PURCHASE PROCESSES Marketing should encourage consumers to purchase products and services. However, this is only possible if you know how the buying process works. Neurobiology provides important insights that are crucial for marketing. This text appeared in the NZZ on November 18, 2015.

Currently, a big wave is sweeping over the marketing, communication and sales of companies. There is a demand for more customer centricity. The focus is on buzzwords such as customer experience, customer journey, and touch points, and stories (storytelling) are used to convey an exciting world of experience. As a rule, people use the English terms; they sound more exciting. The renowned Marketing Science Institute lists the topic of "understanding customers and customer experience" in first place when it comes to developing marketing.Misinterpreted customer processThe approaches are diffuse, but seem to appeal to the new generation of marketers. One hears arguments such as: Traditional marketing is losing its impact; customers are not moving linearly toward purchase; action comes before thought; buyers are taking the initiative themselves (thanks to social media) and leveraging the efforts of suppliers. - The path that customers take to purchase is a matter of concern for experts. It's just that many analyses have fallen short so far.Some marketers try to capture the customer process and distinguish between different phases: Attention, Interest, Desire and Action. They believe in logical behavior. Such customer phases are plausible, but do not occur in reality.In marketing, moreover, brand management approaches continue to dominate. Commercials on television now show abstract feel-good and life worlds for insurance companies, banks, or cars to suggest that every customer is looking for his or her own way. Often, however, it is hardly possible to connect these lifeworlds with the advertised service.Touch point analysis examines where the buyer encounters the company. It is about the contact with the product and the people of a company, with the salesrooms, internet platforms and announcements in the media. Representatives of the touch point approach are interested in the impressions that are created. They want to design the touch points in such a way that the customer feels the brand at each one. Uniqueness and uniformity of the basic emotional feeling are required. When BMW promises "driving pleasure" in its advertising, the consumer should experience this pleasure at every touch point. Every touch pays off for the brand, as the jargon goes. - The customer is usually asked about the emotional impressions and their importance for the purchase decision. And it is assumed that he can explain himself.Marketing should pleaseMarketing focuses on pleasing the consumer. It is hoped that the customer will then desire the products and services and move toward purchase. In practice, however, it is clear that creating impressions is quite different from triggering actions. This is also confirmed by various scientific disciplines that provide us with the know-how in this area. Neurobiologists, for example, have proven that these are two fundamentally different processes. Kent Berridge and his team, researchers at the Laboratory of Biopsychology at the University of Michigan, report two separate systems in the brain in which the processes occur relatively independently of one another (Kringelbach/Berridge 2010). They call one Liking, the other Wanting. The processes in the Liking system originate in the midbrain - where stimuli from outside arrive - and from here neuronal pathways lead to the cerebral cortex, where the incoming signals become conscious. Liking enables a person to ponder and articulate.In contrast, the processes of the wanting system lead from the midbrain to the deeper, developmentally older layers of the brain. There they meet those areas where motor actions are initiated. Consciousness has no access to these brain regions; we humans are not aware of the wanting processes. We are quite actually surprised by them, namely when we see ourselves acting abruptly. We are also hardly in a position to talk about and exchange ideas about the wanting processes going on inside us - they just happen. And in retrospect, they often appear irrational.However, these circuits do not function completely independently of each other. But surprisingly, the neural currents flow backwards, namely from the Wanting system to that of Liking. This can be imagined as follows. From the Wanting system flow the impulses that set the motor system in motion and lead to action. This has consequences. The person who acts subsequently enters a new situation that (for example) generates feelings of happiness: a food he enjoys or a place he visits that puts him in a good mood. These impressions - a consequence of the actions - are now evaluated by the Liking system: They please. And this, in turn, can be communicated to us by the human being. The explanation of the neurobiologists is clear, and we can follow it. But it contradicts our intuitive logic. This tells us: What pleases leads to action - pleasing causes action. That this intuitive expectation is not true has been known for a long time. Benjamin Libet has been able to prove that actions are initiated by unconscious processes about which the person acting cannot give any information. Michael Gazzaniga and Joseph Le Doux proved conclusively that humans postpone the reasons for their actions - they cannot be causal. Social psychology established decades ago that there is a very weak correlation between attitude and behavior and that the behavior performed influences the attitude in advance.The neuronal processes uncovered by the natural scientists yield something highly significant for marketing: the customer can provide information about liking processes. He can say (for example in a survey) what he likes. Wanting processes, on the other hand, flow unconsciously. They have no voice. They can only express themselves via the hand - the customer reaches out - or the feet - he strides to the point of sale.The art of fableIf we go to the marketing department of companies, we find an equivalent there. Here, too, we encounter an asymmetry: In marketing, we talk almost exclusively about the processes surrounding the Liking system: The customer can talk about it - he tells us what he likes. You think you understand the buyer. The belief is reinforced by the fact that the customer's assessments are mirrored in one's own consciousness: "I feel the same way, too," one thinks. And already these articulations flow into the concepts. But we infer past the reality of the customer. The customer acts, but does not reveal the laws of his actions to us - they never become an issue. Companies earn their money thanks to the actions of the buyers, they bring the turnover.justifications of the customer for his behavior are to be taken with caution - they follow the actions, but are not their cause. Behind this is a mechanism that neurobiologists have given the colorful term "fabulation instance"; people automatically add a "reason" to their actions. This is in accordance with his self-image, and it also cleverly incorporates the facts that can be ascertained by everyone - but they have nothing to do with the actual motives. They do, however, seem plausible and create a resonance in the listener's self-image. And so the listener is inclined to adopt this "rationale".The fact that company managers are also subject to these automatisms was recently demonstrated by Hattula/Reinecke et al. (2015, p. 235 ff.). Asked to put on the empathetic customer glasses, as it were, marketing executives have reinforced their egocentric expectations - and in the same course distanced themselves further from the customer.Customer journey and customer experience approaches thus address the question of where buyers and companies meet. Here, the aim is to make the brand message tangible and to increase the customer's sense of well-being. The buying process approach is different; here, the goal is to uncover those places where the buyer's action can be triggered, accelerated, and guided along the desired path. But how do you uncover those points in the customer's processes where impulses are necessary and effective? The purchase process analysis provides information about this. The method we use in practice is called behavioral analysis. It focuses on the consumer's activities and uncovers triggers that lead to action or inhibitors that stand in the way of action. The entire process that precedes a purchase act is examined: These processes often start in early childhood, where the person experiences imprints that today have an impact on the purchase or non-purchase.The behavioral analysis is based on observation, where this is possible, for example at the point of sale or by means of tracking on the Internet. The preceding process route, which is not accessible to observation, is surveyed using a special interview method. It addresses the episodic memory. Previous events are stored in it as a spatial sequence of images with associated emotions. The method has now been applied in more than 180 sectors and industries and is constantly being further developed (Rutschmann 2005 and 2013).The key points at which a company can intervene can therefore be identified in a purchasing process that is researched and mapped from the point of view of actions. Only at a few points do we find a willingness to act on the part of the customer. They can be activated with targeted messages. Precautions and measures in sales, in the sales channel and at the point of sale also have an effect. The results of a buying process analysis are surprisingly robust and allow a company to deploy scarce marketing resources in a focused manner.Science shows the wayThe buying process approach is about dynamics. We therefore do not speak of touch, but of impulses to action. The goal is to create a flow of action and to lead the customer - stage by stage - to a purchase. The successes in practice support this approach. If the consumer likes something, this does not mean that he will act and move. Leading them to purchase is the joint task of marketing, communications and sales. With the new marketing, we are shifting the emphasis and budgets from the world of liking and identification to action (Rutschmann/Belz 2015). In doing so, we are tying in with research, behavioral biology, experimental psychology, and neuroscience. They provide access to validated insights that are new to marketing and have been underutilized.At the same time, the buying process connects specialists in marketing and sales, and it is no longer the many tools that are the focus. Uncertainty and fragmentation are absorbed because the tasks in the process can be clearly defined and those responsible are not simply looking for ways to use their instruments (such as: What do we do with social media?). Budgets can also be effectively allocated according to customer processes. New marketing does away with market research that only asks for customer opinions; it focuses on concrete behavior and the factors or situations that influence it in each case. New marketing directs ingenuity to clear points in the customer process and relies on the rules of the game of human behavior.The merely pleasing marketing has had its day. Looking at customer experience, customer journey, and touch points is probably right. However, as long as the inference remains in "like" marketing, companies will not succeed in making significant progress.Authors

Marc Rutschmann

Dr. Marc Rutschmann is the head and owner of an agency in Zurich that specializes in so-called action-triggering communication and buying process analyses. These concepts are based on empirical studies of consumer behavior, which are created on the basis of systematically conducted interviews. Rutschmann is a lecturer at the University of St. Gallen and the author of several specialist books.

Christian Belz

Prof. Dr. Christian Belz is a full professor of marketing at the University of St. Gallen and has headed the Institute of Marketing since 1991. His responsibilities include teaching, research and practical projects. Among other things, Belz deals with so-called dialogue marketing, new forms of market cultivation. He is the author of numerous publications on marketing and a member of the board of directors of several companies.LiteratureGazzaniga, M. S. (2014): Tales from Both Sides of the Brain, New York: Ecco (Harper-Collins).Hattula, J. D. / Reinecke, S. et al. (2015): Managerial Empathy Facilitates Egocentric Predictions of Consumer Preferences, in Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. LII (April 2015), pp. 235-252.Kringelbach, M. L.; Berridge, Kent C. (Editors) (2010): Pleasures of the brain, Oxford: Oxford University Press.Marketing Science Institute (MSI) (2014): MSI 2014-16 Research Priorities in Marketing (www.msi.org), Cambridge (Massachusetts).Rutschmann, M. (2005): Recognizing and guiding customer buying processes, Wiesbaden: Gabler.Rutschmann, M. (2013): Farewell to branding, 2nd edition, Wiesbaden: Gabler.Rutschmann, M. / Belz, Ch. (2014): Reales Marketing - Kunden zum Kauf führen, Stuttgart: Schaeffer-Poeschel.