Have you ever wondered why you acted as you did? Why you bought what you did? Why people from a different culture say what they say? Why people buy or don’t buy from you or your business?
Years ago, I remember reading a marketing story in high school textbook. People were asked if they would buy washing machines that had a simple dashboard or a complex one, one with few control buttons or many. Majority opinion favored the simple. The company manufactured and delivered washing machines accordingly.
And the model bombed. Nobody bought. The company lost big time because they provided a product people said they wanted.
Were the peopled surveyed lying? Possibly, though they may have had little motive to do so … perhaps other than shame at admitting they wanted something fancy. Or did they not know what they wanted?
Enter Clotaire Rapaille, who gives us a model that helps explain why we do what we do … even when we cannot say why.
In part, it is because of who we are.
Sociologists and anthropologists tells us we are an integrated bundle of nature and nurture, of biology and experience. Jumping off from there, our brains from the beginning develop first without abstract logic. Subconscious things like heart beat, digestion, breathing, and flight-or-fight instinct come first. For the latter instinct, it is probably difficult to discern what is innate and what is imprinted (Rapaille likes the word “imprinted”) on the brain … when the big scary dog barks, or whatever.
Important to the theory at this point seems to be that the neuron superhighways of the brain receive their major directions and blueprint at an early stage of brain development. Rapaille calls this the “reptilian” segment of the brain (partly due to its shape).
Instincts like survival and reproduction reside here. Here is where the gut-level driving impetuses for our buying habits come from and stay with us for the rest of our lives. Here is why we do what we do. We want to be beautiful, Rapaille tells us as an example, because our “reptilian” brain instinctively directs us. Or so goes the impressively testimony-substantiated theory.
Of course, normal human development is not arrested there. In the Limbic portion of the brain, we develop early emotional reactions to experiences. A given culture may have certain experiences in common. The early emotional reactions imprint patterns in our brain which later life expands but does not fundamentally alter.
Where there is a conflict between the Limbic and the “reptilian,” the reptilian always wins because its patterns are set deeper in the neuron highways. Or so goes the theory.
But there is not always a conflict. I may buy coffee both because I associate the smell with warm emotions of early childhood and confidence in my survival in the “womb” of my home. If the two can reinforce each other, the buying motive presumably is stronger.
Rapaille tells us the logical, intellectual, cognitive part does not really kick in until age seven. That part seeks to control the other two, but when it comes, for example, to buying, the gut-level “reptilian” takes over. Of course, there is not always a conflict between the three parts.
But if you want to know what people will buy, get down to the “reptilian” brain, down to survival and reproduction instincts, and forget the usual survey answers.
For marketing research services based on this model, see
www.archetypediscoveriesworldwide.com.
Peter Rubel
P.S. For what it is worth, I offer the following comments:
(1) I am loath to say the “reptilian” always takes over, though I think it plausible that it usually does. For example, sometimes we humans do things in opposition to what is needed for our own survival or for the survival of our offspring. Our intellectual, conscious brain is also able, with practice, to grow or shrink neuron pathways, at least to some extent.
(2) I believe there is a non-material aspect to the human psyche, one ultimately responsible for self-awareness and lying, for example, an aspect which can manifest itself in a higher order causality than any part of the physical brain, though normally the physical and non-physical are highly integrated.
(3) I am not affiliated with Rapaille’s business, but I think he has an unusual marketing theory that deserves a hearing.
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