This article reveals remarkable patterns underlying all consumer behaviour and brand choice. It is based on many years of research driven by Neurobiology and establishes, for the first time, the links between the disciplines that study consumer behaviour. Underlying all behaviour exist human dispositions that made us survive and thrive.
Despite the fact that much of our behaviour is unconscious, it is not arbitrary. Our dreams have substance, they make sense. Our life choices must be justified, our life must add up. Marketing is all about associations, but for associations to work they must be the right ones.
We do not just buy goods or services. By integrating intrinsic functionality with predefined meaning we create and express the master narratives of our lives. Brands are powerful carriers of meaning that allow us to experience our human heritage and put our world in order.
People do not just buy products. Integrating functionality with meaning they create the narratives which are necessary for the expression of our very life forces.
Global brands cross languages and cultures and sell virtually undifferentiated products to millions of us around the world. This is only possible by fulfiling the most universal collective representations, basic dispositions and commonalities of human experience, excluding all fortuitous and individual elements from their narratives.
Brands are powerful containers of meaning that help people write the stories they need in order to survive. We live through our narratives, we are literally our own theories: if our theories are fulfilled, we grow and thrive. If they remain unfulfilled, our capacity to fully live is undermined. Our everyday actions are far from being trivial. With each what we are ultimately seeking is to maximise life.
