Habit: The 95% of Behavior Marketers Ignore (Hardcover)

by Neale Martin (Author)
Key Phrases: habitual mind, behavioral marketing, executive mind, United States, Bill Gates (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
In his first book, communications consultant-to-the-stars (Sprint, Nextel, Cisco, Nortel, TI, Motorola) and "expert in consumer behavior" Martin uses ideas from the worlds of science, technology, psychology, history, philosophy and business to demonstrate how a consumer's unconscious controls most of his or her behavior. As a result, Martin argues, companies large and small are wasting money and energy engaging the wrong part of the brain-rather than worrying over expected behavior or ultimate satisfaction, marketers should focus on how buying habits form through simple, time-tested methods like reward and repetition. How else would brands like Microsoft-infamously frustrating but ingrained in the culture-and Starbucks coffee-overpriced but ubiquitous (and literally addictive)-make it? In a reportorial style fit for both marketing executives and savvy consumers, Martin presents interviews with marketers, researchers and scientists that outline the principles supporting his method, delineating the executive mind from the habitual (unconscious) mind, exploring how an ideal product like the iPod targets both minds, and providing a blueprint for creating habitual buyers. Martin's argument requires readers to suspend some long-held beliefs about consumers, but rewards them with some eye-opening perspective.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Product Description
80% of new products fail. Billions of advertising pounds are wasted every year. Even "satisfied customers" abandon companies at the drop of a hat. How can this be? How can so many brilliant marketers and product developers be failing so thoroughly? Here's how: they've focused their vast resources almost exclusively on the conscious mind, but it's the unconscious mind that controls 95% of human behaviour. In Habit, Dr. Neale Martin presents powerful new research that reveals how the mind actually works and explains in practical detail the implications of this new science for marketers and product developers. You'll learn why 50 years of marketing theory is deeply flawed, how your customers' unconscious minds thwart your marketing campaigns, and how to identify what customers really want when they don't even know. Using Martin's techniques, you can not only avoid marketing and product failures: you can finally achieve the twin holy grails of marketing: higher customer retention, and greater long-term profitability.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: FT Press; 1 edition (July 6, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0131357956
• ISBN-13: 978-0131357952
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #152,835 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Must Marketing Reading, July 25, 2008

By	Phillip Rubin "rDialogue CEO" (Atlanta, GA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Bottom line: this is the best book on (customer) loyalty marketing since Reicheld's "The Loyalty Effect" and a great complement to it given its explanation of the neuroscience behind customer behavior as it relates to habit.

As marketing becomes increasingly accountable for top- and bottom-line impact, understanding the concept of habit as it relates to customer behavior is critical.

If you buy at Amazon you know how easy -- and habit forming -- it is to shop here. This book demonstrates how the power of habit, relative to customer purchase and usage decisions, has been grossly undervalued.

"Habit" gives the scientific context by gradually explaining how the human brain works in easy layman's terms and then illustrates how this significantly impacts the difference between the expected behavior (traditionally just supported by marketing research) and actual actions taken by an individual.

Having practiced loyalty marketing for 20 years now, this book is more than a theory but is in fact an overlooked reality of customer behavior.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Give it a 6th star!, November 16, 2008

By	D. D'Eugenio (Palm Beach, United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

You will yellow pen this book to death! Plan on buying a second just to have a clean copy. Page after page has insightful behavioral understanding that marketers have not necessarily ignored, but are only learning about now thanks to the evolution of modern scans. Today, can we see and understand the way we receive and react to stimuli. In HABIT, Neale Martin has brought us to the new science of positioning to the way the brain works. This book is for anyone in business or human sciences.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It's automatic, September 6, 2008

By	Michael P. Maslanka (dallas, texas United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This short and useful book's Big Idea:what we do is automatic. People take decisional shortcuts because it makes their lives easier. They are unaware of even doing so. What's this mean for business and marketing? With a customer or clinet, toss out the consultant idea of doing a satisfaction survey---it only reminds them that they have options and interurpts the automatic decision making, elevating your service to the attention of the "executive" mind. Reinforce at the right times: salepeople entertain before the prospect makes a purchase and thus the prospect thinks if I buy, then the good stuff stops so they don't. The timing of the conditioning is ,well, the cart before the horse. Always be honest and protect the brand. Customers are constantly scanning to see if you do. Appeal to emotions. Facts and benefits get you no where. There is lots more. A good book for shaping how you look at selling and business development.