Book review: Habit - The 95% of Behavior Marketers Ignore

Neale Martin is a marketer with a background in psychology which I believe is a winning combination for understanding consumer behavior. This is a very solid book that puts forth and then supports effectively the key insight and premise that marketers would be wise to focus their efforts on creating customer habituation rather than customer satisfaction.

As I've stated in my previous works, people attach to brands emotionally first and then support their position with logic later---if they are forced to support their position at all. Neale Martin made my own words come alive to me as he describes the underlying brain science behind the process of the human mind going on "auto pilot" as much as possible to cope with the vast complexity that we deal with every day. Our brains try to automate decisions as much as possible to avoid having to consciously and logically think about most of the decisions we make. A strong brand is a way to help people automate their behavior so they don't have to invest the extra effort to think about their decision amongst available brands.

Martin's bottom line on effective marketing is contained in the last sentence of the book where he states that unconscious customer loyalty is the most important asset any company can own. Marketers would be wise to keep this in mind. We design marketing campaigns and we often tend to only think of brand and advertising messages in terms of making logical and rational arguments as to why people should choose our brands. We should also ask ourselves what it would take to help people choose our brands out of habit so they don't have to make the extra effort to even think about the brand selection decision.

This book is a solid effort that I recommend to anyone involved in marketing any product or service.