd learned along his journey from 11-year old Lego enthusiast to one of the globe's foremost marketing experts. His goal? By exposing the best kept tricks and secrets of the marketing world, and opening our eyes to all the ways in which we, as consumers, are being manipulated and deceived, he would help each one learn to resist the siren song of advertising and make smarter, more informed decisions about how we spend our money. The goal is to prepare brands for a more transperent and honest appraoch where secrets no longer will be possible and thus transperancy is needed. Brandwashed is the culmination of this ambitious undertaking.

Lindstrom has been featured and continues to be featured in the Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, The Economist, New York Times, BusinessWeek, The Washington Post, USAToday, Forbes and Harvard Business Review. He also frequently appears on NBC's TODAY show, ABC News, CNN Money, CBS, Bloomberg, FOX & Friends, Discovery Channel and the BBC. Lindstrom also pens a weekly column for Fast Company and TIME Magazine and appears regularly America's #1 ranking morning TV show, The TODAY Show, as an expert on consumer awareness and advocacy. In 2011 Lindstrom appeared in the Morgan Spurlock (Supersize Me0 documentary: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold.

His latest book, Brandwashed (Crown) is based on a 3-month long, $3 million guerilla marketing experiment, exploring the most powerful hidden persuader of them all. Us!

Buyology (paperback released February 2010 by Crown Publishing), was voted "pick of the year" by USA Today, and, between 2008 and 2009, reached ten of the top 10 bestseller lists in the U.S. and worldwide. His 6 books have been translated into more than 40 languages and published in more than 60 countries globally.

In 2009, TIME Magazine, named Lindstrom one of the World's 100 Most Influential People for his groundbreaking work on neuroscience and branding.

Visit MartinLindstrom.com to learn more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

236 of 251 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Infomercial?, November 5, 2008

By 

C. P. Anderson (Charlotte, NC) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy (Hardcover)

This book has a very interesting premise - using MRI to examine, not cognition, memory, or emotion, but advertising. And some of the results are rather interesting. For example:

- Negative messages (anti-smoking ads, say) can activate desires just as easily as positive ones.
- Strong brands can activate the same brain centers as do religious topics.
- Indirect advertising (the coke glasses sitting in front of the American Idol judges) can be more effective than direct advertising.

Probably the biggest takeaway is that what people say and how they really feel are not the same. Actually, having written all this out, I'm not sure that these results really are all that unexpected and interesting after all. ;^)

My biggest beef with the book is how thin it is beyond the basic reporting of results. Yes, it actually is over 200 pages (just barely), but there is an awful lot of padding in there. Part of that is going over some very basic ideas (subliminal advertising, e.g.) ad infinitum, but also being extremely anecdotal. I like anecdotes, and feel they make for a great read, but the author really goes overboard - especially when it comes to anecdotes about himself.

In fact, the author's ego really gets in the way here. Here are some samples:

"But this study wasn't going to come cheap, and I knew that without corporate backing, it was dead in the water. But when I get an idea in my head that keeps me up at night, I'm persistent. Politely pushy, you might call it. Those twenty-seven messages on your answering machine. They're all from me (sorry)."

and

"By way of profession, I'm a global branding expert. That is, it's been a lifelong mission (and passion) to figure out how consumers think ... If you look around, chances are you'll find my branding fingerprints all over your house or apartment ... As a branding expert and brand futurist (meaning that the sum of my globe-hopping experience gives me a helicopter view of probable future consumer and advertising trends) ..."

and

"I've been told more times than I can count that my appearance is as unconventional as what I do for a living ... My features [he has a baby face], my raked-back blond hair, and my habit of wearing all black give a lot of people the impression that I'm some kind of quirky child evangelist, or maybe some precocious, slightly wired high-school student who got lost on the way to the science lab and ended up in a corporate boardroom by mistake. I've gotten used to it over the years. I suppose you could say it has evolved into my brand."

Overall, the tone of the book is more one of simply trying to drive business (including a URL to his site in the book's last sentence) than actually reporting anything seriously. A little sad, given the premise and all the hype and expectation the author tries to generate.

This also brings up the issue of ethics, which the author barely touches on. Apart from the issue of the book being basically a long infomercial, I also wondered about the intrusiveness and manipulation that would be inherent in applying some of the findings. It really only gets an oops-almost-forgot two sentences at the end of the book:

"Because that is a world in which we, the consumers, can escape all the tricks and traps that companies use to seduce us to their products and get us to buy and take back our rational minds. And I hope that by writing Buyology, this is the world I have helped bring about."

A much better read would be Click: What Millions of People Are Doing Online and Why it Matters - same large topic, but much more interesting, informative - and modest.

108 of 119 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars 5 minutes of clear thinking will answer every question you might have thought this book would answer., November 3, 2008

By 

David McDowell "Researcher" (America's midwest) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy (Hardcover)

This is the first book in a long time I felt like taking back, and demanding a refund.

Filled with common-sense observations inflated with info-mercial style prose, it's a shadow of the scientific study it claims to be.

Each chapter pounds you with juvenile "imagine this!" scenarios, while providing little scientific backing for the author's conclusions. After each disappointing narrative, he promises the next chapter has "groundbreaking new science!" Clearly, he has mastered the art of hype, for that's mostly what this book is.

Those looking for information on motivation and thinking patterns will be best served to look elsewhere.

103 of 114 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Should have been a 3 page magazine article, November 6, 2008

By 

John Coley (Lake Martin, AL) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy (Hardcover)

This book was 50% review of other brands and ad campaigns, 30% bragging about how cool the "experiments" were, 10% new data that was only semi compelling, and 10% telling you what they just told you.

If they really stretched it, this should have been a 3 page article in a reader's digest. Maybe a 1,000 word article in the WSJ.

The most interesting thing I learned was about "mirror neurons" and how our brains imagine, e.g., eating an apple when only watching someone else do it. But that is not enough for a whole book. There were other tidbits but not worth the $ or effort to learn them.

I bought this book on tape along with "Tribes" by Godin. Audible is giving that one away for free. I would have paid $20 for Tribes and nothing for Buyology. It's almost as if the author of Buyology said "well since I have spent all this money for research I guess I should write a book."