Why We Choose the Brands We Do

The first indication we were in a post-industrial society came when it was apparent that price was not necessarily the most important factor in a customer purchase decision. Our Maslowe-vian needs had been addressed. Other forces compelled us to act.

We may now be entering a second phase: where the product and its features dont even matter.

It seems like the science of analyzing why we buy has been around forever.

Package design, store layout, catalogue product placement, the demo and psycho graphics of just about everything. Been there, done that.

But we can not leave well enough alone. The Holy Grail of Marketing remains being able to predict the purchase decisions of a single consumer based on their history. Researchers have come tantalizingly close, but the ultimate prize remains elusive.

The latest iteration employs scientific research-based principles involving eye movement and a host of other involuntary reflexes. While earlier efforts may have been aware of such impulses they were not always able to capture them. Now they are.

There are, of course, concerns about what might happen if this data falls into the wrong, unscrupulous hands. It goes almost without saying that they may already have. But given society's penchant for convenience, the evidence suggests that we are, so far, comfortable with the trade-off. And probably will continue to be. JL

Christie Nicholson reports in Scientific American:

A recent study finds that we might often choose brands and products for reasons that have nothing to do with the actual brand or product.
You just bought peanut butter. You chose the jar because, well, you’ve always eaten the crunchy variety. In reality, however, something else may have influenced your choice—the product you picked was centrally located on the store shelves.

Researchers tracked eye movements of 67 subjects scanned a 3 by 3 matrix of fictitious brands. The tracking found that consumers tend to focus on the objects in the middle—specifically, five seconds before they make their choice. And they do this for all kinds of products, from vitamins to online movies. The study will be published in December 2012 in the Journal of Consumer Research.

Also, subjects continued to go for the centrally-located brand even if the product was not in the middle of their specific visual field. So it’s not in reference to one’s view, it is literally about the product being central within the entire shelf layout.

Past studies have shown that people tend to make a lot of choices based on central locations, like choosing the middle bathroom stall in a public washroom, a middle seat at a table, or even the middle items in a series of arbitrary objects.

The test consumers had no conscious awareness that they had chosen centrally located brands. Makes you wonder what you’ve taken home without realizing why.