Habit: The 95% of Behavior Marketers Ignore

Promoting Habits

Promotion is an odd marketing concept, encompassing a wide range of activities from advertising to sales promotions. Although it’s hard to understand why a coupon would be in the same marketing category as a television commercial, the promotion P deals with anything that communicates with customers and potential customers. As previously noted, every component of the offer communicates something, but the promotion component of the marketing mix recognizes the responsibility of the firm to package its messages for customer consumption.

Hundreds of billions of dollars are spent annually trying to influence customer behavior. Unfortunately, many people believe that much, possibly most, of this money is flushed down the drain. “I ...