I just came by this Q&A at HBS Working Knowledge, with Gerald Zaltman, author of How Customers Think: Essential Insights into the Mind of the Market.  The basic premise of the book is that 95 percent of our purchase decision making takes place in the subconscious mind, and he attempts to answer this essential question: How can marketers understand unconscious consumer thinking?  

A few excerpts :

"Q: How can marketers begin to understand behaviors and attitudes of which customers themselves are not aware?

A : There are several helpful approaches. One is to double check stated beliefs with actual behavior. For example, many consumers report handling competing brands and comparing prices at the point of purchase. However, observations of these same consumers often reveal that they don't even look at alternatives to the chosen brand. Another option uses physiological or response latency measures. These often reveal that what consumers actually believe or think, as measured by unconscious physical reactions, contradicts what they say when asked directly. Another very productive approach is to study the metaphors consumers use to express their thoughts and feelings. This involves in-depth probing in one-on-one interviews for the hidden meanings contained in their metaphors."

"Q: We hear a lot about how technology is revolutionizing our ability to understand customers. Is this aspect overrated? Is science the future of marketing?

A: Technology is indeed revolutionizing our ability to understand customers. Insights about the workings of the cognitive unconscious including memory, attention, information processing, the nature of human universals, and socially shared cognitions, and the neurobiology of figurative thinking, for instance, have already outdated most thinking and current practices among managers. Many of these advances are the product of advances in research techniques. Still, the use of scientific advances requires the imaginative translation of scientific findings into effective practice in the marketplace. This is the art that goes hand-in-hand with science. Imaginative thinking by managers and market researchers is required to successfully apply insights from metaphor-elicitation and neuro-imaging techniques, for example, to generate helpful new products, more informative communications, and more rewarding in-store experiences."

There seems to be lots of good stuff for market researchers in this.  Human cognition meets storytelling.  Psychology, neurosciences, sociology and anthropology all rolled into one, in the approach.   

I did a search on Google for reviews, and found a lovely article related to the book, called The Hidden Language of the Market.

Has anyone read the book ? Views ? 

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