Psychology: Psychological theories

 

Most marketers and researchers have experienced situations where a market or a brand behaves in a manner they cannot decipher. Market research, both past and present, continues to highlight dissatisfa ...

This paper is about how dominant marketing thinking shapes our underlying assumptions about human behaviour, and continues to predominate in the face of the challenges at the current 'inflexion point' ...

David Penn, managing director of Conquest Research, says we should distinguish between brain science, which is a new way of understanding the consumer mind, and neuromarketing, which through observing ...

Mike Flynn, principal of Flynn Consulting, explains how the brain processes sensory stimuli, and why this is important to marketers. He discusses the thinking behind sense-based brand experiences and ...

Because the vast majority of our cognitions, including decision making and emotional reactions, occur below the level of conscious awareness, Peter Laybourne and Dr David Lewis (from Neuroco, a neurom ...

Dr Tamsin Addison, head of research at RSM Robson Rhodes Business Consulting, reviews the current neuromarketing literature and investigates how, and with what effect, neuromarketing is being used. Sh ...

Erik du Plessis, CEO of Millward Brown South Aftrica, believes that new brain-scanning techniques and new thinking on emotion are revolutionising advertising practices. Using the theories of the neuro ...

In this introduction to Admap’s focus on ‘the consumer brain’, Roderick White argues that many recent insights into how the brain processes and stores advertising (or fails to) resonate with earlier t ...

Sue Elms and John Svendsen, from Carat Insight, describe a planning framework that has been developed from current thinking on communication processing. They introduce the concept of hierarchical res ...

Discusses the psychology of play, and argues that `play’ values are increasingly being adopted (by adults as well as children) as a corrective to `work’ and stress. Various psychologists’ theories are ...

Chris Hackley, professor of marketing at Royal Holloway College, London University, argues that today social identity is a 'pick'n'mix stall', where consumers express their identity through a range of ...

Larry Percy and Flemming Hansen, from Copenhagen Business School, and Rolf Randrup, TNS/Gallup, contend that by measuring the emotional associations that consumers have with brands, managers will have ...

Wendy Gordon, founder and partner at Acacia Avenue research and strategy consultancy, confronts some traditional theories of consumer decision-making and explains how recent research is modifying our ...

Mark Earls, executive planning director at Ogilvy, argues that the mass (as in mass marketing) has not been usurped by the individual, as is the popular view. He shows that the mechanism that drives ...

In this introduction to 6 articles focusing on understanding consumers, the author muses on how little we know about how buying decisions are made and how many of us still rely on outdated theories.

Review of article in Harvard Buusiness Review. Article analyses `success’ and argues that it must be more than single-minded ambition, which leads to dissatisfaction and stress. Enduring success requi ...

What are the environmental, social and economic dimensions of sustainable development at a regional level? This key question led to the search for an indicator system that could measure it. The author ...

Mark Earls, Ogilvy executive planning director, argues that human behaviour is better understood by thinking of consumers as herd animals (rather than individual decision makers). He then goes on to ...

Argues (in some detail) that the model which underpins all current theories of the brand, that it is a representational image or memory inside the heads of individuals which is modified by information ...

Argues that the pessimistic view of the future prevalent in many current academic and sociological books is mistaken. Evidence from work at the Future Foundation has, on the contrary, shown that (at l ...

This ‘Best Practice’ looks at ‘why we buy what we do’. Although consumer motivation is an extremely complex field, this paper briefly guides the reader through the psychological and need state theori ...

Chris McDonald asks whether it is time to revolutionise the approach to marketing due to the rapid increase in the number of TV stations, magazines and growth in advertising expenditure. The number of ...

Bruce Hall contributes to the debate on the significance of low and high involvement processing of advertising messages by suggesting that it is a problem of measurement. This particularly applies in ...

David Penn review the current debate on the theories of 'active' and 'passive' learning from the viewpoint of a pragmatic research practitioner rather than an advertising theorist. He believes that t ...

These are the final comments on the debate between Robert Heath on the one hand and Nigel Hollis and Erik du Plessis on the other on the issue of the significance of high involvement processing (HIP) ...

Robert Heath responds to Millward Brown's critique of his book 'The Hidden Power of Advertising' which appeared in the July 2002 issue of Admap. He reviews his theories on the significance of high i ...

This article challenges many of the theories put forward by Robert Heath in his book 'The Hidden Power of Advertising' especially on the importance of low involvement processing and its significance i ...

This is an adaptation from John Grant's book 'After Image - Mind-Altering Marketing'. It reviews what he calls the old paradigm which emphasised the power of image and the idea of the image adding va ...

Robert Heath introduces this article on understanding advertising by claiming that so called 'stickiness' (a message that sticks in the memory) is what most as ad agencies crave for. He discusses wha ...

This introductory piece to a special feature on the value of fame reminds us that we all knew where we were when Princess Diana died and when John Lennon was shot. These are described as 'flash bulb' ...