How customers think : essential insights into the mind of the market / Gerald Zaltman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Zaltman, Gerald.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Consumer behavior--Psychological aspects.

Consumer behavior.

Consumers--Psychology.

Consumers.

Marketing--Psychological aspects.

Marketing.

Creative thinking.

Physical Description:

xxii, 323 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Boston, Mass. : Harvard Business School Press, [2003]

Summary:

Despite the resources spent on market research, nearly 80 percent of new offerings fail. The pattern is predictable: Customers say they want something, companies create it, and once it's available, customers don't buy it. Why? Is it because customers just don't know what they want? Gerald Zaltman sorts through this puzzle and concludes that, at some level, customers do know, but marketing's most overused tools -- surveys, questionnaires, and focus groups -- and conventional thinking don't dig deeply enough to help them discover and express it. In this mind-opening book, Zaltman argues that 95 percent of thinking happens in our unconscious. Therefore, unearthing your customers' desires requires you to understand the "mind of the market," that dynamic interplay between the consumers' and the marketers' thoughts that determines the outcome of every buying decision. Building on research from disciplines as diverse as neurology, sociology, literary analysis, and cognitive science, Zaltman offers rich insights into what happens within the complex system of mind, brain, body, and society as consumers contemplate their needs and evaluate products. The mind of the market is waiting to be explored. Make sure your competitors don't get there first.

Contents:

A voyage from the familiar

A voyage to new frontiers

Illuminating the mind : consumers' cognitive unconscious

Interviewing the mind/brain. pt. a: Metaphor elicitation : appendix

Interviewing the mind/brain, pt. b: Response latency and neuroimaging

Come to think of it

Reading the mind of the market : using consensus maps

Memory's fragile power

Memory, metaphors, and stories

Stories and brands

Crowbars for creative thinking

Quality questions beget quality answers

Launching a new mind-set.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 291-310) and index.

ISBN:

1578518261

OCLC:

50243751