Habit: The 95% of Behavior Marketers Ignore

11. Habit Maintenance

The most counterintuitive argument in this book is that companies don’t want their customers to think about them, especially if the company is the market leader. If your customers are cruising on autopilot, leave them alone. If the repurchase behavior is dislodged from habit and raised to executive mind awareness, other brands might fall into consideration. Also, the customers might modify their purchase behavior. Let’s look at a few scenarios in which this happens.

Any change to a product—including features, performance, appearance, price, or channel of distribution—risks moving a habit into executive mind review. I was surprised when my wife returned from shopping to replace our Ford Explorer that was totaled in an accident. ...