Branding expert Denise Lee Yohn proposes a new hierarchy of customer service based on Maslow's famous breakdown of human needs.

The comments on "Revealed: How Steve Jobs Turns Customers into Fanatics" show that many Apple fans don't believe marketing has played a role in Apple's success. Other consumers also think they aren't influenced by ads. When a business owner or key executive doesn't believe in marketing, though, it's a different story.

Could wearing a particular color influence the results obtained by a salesperson? If that salesperson is selling to a buyer of the opposite gender, the answer may be, "Yes!"

Marketers gaze in envy at brands like Apple. The firm that began with the Mac built some of the first home computers [doh, thanks, alert reader!] has turned their customers into legions of fanatical evangelists. But, without a Steve Jobs at the helm, or with fewer resources than Apple, is building that kind [...]

Big thanks to Johnny Dee of The Guardian for listing Neuromarketing as one of the six psych blogs that made their “Internet Picks of the Week.” Others listed include Mind Hacks and Malcolm Gladwell.

If you were asked to judge a policy proposal for addressing a social issue, which would be more important to you, the content of the proposal or the party that wrote it? Most of us would answer that the specific policies would be much more important than the political party that proposed it. [...]

The imperfection of our human brains has been a frequent topic of books lately, most notably Dan Ariely’s Predictably Irrational. Mistakes were made goes into considerable depth on one key failing, cognitive dissonance. The authors call cognitive dissonance the “engine of self-justification” and attribute many examples of irrational behavior to our attempts to resolve it.

What if there were five days every month when your customers were unusually receptive to your product? If you market products or services that make women more attractive (apparel, cosmetics, diet programs, etc.), those magic days exist. New research shows that women’s purchasing behavior is unconsciously influenced by their hormones. Specifically, [...]

Twitter is a mess. Maybe it’s just me, but in the last few weeks the vast majority of my new Twitter followers were bots or people promoting something. Perhaps that’s not unexpected. After all, I’m sure an even higher percentage of my email is spam. In this day and age, it’s [...]

Marketers expend a great deal of effort making it easy to buy their products. They expand distribution channels, offer financing alternatives, and when possible ensure the customer can leave with the product at time of purchase. After all, if you think of the sales process as a funnel (or perhaps a leaky funnel), [...]