What are Your Assumptions About Consumers?

In marketingland, there are four dominant models of buyer behavior. (All stereotypes, of course. Sheesh.)

1. The Economist: "Assume a rational human in a social vacuum, calculating utility accurately across time...." 

2. The Creative: "Assume an irrational human driven by social pressures, buying purely
on feelings…”

3. The Brand Scientist: "Assume a random distribution of weak preferences among humans with fragile memories…”

4. The Physicist: "Assume a spherical human in a vacuum, extruding money uniformly in all directions…”

At their extremes — as here — they're caricatures. They're obviously incomplete. And they make good straw men to beat down easily. 

They all have merits and limits (aside from the riff on the famous "spherical cow" joke). And the truth is somewhere in the middle. 

What are your biases and beliefs? Because those are probably your blind spots in understanding how consumers really think and shop and buy.

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