What actually drives consumer behavior?

The Context Of Things

Consumer behavior is a fairly big racket at some level. For smaller purchases — so, if your widget costs less than about $100 or so — you could argue that there’s no rational way to predict the behavior of a consumer. I can buy this detergent or that detergent. At that point, it’s probably about brand name — although the power and value of brand is probably declining — because I doubt I’m calling 10 of my friends and asking them about detergents. (If I had small children, I might do this.) We spend billions (probably trillions) of dollars every year trying to figure out exactly how to segment, target, and outreach to the consumers we desperately want/need, and probably about half to 3/4 of that money could essentially be flushed down a toilet, because the companies take the data and analysis and advice and completely eff it up or…

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