How much do we know about why we buy? What truly influences our decisions in today’s message-cluttered world? An eye-grabbing advertisement, a catchy slogan, an infectious jingle? Or do our buying decisions take place below the surface, so deep within our subconscious minds, we’re barely aware of them?
In BUYOLOGY, Lindstrom presents the astonishing findings from his groundbreaking, three-year, seven-million-dollar neuromarketing study, a cutting-edge experiment that peered inside the brains of 2,000 volunteers from all around the world as they encountered various ads, logos, commercials, brands, and products. His startling results shatter much of what we have long believed about what seduces our interest and drives us to buy. Among his finding:
Gruesome health warnings on cigarette packages not only fail to discourage smoking, they actually make smokers want to light up.
Despite government bans, subliminal advertising still surrounds us – from bars to highway billboards to supermarket shelves.
"Cool” brands, like iPods trigger our mating instincts.
Other senses – smell, touch, and sound - are so powerful, they physically arouse us when we see a product.
Sex doesn't sell. In many cases, people in skimpy clothing and suggestive poses not only fail to persuade us to buy products - they often turn us away .
Companies routinetly copy from the world of religion and create rituals – like drinking a Corona with a lime – to capture our hard-earned dollars.
Filled with entertaining inside stories about how we respond to such well-known brands as Marlboro, Nokia, Calvin Klein, Ford, and American Idol, BUYOLOGY is a fascinating and shocking journey into the mind of today’s consumer that will captivate anyone who’s been seduced – or turned off – by marketers’ relentless attempts to win our loyalty, our money, and our minds. Includes a foreword by Paco Underhill. |
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 brilliant, timely, eye-opening |
| Review Date: November 9, 2008 |
| Reviewer: George DeMark, Chicago, Ill. |
| I'm not a marketer, or all that interested in business-type books (though like most people I do like to shop). But this book was being reviewed all over the place and I saw it on the Wall Street Journal bestseller list and I thought it sounded like the perfect business book. Well, it is. I couldn't put it down, and when was the last time I said that about a book about the sly and subtle ways that businesses and advertisers try and get us to buy their stuff? By the time I put this book down, I couldn't even look at my iPod in the same way. Lindstrom carried out a global survey of customers using brain-scanning so he could peer into their minds as they observed various logos and such. Along the way he presents intriguing, and at times devastating, scientific findings on brands and religion (Apple computers light up the same region of the brain as do pictures of rosary beads and churches), subliminal advertising and tobacco, and most startling of all -- AND WHY ISN'T THE WHOLE WORLD REPORTING ON THIS? -- that cigarette warning labels, rather than discouraging smokers, actually make them want to smoke. Hello? I know we're in a crucial election issue, and that the economy is tanking, but the fact this isn't a headline around the world that's causing policy makers to rethink their strategies just boggles my mind. A superb, illuminating read -- easy to read science with fascinating anecdotes. |
BUYology forces us to look at advertising & marketing from a new perspective
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| Review Date: November 12, 2008 |
| Reviewer: Anne Marie Kovacs, |
With his perpetual globe-trotting ways, and front seat access to the practices of leading brands worldwide, Martin Lindstrom has his finger on the pulse of the latest, bravest and best of worldwide marketing, advertising and consumer behavioral trends.
BUYology is a direct product of Lindstrom's futuristic vision for brands everywhere. Before BUYology, we were presented with BrandChild and BrandSense, where in each case, he brought us new concepts, research and theorems that we now take for granted in branding strategies.
In his constant quest to find out ways to build better brands, Lindstrom's BUYology forces us, yet again, to look at branding, advertising and marketing from a new perspective. In this case, through neuroscience, he investigates whether marketers can unlock consumers' subconscious thoughts and better understand their motivations to buy. Through extensive research, Lindstrom demystifies and questions some well anchored tactical advertising assumptions and myths, e.g. does sex sell, really? When it does, he tells us the why and the how.
The book is written in a conversational, approachable tone. It is filled with Lindstrom's colorful storytelling, examples that corroborate each point that he is making. As he mentions, until now, most advertising and marketing has been a guessing game. It seems that the marketing folk as well as the consumer can learn some new tricks with this book.
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Why did you buy that? Martin Linstrom knows.
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| Review Date: November 14, 2008 |
| Reviewer: B. A. Killmeyer, Pittsburgh PA USA |
After reading Buy-ology by Martin Lindstrom I will never again purchase anything without examining my reasons for doing so.
The book is written in a down-to-earth, easy to read style and is as interesting as any novel I've read. Combining marketing with scientific research provides excellent, factual help for both the consumer and the retailer. In each chapter the reader is confronted with results of scientific studies that cause him to question the motivation behind purchases,and gives the merchant helpful advice on ways to increase his sales while remaining honest and fair to customers.
Does sex sell? Does religion play a part in our purchasing choices? What part do our senses play in our decision about which product to purchase? How do logos affect our decisions? Martin Lindstrom answers all these questions and more. He also gives us insight into what to expect in future advertising.
Buy-ology is not only a fascinating read, it is essential for every consumer and for every merchant. Martin Lindstrom is a man of extensive marketing experience and he shares his acquired knowledge with his readers.
I highly recommend this book as both interesting and helpful.
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Martin's a leader in this field.
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| Review Date: November 18, 2008 |
| Reviewer: Ric Fletcher, Tasmania, Australia |
| I have to admit that I have a bias about Martin Lindstrom's books. His incredibly enthusiastic line of enquiry and fascination with marketing, together with his experiences around the world make this a riveting investigation about human nature and what makes us tick (buy) when we walk into a shop. It all makes so much sense. The three years of research and academic study behind the book add a powerful understanding and legitimacy to this witty and most importantly, entertaining read! |
To Buy or Not To Buy?
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| Review Date: April 13, 2009 |
| Reviewer: Deb, Palo Alto, CA |
| Curious about what ultimately determines your purchasing decisions? Then, you might want to take a peek into the "window into the human mind" created by neuromarketing: "an intriguing marriage of marketing and science." _Buyology_ offers a glimpse into the subterranean brain activity going on during the purchase-or-pass debate. Based on interesting--and often surprising--findings from Lindstrom's neuromarketing study which uses fMRI and SST (steady-state typography) to map and measure brain activty, _Buyology explores the intersection of marketing, psychology, and, neuroscience. Without being too science or marketing heavy, _Buyology_ provides intriguing insight into what really motivates us to buy. Mindful consumerism begins here. |
Amazing
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| Review Date: November 3, 2008 |
| Reviewer: Allan Mulinacci, |
Martin Lindstrom's take on advertising is entirely refreshing. He views the industry, consumers' relationship with it, and the brands through which the two factions interrelate as human entities. By understanding the mission of advertising in human terms, we learn that it makes an impact on us in the same way we make impacts on each other - by being relevant, making sense in context. By understanding brands as organisms with human traits, we learn that brands can be memorable by giving us something to remember and creating somatic markers - more highlights to add to our lifetime of impressions stamped by somatic markers, to join our experiential recollections of family, childhood experience, pains and pleasures. If advertising does us the courtesy of remembering consumers are humans, brands have more chance of becoming parts of our lives. Perhaps neuromarketing, as Lindstrom has begun to demonstrate in Buyology, will enable marketers to treat us as individuals. Buyology's insights reveal that human-oriented branding, that uses differentiation to build somatic markers and introduces value to, rather than intrusion into, is possible.
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Please read this book!
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| Review Date: November 4, 2008 |
| Reviewer: Tine, |
What a fascinating book. Here's a story about us that tells us more than we know about our own minds. The old adage "you don't know your own mind" is validated by Martin Lindstrom's exploration of it from the perspective of the consumer-marketing relationship. It's perversely comforting to know that my inexplicable changes of mind about fashions which, initially seem unappealing to me, eventually win me over. This could be my mirror neurons at work. I do want what she's having. Buyology explains its findings in the context of real life and highly recognizable situations - all the more interesting because they form a tapestry of world experience.
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