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How Brands Shape Your Choices Without You Knowing

Is your shopping behavior controlled by your conscious mind, or is something else at play?

Allen Herlambang Julizar
21 min readOct 7, 2024

Did you know that up to 95% of our purchasing decisions are made subconsciously?

This startling statistic, revealed in a groundbreaking study by Harvard Business School professor Gerald Zaltman, suggests that the vast majority of our consumer choices are influenced by factors we’re not even aware of.

This is the hidden reality of priming in marketing.

Picture yourself entering a grocery store for a single item and leaving with a cart full of unplanned purchases. You’re not alone.

A survey by the Point of Purchase Advertising International found that 82% of purchase decisions happen in-store, often triggered by subtle environmental cues.

Priming’s influence goes beyond physical stores. A study in the Journal of Consumer Research found that changing a website’s background color can affect purchase intentions by up to 26%.

Research from the California Institute of Technology showed that priming consumers with certain words can increase their willingness to pay for products by as much as 28%.

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Allen Herlambang Julizar
Allen Herlambang Julizar

Written by Allen Herlambang Julizar

Tired of marketing BS? Me too. Let's talk branding, career growth, and leadership that actually matters. Find me: https://www.linkedin.com/in/allenherlambang/

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