'How Humans Decide': WPP and Oxford propose revolution in buyer-behavior thinking

"The report, ambitiously titled 'How Humans Decide', draws on some 1.2 million one-to-one interviews fresh after people have finished buying something. The interviews, drawn from WPP's 'Momentum' database, have been collected over the last decade from a series of discrete category- and market-specific surveys. Now covering 200 categories in 47 countries, this is the first time that their results have been pulled together for a comprehensive analysis of buying behavior."

"The centerpiece of the research is a new mapping of the purchase journey as one in which most purchasers have made up their minds long before shopping even begins. It divides the purchase process into two phases: first, the 'priming stage' of "accumulated brand experiences over time" and, second, an 'active stage' triggered by a tangible want or need. The research diagnoses a widespread phenomenon it calls 'priming bias', in which 84% of purchases "consist of people choosing brands they're already biased towards before shopping"."

"Based on 1.2m post-purchase interviews, the researchers argue that marketers' understanding of real behavior - and the media plans they influence - has been oversimplified and misleading for too long. A new report from WPP Media and Oxford University's Future of Marketing Initiative argues that the marketing and media worlds have been led astray by convenient oversimplifications about how humans behave."

The dataset comprises 1.2 million post-purchase, one-to-one interviews collected over a decade across 200 categories in 47 countries. The purchase journey maps into two phases: a priming stage of accumulated brand experiences and an active stage triggered by a tangible want or need. A phenomenon called priming bias explains that 84% of purchases consist of people choosing brands they were already biased toward before shopping, with no category below 70%. Consumers typically consider fewer than three brands and often already know which brand they will buy. Homogenous media planning overlooks individual and channel differences and misaligns with real purchasing behavior.

Read at The Drum