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Buyology: Martin Lindstrom Reveals What Makes Consumers Tick
Despite the "Ye Olde Faithful" nature of his clientele, Lindstrom eschews traditional marketing, which he claims is ineffective. "Most retailers are not really aware of it, but the fact is that basically eight out of 10 of all the products you put onto the shelf, the decision to purchase is made by the subconscious mind and not by the rational mind," Lindstrom insists. Therefore, "retailers should not compete on rational dimensions, because they'll never ever survive." Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy An astonishing three years and seven million dollars went into Lindstrom's neuromarketing study (neuromarketing is the marriage of brain science with the psychology of marketing.) Two thousand volunteers from around the world offered up their brains to be peered, prodded and pondered in the interest of discovering why we as consumers buy what we buy. Is it a catchy slogan that grabs our attention? A jazzy jingle? Does a half-dressed blonde draped on the hood of an automobile make us want to run out and buy a Porsche? Lindstrom's experiments shatter many of our long-held beliefs about what makes consumers tick. It turns out much of our buying decisions take place at a level of the subconscious so deep we are barely even aware of it. To effectively reach that subconscious level of decision making, marketers must appeal to all of our senses--particularly smell and sound. "These senses are much stronger than we ever thought, more than anyone in the world thinks they are today," Lindstrom explains. "This is most likely going to change the entire way we are going to build brands in the future . . . " But what grabs my attention about Lindstrom's ideas are the possibilities for helping countries better position their products in the global marketplace. At one conference, for example, Lindstrom asks participants a simple question: "Are you more likely to buy a car from Turkey or from Switzerland?" Neither country produces automobiles, so you might think it would be a difficult question to answer. Not so. The truth is not a single participant wanted to buy a Turkish car. The Turkish brand was simply outclassed by the Swiss. That's great for Switzerland, but what about developing countries seeking a toehold in Western markets--will their brands always be labeled "inferior"?
What about countries best known as raw materials suppliers--much of sub-Saharan Africa, for example--are they consigned to that status forever? Development theory tells us that as these countries establish an industrial base, they will move towards producing and exporting more complex, higher-order goods that put more money in government coffers, employ more citizens, and create more advanced technologies for exploitation. But if the global consumer has subconsciously absorbed the country's brand as low-level and inferior, will demand rise up to meet its more higher-order exports? Although Martin Lindstrom's Buyology The successful brands of the future will be those that appeal to the consumer's brain, senses and emotions.
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Martin Lindstrom knows a little something about marketing. The thirty-eight year old guru and author of BRAND sense--hailed by the Wall Street Journal as one of the ten best marketing books ever published--is advisor to such venerable clients as McDonald's, Procter & Gamble, Microsoft and The Walt Disney Company. 
provides some of the necessary data to support those claims.