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Habit: The 95% of Behavior Marketers Ignore Kindle Edition

4.0 4.0 out of 5 stars 34 ratings

Habit begins with a revolutionary premise–95% of human behavior is controlled by the unconscious mind. This fact exposes the central flaw in marketing theory, market research, and a preponderance of business strategy–that customers are consciously aware of what they’re doing. Habit explains why 80% of new products fail, why billions of advertising dollars are wasted every year, and why even satisfied customers aren’t loyal.

 

In Habit, Dr. Neale Martin persuasively contends that recent research from the brain sciences reveals that our brain evolved two minds–and marketing is focused on the wrong one. By explaining how the mind actually works, Martin shows how 50 years of marketing theory is deeply flawed, and how your customers’ habits thwart even your costliest marketing campaigns.

 

Habit explains in practical terms how to work with both your customers’ executive and habitual minds to not only make sales but more importantly, create loyalty. You’ll discover how behavior actually rewires your customers' mind–and how to leverage this by refocusing on behavior, not on attitudes and beliefs.

 

Martin offers a complete process for working with customers’ unconscious and conscious minds together, to become your customer’s habit, not just their choice. Using these techniques, you can finally achieve the twin holy grails of marketing: higher customer retention, and greater long-term profitability. 

 

Why focusing on customer satisfaction is a waste of time
Prioritizing customer satisfaction ignores a crucial reality: 85% of customers who defect report being satisfied!

 

How to establish a beachhead in your potential customer’s unconscious
Teach new buying habits through cause and effect, reward and repetition

 

Why you should keep your regular customers from thinking about you
Learn how to keep repurchase behavior on permanent autopilot

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In his first book, communications consultant-to-the-stars (Sprint, Nextel, Cisco, Nortel, TI, Motorola) and "expert in consumer behavior" Martin uses ideas from the worlds of science, technology, psychology, history, philosophy and business to demonstrate how a consumer's unconscious controls most of his or her behavior. As a result, Martin argues, companies large and small are wasting money and energy engaging the wrong part of the brain-rather than worrying over expected behavior or ultimate satisfaction, marketers should focus on how buying habits form through simple, time-tested methods like reward and repetition. How else would brands like Microsoft-infamously frustrating but ingrained in the culture-and Starbucks coffee-overpriced but ubiquitous (and literally addictive)-make it? In a reportorial style fit for both marketing executives and savvy consumers, Martin presents interviews with marketers, researchers and scientists that outline the principles supporting his method, delineating the executive mind from the habitual (unconscious) mind, exploring how an ideal product like the iPod targets both minds, and providing a blueprint for creating habitual buyers. Martin's argument requires readers to suspend some long-held beliefs about consumers, but rewards them with some eye-opening perspective.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From the Back Cover

“The Samsung Instinct was designed to be habit forming. Inspired by pioneering work by Dr. Neale Martin, Sprint and Samsung created the Instinct interface from the bottom up to work the way your brain works.”

―Doug Rossier, Sprint Instinct Marketing Lead

“In Habit, Neale Martin provides what seems to be a simple observation―that human behavior is largely managed through subconscious process. In startling fashion, Martin makes this point and then proceeds to undermine much of what marketers have come to believe as absolute truths. This is a worthwhile read, with significant implications to anyone who hopes to build brands and sell products.”

―John Stratton, Sr. Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of Verizon

“Neale provides some of the most comprehensive insights into marketing I have ever read. His understanding of today’s market complexity is simply brilliant.”

―Derek Broes, Sr. Vice President, Paramount

“At last someone has approached marketing with the clarity and precision of a brain surgeon.”

―George Ford, Marketing Director, Petrafoods

Habit reveals why traditional approaches to acquiring and keeping customers don’t work anymore. Dr. Martin shows that by focusing on behavior instead of attitudes and intentions, companies can radically improve not only how many customers they win, but how many they keep.”

―S. Somasegar, Microsoft Senior Vice President, Developer Division

Habit is an essential read for all marketers, managers and executives. Dr. Martin has elevated the seemingly boring concept of habits to a science with implications for every business in every market. This excellent book not only explains why consumers behave the way they do, but what companies should do in light of these startling insights!”

―Jagdish N. Sheth, Ph.D, Charles H. Kellstadt Professor of Marketing, Goizueta Business School, Emory University

Habit begins with a revolutionary premise―95% of human behavior is controlled by the unconscious mind. This fact exposes the central flaw in marketing theory, market research, and a preponderance of business strategy―that customers are consciously aware of what they’re doing. Habit explains why 80% of new products fail, why billions of advertising dollars are wasted every year, and why even satisfied customers aren’t loyal.

In Habit, Dr. Neale Martin persuasively contends that recent research from the brain sciences reveals that our brain evolved two minds―and marketing is focused on the wrong one. By explaining how the mind actually works, Martin shows how 50 years of marketing theory is deeply flawed, and how your customers’ habits thwart even your costliest marketing campaigns.

Habit explains in practical terms how to work with both your customers’ executive and habitual minds to not only make sales but more importantly, create loyalty. You’ll discover how behavior actually rewires your customers' mind―and how to leverage this by refocusing on behavior, not on attitudes and beliefs.

Martin offers a complete process for working with customers’ unconscious and conscious minds together, to become your customer’s habit, not just their choice. Using these techniques, you can finally achieve the twin holy grails of marketing: higher customer retention, and greater long-term profitability.

Why focusing on customer satisfaction is a waste of time
Prioritizing customer satisfaction ignores a crucial reality: 85% of customers who defect report being satisfied!

How to establish a beachhead in your potential customer’s unconscious
Teach new buying habits through cause and effect, reward and repetition

Why you should keep your regular customers from think

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B004LB5J14
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ FT Press; 1st edition (November 25, 2009)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ November 25, 2009
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 310 KB
  • Simultaneous device usage ‏ : ‎ Up to 5 simultaneous devices, per publisher limits
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 230 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.0 4.0 out of 5 stars 34 ratings

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Neale Martin
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Customer reviews

4 out of 5 stars
4 out of 5
34 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Reviewed in the United States on July 25, 2008
Bottom line: this is the best book on (customer) loyalty marketing since Reicheld's "The Loyalty Effect" and a great complement to it given its explanation of the neuroscience behind customer behavior as it relates to habit.

As marketing becomes increasingly accountable for top- and bottom-line impact, understanding the concept of habit as it relates to customer behavior is critical.

If you buy at Amazon you know how easy -- and habit forming -- it is to shop here. This book demonstrates how the power of habit, relative to customer purchase and usage decisions, has been grossly undervalued.

"Habit" gives the scientific context by gradually explaining how the human brain works in easy layman's terms and then illustrates how this significantly impacts the difference between the expected behavior (traditionally just supported by marketing research) and actual actions taken by an individual.

Having practiced loyalty marketing for 20 years now, this book is more than a theory but is in fact an overlooked reality of customer behavior.
13 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on December 21, 2008
Neale Martin is a marketer with a background in psychology which I believe is a winning combination for understanding consumer behavior. This is a very solid book that puts forth and then supports effectively the key insight and premise that marketers would be wise to focus their efforts on creating customer habituation rather than customer satisfaction.

As I've stated in my previous works, people attach to brands emotionally first and then support their position with logic later---if they are forced to support their position at all. Neale Martin made my own words come alive to me as he describes the underlying brain science behind the process of the human mind going on "auto pilot" as much as possible to cope with the vast complexity that we deal with every day. Our brains try to automate decisions as much as possible to avoid having to consciously and logically think about most of the decisions we make. A strong brand is a way to help people automate their behavior so they don't have to invest the extra effort to think about their decision amongst available brands.

Martin's bottom line on effective marketing is contained in the last sentence of the book where he states that unconscious customer loyalty is the most important asset any company can own. Marketers would be wise to keep this in mind. We design marketing campaigns and we often tend to only think of brand and advertising messages in terms of making logical and rational arguments as to why people should choose our brands. We should also ask ourselves what it would take to help people choose our brands out of habit so they don't have to make the extra effort to even think about the brand selection decision.

This book is a solid effort that I recommend to anyone involved in marketing any product or service.

~~Review by the author of the e-book, "How to Build and Manage Your Brand (in sickness and in health)."
Reviewed in the United States on November 17, 2008
You will yellow pen this book to death! Plan on buying a second just to have a clean copy. Page after page has insightful behavioral understanding that marketers have not necessarily ignored, but are only learning about now thanks to the evolution of modern scans. Today, can we see and understand the way we receive and react to stimuli. In HABIT, Neale Martin has brought us to the new science of positioning to the way the brain works. This book is for anyone in business or human sciences.
3 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on August 22, 2016
Insightful and easy to read. If you are a product designer or just want a better understanding of consumer behavior, I would recommend.
Reviewed in the United States on June 17, 2010
It has concepts that you do not found in the 20 others books about neuromarketing.
About the aplication of the concept it needs more practicle examples about how to do it.

Very good book
One person found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on September 2, 2012
I read Power of Habit ( The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business ) before this book. Power of habit gave really good insights. Before it, this book felt superficial and repetitive.

Examples in the Power of habit are well integrated into the framework (cue--> routine -->reward) argued by authors. The only thing different in this book is that maintain status-quo if you are a market leader, for you may risk customers evaluating your product vs competitors' offerings. Of course, this suggestion comes with a caveat. Do not maintain status-quo for long, for you may get outdated. Now to me this seems like a tautology with no discussion/suggestions on when to do what.
One person found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on December 2, 2012
States the obvious but overlooked idea that complicated market analysis doesn't explain the bulk of sales. Most stuff is sold automatically if you don't mess things up.
Reviewed in the United States on August 6, 2013
The money spent is well worth the content. Don't let the unappealing cover for you. It is worth your reading time.

Top reviews from other countries

Anthony
5.0 out of 5 stars Very interesting indeed
Reviewed in France on September 22, 2014
A clearly exposed and accessible book for readers both in and out of this domain. Shines some more light onto what's overlooked in a consumers everyday life.
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