Introduction

This book reveals how two fundamental assumptions have led marketing onto a dead-end path: that customers are aware of what they are doing, and that they know why they do what they do. Using advanced technologies, neuroscientists and cognitive psychologists have recently discovered the counterintuitive fact that the unconscious mind controls up to 95% of behavior, so it is not surprising that the marketing theory taught for the past 50 years requires some serious updating. Managers and executives willing to revise their most cherished beliefs in light of this new understanding can gain the rarest kind of success, a sustainable competitive advantage.

Habit assists in this process by exploring the implications of the powerful but invisible habitual mind. By recognizing the influences of both executive and habitual mental processes, companies can develop products and services that are better for customers while simultaneously increasing customer retention and profitability. To accomplish this, companies must reassess not only their basic operating assumptions, but also their organizational structure.

Ultimately, Habit is about the limitations of marketing to perform its basic function: to help companies establish and maintain profitable relationships with customers. This failure does not occur because companies fail to follow the basic tenets of marketing—it occurs because they do follow them!

As a marketing professional, I must confess to having counseled my clients and taught my students the same rules of marketing that lead to such bleak results as an 80% new product failure rate and customers that defect even as they report being highly satisfied. Although I knew about these persistent failures, my sense was that companies were simply not doing a good job in execution, not that there was a problem with basic marketing principles. Because I passionately believed in a customer-centric focus, I accepted the articles of marketing on faith.

And as a true believer, I was unable to separate these dreadful results from the marketing models that created them. My faith in the underlying goals kept me from questioning marketing’s most sacred cows even when evidence of their failures was pervasive.