Page 19 - Decoding Decisions ~ Making sense of the messy middle

19 CHAPTER 2 IDENTIFYING THE MESSY MIDDLE

If you recognise a few of the marketing models mentioned earlier, there’s a
chance that our model will feel familiar, sharing common elements with the
McKinsey model and others. This is intentional – our brief history shows how
each generation builds on the models that came before, stretching all the
way back to AIDA. However, we do believe that we’ve identified several novel
elements that reflect nuances of decision-making that previous models don’t
fully capture.

In our model, between the twin poles of trigger and purchase, sits the messy

middle, in which consumers loop between exploring and evaluating the
options available to them until they are ready to purchase. This process takes
place against an ever-present backdrop of exposure – effectively a substrate
representing all of the thoughts, feelings, and perceptions the shopper has
about the categories, brands, products, and retailers. After purchase comes
experience with both brand and product, all of which feeds back into the sum
total of exposure.

That’s the simple version – over the rest of this chapter we’ll look at each
component of the model in more detail.

E is for...

Alliteration is a good aide-memoire and, in a happy coincidence, all of the

novel components in our model beyond trigger and purchase begin with the
same letter.

Exposure

Describing the effect of brand advertising in a marketing model is tricky.
Brands can inspire powerful emotional responses and, as Binet and Field
have shown, their impact can be felt throughout the decision-making
7
process. Moreover, their power doesn’t only derive from advertising. Brands
have a presence beyond marketing: our associations with them may
be life-long in some cases and everything we know about them, from a

newspaper article to a conversation overheard on the street, can influence
our perceptions.

7 Binet, L., & Field, P. (2013). The Long and the Short of It: Balancing Short and Long-Term Marketing Strategies. IPA