Customer Reviews

Habit: The 95% of Behavior Marketers Ignore

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This review is from: Habit: The 95% of Behavior Marketers Ignore (Hardcover)
Overall the premise of this book is that customers often buy based on habit rather than on detailed conscious choice. And this simple premise is repeated ad-nauseum. This is a book that could really have done with a good edit. The early chapters are incredibly repetitive, and repeat this simple 'fact' with very little supporting evidence. Some examples of fMRI studies are provided, with little mention that the science in this area is still highly disputed.

The later chapters provide little in terms of actual insight into what habitual purchases actually mean for marketers - it repeats the mantra that you have to break consumers habitual purchase behaviours - yes, but how? On this the book is largely empty.

This is an important topic, but really if you have done any reading in the areas of behavioural economics, behavioural change, or brain science, then you will already be well past the paltitudes offered by this book.

Perhaps the most annoying thing about this book is that it has a few sporadic footnotes, but then will have pages and pages of unsupported material - why bother with the few footnotes. Either have a properly referenced text, or don't waste our time.

Overall very disappointing.

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.

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.

Habit is an enjoyable read. It meshes well with the more detailed accounts of recent neuroscientific research. Probably its most important lesson is that what works is counterintuitive. My next read in this vein will be Neuro Web Design: What Makes Them Click? (Voices That Matter).

Most reviewers have gone overboard on this book rating it very highly indeed. Retail guru Herb Sorensen rates it a top 5 book on marketing. I found it good- I was even citing themes addressed at work within a couple of weeks- but there is something missing......

The positives: The book is short, easy to read & it contains easy to understand anecdotes to support the claims made

On the other hand: THe title- habit- the 95% of behaviour narketers ignore illustrates the point for me. Where is the support for the 95%? There is a lack of references in the book & unusuually no further reading list. Perhaps the book was aimed at airport bookstores rather than universaity libraries. Similarly much is made of the website but the entries to it stopped suddenly 18 months ago

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.

challlenged my thinking. related lots of what he said to a teacher's goal of having the children "buy into" what I'm teaching.

It has concepts that you do not found in the 20 others books about neuromarketing.
About the aplication of the concept it needs more practicle examples about how to do it.

Very good book

This book was kind of good. It was certainly better than OK, but it didn't set my world on fire. Its message is something any marketer should consider. However, I wasn't particularly impressed with the author's writing ability. Some of the chapters were overly technical. Some of the points made are arguably bunk. And I didn't think the chapters flowed from 1 to 13.

What I got from this book is that marketers can sell to customers one product at a time (and waste their time and money). Or they can sell to the customer the first time and let the customer habitually buy the product on autopilot thereafter. Some call this "Customer Loyalty Marketing." It would be nice if there really was a way to do the second way exclusive of the first. But I don't think it can be done.

If you are a stock trader trying to make a buck playing with stock, then you can read books that advocate Technical Analysis. And you can read books that advocate Fundamental Analysis. Each book will probably say their way is better. However, in reality, the most successful traders are ones who use both ways to analyze stocks. I mention this because I think the best marketers are the ones who have marketing plans that involve selling one product at a time and also involve creating purchasing habits in their customers. By the way, the book's title probably should have been PURCHASING HABITS, and not just "Habit."

The instant book being reviewed seems to promote the idea that marketers are wasting their time selling one product at a time. And it does this without writing a clear easy-to-follow set of chapters that do not build upon each other. As a result, I don't buy into the author's message. However, after reading this book one will definitely be reminded that selling one product at a time is not the ONLY way to go. 3.7 stars!

PS. Take a look at the Search Inside feature Amazon provides for this book. There you can examine the Table of Contents and get a better feel for what this book covers.

If you want to read a new, refreshing marketing book, look no further. Consumer behavior expert Neale Martin has produced an entertaining, informative explanation of how the conscious and subconscious minds work together in the context of sales and marketing. He has put in years of extensive groundwork updating the principles of marketing to reflect new findings in cognitive psychology and neuroscience that say much of the way people act is governed by unconscious habits. In the process of explaining the brain's biological miracle, he also teaches readers why some products fail and what marketers must understand to improve their odds. getAbstract thinks this intellectually invigorating book is a real keeper, especially for marketers who want to learn how each customer's two minds (unconscious and subconscious) work together.