Habit: The 95% of Behavior Marketers Ignore

8. Behavioral Training

In Part I, the implications of the remarkable discovery that our unconscious minds control most our behavior. Part II briefly updated basic marketing concepts based on this insight. But simply knowing that our customer’s unconscious mind is influencing behavior isn’t very helpful. This last section, introduced by “Of Google and Cigarettes,” provides a blueprint for working with our customer’s habitual and executive minds to become the customers’ habit. The short version is simple: Treat your customers like dogs.

Although this sounds particularly counterintuitive, this idea is based on one of the most heavily researched and validated areas in psychology. We don’t have established marketing rules to guide us, but we do have ...