Decoded:The Science Behind Why We Buy

A recent study of 1,200 CEOs across North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific found that 80 percent of chief executives believe marketers are “disconnected” from business results and focus on the wrong areas. More specifically, 78 percent of respondents said that marketers “too often lose sight of what their real job is” — namely, to increase demand for goods and services in a quantifiable way.

Why is this so? Marketers accumulate a huge amount of information and sophisticated analyses about their customers, and they have developed models that capture years of collective experience. These models guide multi-million investments in product development and innovation, communication and research.

However, the true reasons why human beings do what they do remain a mystery. Otherwise, the failure rate of new products would be nowhere near the reported 80 to 90 percent, and advertising budgets would be totally efficient and effective.

But marketing’s not like that. Sometimes activities are successful, and sometimes they are not. Phil Barden spent 25 years at Unilever, Diageo, and T-Mobile trying to influence consumer behavior in favor of his brands and products. Based on personal experience, he built his own mental model of how consumers decide.

Our summary of Barden’s book Decoded bridges the gap between the world of marketing and decision science, revealing the fascinating insights he has come across about why consumers buy what they buy. This summary offers a framework to enable marketers to address the real drivers of brand choice. It will empower you to harness this valuable knowledge and apply it to everyday marketing work.