The Business of Choice: Marketing to Consumers’ Instincts

6. Thanks for Sharing (Whether You Meant to or Not)

People’s best indicator of what to do comes from the signals they receive from others.

Over the years, I have sat on the viewing side of two way mirrors watching hundreds of focus groups in Europe, Asia, North America, and South America, and seen thousands of people explaining their choices for pet food or credit cards, video games or business computing systems, or jeans or cars.

In all of that time, I think I’ve only heard a handful of people say that they have made a choice because it appeared to be what others were doing. This concurs with the experience of Vicky Johns, co-founder of the particularly enlightened qualitative research agency QRC (which predictably stands for Qualitative Research ...