5: How Consumers Really Decide
Human beings readily admit that they are not omniscient and infallible, but only after having made a very stupid mistake. When we somehow manage to get things right and the outcome is good, we return to the attitude that "I meant to do that." An in that sense, marketing has long misused the ideal concept of man in approaching customers - assuming that they are perfectly rational, well informed, and deliberate in their decision-making processes. This is more in the line of philosophy than psychology, and far removed from any sort of reality.
The author makes reference to a number of pop psychology studies that highlight the irrational nature of human thought. (EN: A common issue with these studies is that they are all lab studies that take people out of their natural environment, and it's a stretch to suggest that decision-making in real life where something is at stake is analogous to decision-making in a lab where nothing is at stake. It's generally been observed that the amount of effort put into decision making depends on the importance of the decision, and when you get a bunch of college kids in a lab to play decision games, it's clearly not an important decision and only natural that they don't make the effort to be rational.)
He also mentions the human proclivity to rationalize - that is, to act on a gut feeling and later claim to have undertaken a more serious and sober process of thought. He mentions an interesting experiment with split-brain patients (whose corpus callosum has been severed so there is no direct communication between the brain's hemispheres). In a series of experiments, instructions were provided in a way that engaged the right hemisphere of the brain, such that the left hemisphere (allegedly the rational side) had not received the information. When asked to explain their behavior, patients routinely made up a plausible story. This is taken as support for the emotion-first argument: that the right-brained mind of emotions often controls our behavior and the left-brained mind of reasoning later makes up a plausible excuse for taking the action (EN: but again, this is based on the fallacy of the dichotomy of the mind. The entire left/right brain has largely been debunked.)
Even for "normal" people in "real" situations, it is found that they have difficulty defending a choice. Consider the choice of personal fragrances (which is highly emotional): we buy a fragrance because we "like" its smell. But we do not go shopping for a fragrance with a list of criteria in mind, nor do we sample every fragrance and take careful notes to help us select the right one. We try a couple and go with whatever we like - and if someone we find attractive later compliments us on the scent, we become loyal to that fragrance. It is not a rational and meticulous process.
Much the same can be said for any brand of any product: we do not do a comprehensive investigation or an exhaustive search, but consider only a few of them on a very superficial level before making a buying decision. And if that decision works out for the best, then we feel we have made the smart choice.
There is even an argument about how fully conscious we are. For efficiency's sake, the human mind mechanizes itself. It took a great deal of effort and concentration to learn how to walk or to ride a bicycle, but once we got the basics down we do these activities without paying much attention under most circumstances. It's only when we have to walk across a slippery or moving surface that we feel the need to pay attention to each step and apply our conscious mind to keeping our balance.
It's argued that we further apply our ability to automate tasks to more complex (and commercial) decisions. We seldom deliberate what brand of what beverage to drink when we are thirsty - we make the decision to "get a drink" and our body follows its established get-a-drink routine without deliberating on what to drink. And when we go to a store to purchase something to drink, chances are we do not deliberate what is the precise drink we want in this moment, but merely go through the routine of purchasing what he have purchased by habit. If there are no obstacles (such as the store being out of what we want), there is no decision-making process.
In all, consciousness constitutes "a small part of what the brain does." Per an earlier discussion, the senses pick up everything in our environment and it is received and processed by the unconscious mind to determine whether there is an immediate/survival need to take action, and it does all of this without paying attention. And in the present discussion, much of what we do is automated, so these actions are also outside of our conscious mind. There are also a lot of basic routines (breathing, pulse, digestion, etc) that are constantly running in the background without focused attention (many of which are beyond our control as well as our consciousness).
He pulls up short of stating that we are complete zombies who live at the will of our unconscious minds - but in all fairness, most of what we do is done without conscious and focused thought. We avoid thinking whenever possible and our brains are inclined to put us on auto-pilot, with our rational mind only being alerted when something goes awry. We are entirely capable of being rational, but choose to apply our thinking mind to very few things in very few instances - particularly, when we sense something unusual.
A few experiments are mentioned that test the cognitive capacity of the brain, and it doesn't take much to "overload" our cognitive processes. When this happens, we find ourselves unable to decide or at least unable to make a sound decision. An overloaded mind makes mistakes and poor decisions, attempting to unburden itself by making snap decisions on things that seem to be of little importance. Specific reference is made to the Lehrer study, which examined the dietary choices of workers: people generally recognize the need to make healthy choices, but when their mind is occupied by many stressful things, we make the easy choice and go for junk-food.
Random trivia: the brain is a very needy organ. It is less than 2% of our body weight but consumes 20% of our energy, and about a quarter of all calories consumed go to fueling the brain - which may be another reason people go for sweet foods: the brain (which makes the decision of what to eat) thinks of itself first, and it needs glucose. Another random bit - the body consumes about 60 watts of power at rest, and the brain consumes 12 of those watts. Given all that the brain does, it consumes very little energy - and to do so means being efficient by automating as much as possible.
So most of the brain's activity is spend on enabling us to ignore things so that we can act quickly and with a minimum o thinking - but even when we are required to think, we seek shortcuts. The reason we are fond of rules and procedures is that these structures give us the ability to decide and act based on minimal information. We are fond of "rules of thumb" which allow us to generalize rather than devoting time to do a more thorough investigation of the particulars of a given situation.
Mental shortcuts, or heuristics, are common. The most common shortcut is the familiarity heuristic, which causes us to do what has been successful in the past rather than explore alternatives. Another is the availability heuristic, which causes us to prefer to make decisions based on data that is already in memory rather than doing research. Then there is the heuristic of similarity, which maintains that things that seem similar likely are similar and can be expected to behave in the same ways.
There is often derision of mental shortcuts - as if the person who uses mental shortcuts is intellectually lazy. But in truth, our heuristics lead us to the right decision most of the time, and we very often regret it when we "second guess" ourselves into doing something other than what intuition or gut instinct suggested. Further evidence is presented that suggests human beings are able to detect correlation very well, such that even advanced statistical models are seldom more accurate than human guesswork. Said another way, fast thinking isn't always bad thinking - and very often it is "good enough" thinking and there is very little return-on-effort for the marginal improvement that we would experience if we undertook a more deliberate and laborious approach to decision making. And said another way still, our instincts and our conscience very often guide us in exactly the right direction.
In the present day, it's simply impossible to consider every option for every decision - there's simply too much information and too much to choose from. For example, go to the toothpaste aisle of any grocery store and you'll find dozens of choices, as there are hundreds of options to choose from. It's simply overwhelming. And in this sense, having more choice is not a good thing - the greater the number of choices, the more effort is required to study all the options to make an informed decision.
Generally speaking, people can hold between five and nine things in memory, and this limits their ability to make comparisons. When there is a greater number, people simply go with their gut - or as some studies suggest, they simply shut down and walk away. And even if the decision is made, having too many options to consider leaves customers dissatisfied with whatever they chose.
As a result, most purchases are mindless. The customer buys whatever they bought before, and is even inclined to do so if it wasn't entirely satisfactory. This is great news for brands with a body of existing customers, as they can count on repurchasing even if their product isn't the best. When faced with the prospect of purchasing something for the first time, customers choose almost at random - whatever they say a commercial for, whatever a friend mentioned in passing conversation, etc. Again, they would rather risk being dissatisfied than invest a whole lot of time in the decision.
Especially given that most brands have largely identical offerings (back to toothpaste, there isn't a set of features that Colgate offers that isn't offered by Crest - and if there is, Crest will soon come out with one), so there is no clear-cut reason that customers choose one over another. It cost a few pennies less, or the package was more eye-catching, or it was placed at eye level, etc. You cannot trust the customer to tell you why he favored one over the other because he doesn't know - though he will likely make up a plausible story to save face.
This is where many brands turn to emotional advertising: if the prospect "feels better" about one brand, he will buy it without even considering the other. If it seems more aligned to the person he is, or the person he wants to be, then he will buy without considering the functional benefits (remember the vodka example from earlier, where customers identified with the "image" of one of two identical products).
It's easy to accept that this takes place for low-involvement purchases - particularly in the grocery store where most products cost a couple of dollars, there's really not much risk in purchasing the "wrong" toothpaste. But the author asserts that the same mental processes are at work even for high-involvement purchases, like buying a car or a house or choosing a college to attend. There are many options, and the decision is often guided by gut and intuition. Even people who claim to do extensive research tend to select one of a small number of options that they believed would be "right" even before performing their research. Most of the data they find simply serves to justify their decision after the fact.