Consumer.ology

Consumer.ology, subtitled the market research myth, the truth about consumers and the psychology of shopping, argues that companies are wrong to make decisions on the strength of market research. The catalogue description puts the claim plainly, that the book explains the folly of using market research to steer corporate choices, and illustrates it with expensive mistakes made by firms ranging from General Motors to Mattel. The reasoning runs through the chapter structure. Graves begins with the unconscious mind, and with the problem that people buy what they buy without being able to explain why, so that asking them produces a rationalisation rather than a reason. He then examines how much of buying is driven by the environment a shopper is standing in, and argues that behaviour should be studied directly rather than reported. Two chapters attack the question itself, distinguishing questions that cannot yield useful answers from the smaller set worth asking, and a further chapter turns on focus groups as a method. The closing chapters move from criticism to alternatives, dealing with innovation and with how an organisation might gain an edge by going beyond conventional research altogether.

Written from the library catalogue record for the Nicholas Brealey edition at the Internet Archive.

What this vault takes from it

Nothing yet. The title appears in the registry because it has been mentioned in passing, and no concept or person note currently draws on it.

Reliability

Not audited here. 0 notes in this vault draw on it.