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Given the # of positive reviews about this book I thought it would be an incredibly insightful book about the neuroscience of why buy or how we make decisions. Unfortunately, the book has very little substance. It could really be condensed down to 10-20 pages of relevant information.At the end of each chapter I could help but think "that's it." All his touting of how expensive the study was and he only came away with this insight. I do not recommend this book.
This book could be twice as long and still be hypnotic; its main weakness is that Lindstrom breezes through study after fascinating study, giving each one only a few pages. This fun, useful and occasionally scary book demonstrates that author Martin Lindstrom is both well-versed in marketing practices and deeply engaged in academic research into neuromarketing. As a result, he can discuss findings from the latest studies involving brain scans, measured attention and recall - and explain how they relate to sales and purchases. However, that said, those interested in rationality, free will or communication will find much of interest here. getAbstract recommends it to them and, of course, to anyone making sales and marketing decisions.
I'm surprised at myself, but I put this book down halfway through. It's a quick, easy read, but I couldn't make it through.Engaging style, but how irritating. The author keeps going on and on about the multmillion-dollar research he did, but he won't tell you what the results were -- even halfway through the book. (I assume that's because the results are somebody's corporate property and he doesn't have leave to reveal them, whether he was in charge of the research or not).Halfway through the book, and you still feel like you're reading the introduction.
Buyology is something special, it sets the benchmark in terms of decent marketing book as it reveals the truth about what consumers REALLY want. The author of this controversial hit is Martin Lindstrom, considered a marketing guru and I certainly agree. Lindstrom has based this book on a brain scan on two thousand people to study the reaction of brain stimulii to numerous advetising techniques. The results make this book a must read.So what are you waiting for.
Subliminal advertising actually works. This guy obviously thinks a great deal of himself. 1) The tone of the author is sometimes self-congratulatory, which I had trouble getting past. This has been proven many times, and is well known. He was also obviously trying to add a flair of drama to the narrative, but this was inappropriate and a bit over the top, given the content he was discussing.2) For several of his studies, I can think of several alternative interpretations of the results, and yet he presents his interpretations as inescapable conclusions. I got the feeling that his obsession with figuring out why people make purchase decisions was clouding his judgment, and causing him to be far more certain of what the brain scans his team performed actually meant.3) Most neuroscientists agree that we have only a primitive, probably flawed understanding of how the different regions and systems of the brain work together to create behavior, and yet the author interprets brain scans as if they were completely accurate, detailed, well-understood snapshots of what we are actually thinking.4) Several studies were hardly surprising. We didn't need a brain scan study for confirmation.5) His primary defense of neuromarketing (from an ethical perspective) is that it will enable manufacturers to produce products that better meet our needs, so therefore consumers will benefit. This argument assumes that all of our competing needs and desires are geared towards doing (or buying) things that will improve our health and happiness which, psychologists have shown time and time again, is clearly not the case.Some nuggets in there, but buried in a lot of sensationalistic rubble.
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