Title: Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy
Author: Martin Lindstrom
Pages: 240
Price: $24.95
Type: Marketing/science
Theme: Neuromarketing is the future, praise God.
Who should read: Marketing and sales executives, CEOs, product developers, strategists, futurists.
Big Think Breakdown: A provocative book with intriguing and sometimes tantalizing claims, Buyology tries to one-up Gladwell and gets close, though it sometimes feels like there’s a man off behind the curtain, pulling levers.
Checks: Lindstrom tells a good story, much like the marketing campaigns he admires most. He’s creative, and he’s got cutting edge research to back his provocative claims about long-held assumptions of how to market goods and services. He does a nice job making the science understandable.
Peeves: You don’t get to see very much about his research. He conflates good branding with religion. His sheer enthusiasm for his argument sometimes leads him into naïve assertions. Seasoned marketers will want to skip to the part of each chapter where he talks about his research.
Quote: “…neuromarketing will become the primary tool companies use to predict the success or failure of their products.”
