The Choice Factory (25 Behavioural Biases That Influence What We Buy)

By (author) Shotton, Richard
Short description/annotation
Before you can influence decisions, you need to understand what drives them. In The Choice Factory, Richard Shotton sets out to help you learn. From priming to the pratfall effect, charm pricing to the curse of knowledge, the science of behavioural economics has never been easier to apply to marketing.
Description
Before you can influence decisions, you need to understand what drives them. In The Choice Factory, Richard Shotton sets out to help you learn. By observing a typical day of decision-making, from trivial food choices to significant work-place moves, he investigates how our behaviour is shaped by psychological shortcuts. With a clear focus on the marketing potential of knowing what makes us tick, Shotton has drawn on evidence from academia, real-life ad campaigns and his own original research. The Choice Factory is written in an entertaining and highly-accessible format, with 25 short chapters, each addressing a cognitive bias and outlining simple ways to apply it to your own marketing challenges. Supporting his discussion, Shotton adds insights from new interviews with some of the smartest thinkers in advertising, including Rory Sutherland, Lucy Jameson and Mark Earls. From priming to the pratfall effect, charm pricing to the curse of knowledge, the science of behavioural economics has never been easier to apply to marketing. The Choice Factory is the new advertising essential.
Table of contents
Preface Introduction The 25 Biases 1. The Fundamental Attribution Error 2, Social Proof 3. Negative Social Proof 4. Distinctiveness 5. Habit 6. The Pain of Payment 7. The Danger of Claimed Data 8. Mood 9. Price Relativity 10. Primacy Effect 11. Expectancy Theory 12. Confirmation Bias 13. Overconfidence 14. Wishful Seeing 15. Media Context 16. The Curse of Knowledge 17. Goodhart''s Law 18. The Pratfall Effect 19. Winner''s Curse 20. The Power of the Group 21. Veblen goods 22. The Replicability Crisis 23. Variability 24. Cocktail Party Effect 25. Scarcity Ethics Conclusion References Further reading Index
Review quote
"This book is a Haynes Manual for understanding consumer behaviour. You should buy a copy - and then buy another copy to give to one of the 97% of people in marketing who are too young to remember what a bloody Haynes Manual is."- Rory Sutherland, columnist for The Spectator and Executive Creative Director, Ogilvy One. "Most books in this area are academic and dry as dust. If you want to know how research and sociology can impact on real life in the real world, Richard''s book will show you - using simple words and examples that real people can understand." - Dave Trott - creative director, author of Predatory Thinking and founder of three creative agencies. "In a cacophony of overstatement, Richard Shotton possesses a melodious and balanced voice. In this short but powerful tome you can learn about how marketing actually does influence consumers. Or, for the more prosaic among us, how to get people to re-use towels, buy wine when German Oompah music is playing and select a broadband supplier by mentioning Charing Cross Station. The book also mentions me (all too briefly) which I also find enticing." - Mark Ritson, columnist for Marketing Week and Professor at Melbourne business school. "At last someone has written a commonsense, practical guide to using behavioural science to sell things. It is backed by lots of research and working examples drawn from the author''s own experience and his encyclopedic knowledge of the industry. In short, this is a classic advertising textbook in the making." --Steve Harrison, British copywriter, creative director and author. "Actionable, memorable and powerful... Shotton has taken the jewels of behavioral economics and made them practical." - Seth Godin, author of `All Marketers are Liars''. "Comprehensive, compelling and immensely practical, t