Decoded, 2nd Edition

1Decision Science: Understanding the Why of Consumer Behaviour

 

Marketing is, essentially, about behaviour change; our ultimate goal is to influence purchase decisions. But what drives those decisions? Decision sciences help to answer this crucial question by uncovering the underlying mechanisms, rules, and principles of decision making. These fascinating and valuable insights from science have been expanding rapidly in the past few years. This chapter will go into some of the depths of the latest learnings from decision science, but don't worry, you don't need to be a scientist to swim here! We will see what really drives purchasing behaviour, and how to apply these insights to maximize the benefit to marketing. Most importantly, we will introduce a practical framework to harness the learnings in our everyday marketing roles.

Let there be light!

It might seem strange discussing an advert that is over 10 years old, but Cadbury's ‘Gorilla’ is one that broke records for creativity prizes and received more public and media attention than any other in recent history. Indeed, it's still talked about in marketing and advertising forums on LinkedIn and Twitter. Cadbury's Dairy Milk volumes had been fairly static for years and the brand had suffered the twin effects of a hot summer and a product recall the previous year. So Cadbury's objective was to get back into the British public's ‘hearts and minds’ with a new advert. The agency's brief was to ‘rediscover the joy’. This ...