Habit: The 95% of Behavior Marketers Ignore

12. The Force of Habits: The Double-Edged Sword

Although capturing customers’ habits can lead to long-term profitable relationships, doing so requires changing the habits of the organization. The inertia of an individual customer’s habit is nothing compared to that of a large company. Not only can the organizational structure (including policies, procedures, and processes) bog down offers designed to be habitual, but the behavior (habits) of individual employees can as well.

If market managers have been using customer satisfaction measures to grade employees, evaluate stores, and report to their bosses, they will experience tremendous resistance to change to a more meaningful metric. A product designer might create an intuitive interface based ...