Why Customers Really Buy

Introduction

Facts and truth really don’t have much to do with each other.

—William Faulkner

The motivations customers act on are seldom logical, predictable, or even conscious. Instead, their strongest responses stem from one source: emotion. It’s a deceptively simple reality, one that the business world has resisted, preferring instead to concentrate on quantifiable explanations for customer behavior. But whether customers are consumers or other businesses, all customers are people. And people are emotional beings. Despite any posturing to the contrary, decisions are swayed by emotion. When this emotional dynamic is acknowledged, it changes the way organizations must go about understanding their customers. It changes the way companies must ...