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Learn the key ideas of the book by Richard Shotton

The Choice Factory

25 unconscious reactions that influence what we buy

With The Choice Factory we will dive into the world of advertising and the preconceptions that lead people to decide whether to buy one product instead of another. Richard Shotton investigates our behavior shaped by psychological shortcuts (biases), and explains how companies can strategically adapt their products and communication to these biases, thereby gaining a significant advantage over their competitors. It is a guide to stop listening only to what consumers are saying, and start seeing what they are doing.

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The Choice Factory
Read in 14 min.
Listen in 18 min.

Many useful tips to:

  • Apply the results of behavioral science to advertising and marketing.
  • Learn about the psychological mechanisms of our unconscious decisions.
  • Find out about studies and experiments that have confirmed or refuted hypotheses and theories.

The author of the book:

Richard Shotton is the deputy director of Manning Gottlieb OMD, the most awarded multimedia media agency in the history of the IPA Effectiveness Awards. He started his career as a multimedia planner seventeen years ago, working with brands like Coca-Cola. After that, he devoted himself to research. His field of interest is the application of the results of social psychology and behavioural science to advertising. He writes for newspapers such as "The Drum", "Campaign", "WARC", "Admap" and "Mediatel".

IDEA CHIAVE 1/27

Consumers use biases to make immediate decisions

The book offers insight on how to apply the results of social psychology and behavioural science to advertising. The study of decision-making processes is a fundamental topic for advertisers as it offers an explanation as to why people buy a certain product. People do not have time to logically assess all the decisions they must face on a daily basis and they resort to the shortcuts of bias (prejudices, unconscious reactions) that allow decision-making to be immediate. Therefore, brands capable of adapting their own products and communication to these biases can have a significant advantage over their competitors.

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The key ideas of "The Choice Factory"

01.
Consumers use biases to make immediate decisions
02.
Which context works best for a brand?
03.
Look at how people behave, not what they say
04.
Why pay attention to the message?
05.
If the competitors go right, we go left
06.
How to persuade consumers to change their usual behavior
07.
"Relieve" the pain of payment
08.
Avoid asking to find out what consumers really want
09.
It is easier to capture the attention of the consumer during a happy moment
10.
How to change price perception
11.
The effective order to build communications
12.
Image and copy affect the perception of the product
13.
Negative opinions do not change
14.
Take advantage of the consumer's presumption
15.
For every situation there is a different approach
16.
Choosing the media context to favor interpretation
17.
When knowledge can be counterproductive
18.
Goodhart's law and the true purpose of advertising
19.
Know the Pratfall effect and increase the attractiveness of the product
20.
How to avoid the "winner's curse" when buying ad space
21.
Provoke a reaction in advertising
22.
Evaluate study results with due consideration
23.
Biases that work and those that don't
24.
The power of personalized advertising
25.
How to take advantage of the scarcity effect
26.
Quotes
27.
Take-home message
 
 
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