Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy |  | Author: Martin Lindstrom
Creator: Paco Underhill
Publisher: Broadway Business
List Price: $24.95
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Seller: owlsbooks
Rating:  167 reviews
Sales Rank: 8739
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 256
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 5.6 x 1.1
ISBN: 0385523882
Dewey Decimal Number: 658.834
EAN: 9780385523882
ASIN: 0385523882
Publication Date: October 21, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
How much do we know about why we buy? What truly influences our decisions in today’s message-cluttered world? An eye-grabbing advertisement, a catchy slogan, an infectious jingle? Or do our buying decisions take place below the surface, so deep within our subconscious minds, we’re barely aware of them?
In BUYOLOGY, Lindstrom presents the astonishing findings from his groundbreaking, three-year, seven-million-dollar neuromarketing study, a cutting-edge experiment that peered inside the brains of 2,000 volunteers from all around the world as they encountered various ads, logos, commercials, brands, and products. His startling results shatter much of what we have long believed about what seduces our interest and drives us to buy. Among his finding:
Gruesome health warnings on cigarette packages not only fail to discourage smoking, they actually make smokers want to light up.
Despite government bans, subliminal advertising still surrounds us – from bars to highway billboards to supermarket shelves.
"Cool” brands, like iPods trigger our mating instincts.
Other senses – smell, touch, and sound - are so powerful, they physically arouse us when we see a product.
Sex doesn't sell. In many cases, people in skimpy clothing and suggestive poses not only fail to persuade us to buy products - they often turn us away .
Companies routinetly copy from the world of religion and create rituals – like drinking a Corona with a lime – to capture our hard-earned dollars.
Filled with entertaining inside stories about how we respond to such well-known brands as Marlboro, Nokia, Calvin Klein, Ford, and American Idol, BUYOLOGY is a fascinating and shocking journey into the mind of today’s consumer that will captivate anyone who’s been seduced – or turned off – by marketers’ relentless attempts to win our loyalty, our money, and our minds. Includes a foreword by Paco Underhill.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 167
Nice stuff to read for inspiration November 10, 2009
Gustavas Jankauskas (Lithuania)
The first feeling when you go through "Buyology" is "wow!". It offfers so many interesting facts and stories and just, well, stuff.
When you finish reading it and skip it through you see that Lindstrom doesn't say much new: fear works, as well as product placement does, real people in the add's sell as well as legends, surrounding the product.
So, the main benefit of this book is much of these theories put together (so you don't have to read too much), interesting facts (sharing with friends or if you want to impress a girlfriend/boyfriend) and all of this written in a easy style (you don't fall asleep on the second page).
If you decide to read it, you'll definetly find something you didn't know (sex does not sell - I bet I grabbed your attention) but it won't shake your world for sure.
 Buy-ology November 1, 2009
Kregg A. Foote (Austin TX)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I enjoyed the perspective of "Buy-ology" although it was not quite as insightful as I had hoped. I appreciated "Predictably Irrational" by Dan Ariely an alternative book with a similar theme a bit more than "Buy-ology".
so much more potential here. October 29, 2009
Herb Hunter (Baghdad)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book was a fascinating study of why we buy what we do involving MRI feedback versus standard market research most of us know about. The author does a fine job writing about an interesting subject enough to educate as well as entertain me. I do not regret buying the book.
However, since the nature of the title already had me thinking somewhat defensively (hm - why DID I buy this book?), I had to wonder what the author might have modified in his approach to avoid offending his likely readers (and purchasers). He took a very big but commendable risk by calling out the behavior of Apple people as akin to that of dedicated followers of an organized religion, something I've mentioned once or twice that only got me defensive sneers of derision down at the Starbucks. But he saved this till mid way thru the book, just to be safe.
Also striking was the complete absebce of any discussion of Barack Obama in the section where he discussed subliminal messages in political branding. There were a couple of gratuitous swipes at Republicans of course, but nowhere in this book about buying and branding was the phenomenon of Obama discussed. Even by the time the type was set, Obama won the primary and was obviously not just going to be handled like an ordinary candidate, yet he leaves him out. The author may not have wanted to gamble on calling the election wrong or simply didn't want to take away from someone he and his readers wished to see win the election. In either case, Obamas total absence from this book was conspicuous and disappointing.
Early on, the overly detailed and unflattering description of the author in the foreward and the authors obsession with anti-smoking (ok, we get it already - you don't like smoking...) were a bit tedious, but these are forgivable annoyances in light of the substance of the overall work. I particular, the part describing the mini cooper and the appeal to certain buyers, which inadvertently (perhaps) also explained the cars popularity with gay men.
Thus, this was an enjoyable but cautious book that in spite of several great examples missed one of the bigest brands of the century and made other obvious attempts at pandering to the purchaser. Then again, the book is about why we buy, and the author knows how far he can go without taking a bite of the hand that feeds him. In that sense, it was well done.
 Long winded, self-aggrandising. October 13, 2009
L Pat
As others have said this book is almost unreadably self-promoting and long winded. His self indulgent and wildy self-promoting style obscures his arguments which are thin on actual evidence. I don't understand how it got all the positive reviews from the magazines listed... amazing! The research that the book is supposedly based on is not clearly presented so that it is impossible to make any assessment of his approach and how he came to his conclusions.
 buyology September 23, 2009
Pablo A. Sanchez Matarin (Almeria, Spain)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
this is a relly practical and updating book, very interesting contents for people related with communication, publicity and marketing.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 167
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