Decoded: The Science Behind Why We Buy

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Decision Science

Understanding the Why of Consumer Behaviour

In marketing our 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!

No advert in recent times has won more prizes for creativity or received more public and media attention than Cadbury’s ‘Gorilla’. Brand volumes had been fairly static for years and the brand had suffered the effects of a significant quality problem 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 resulted in the ‘Gorilla’ advert, in which a gorilla first anticipates and then starts drumming along to the Phil Collins song ‘In the air tonight’. The advert achieved huge amounts of interest and attention, not only from consumers but also from those of us working ...