What Really Makes Customers Buy a Product

On a cold English autumn evening recently, we three found ourselves together in the bar of our business school, Cranfield School of Management, along with some clients. Emma, an Australian by upbringing, did something entirely unexpected: she ordered the quintessential summer drink of Wimbledon, a Pimm’s. She didn’t say this was a good idea, or praise Cranfield’s Pimm’s, she just ordered it. Most of the group instantly followed her.

The business world is rightly obsessed with net promoter score and other measures of peer recommendation. What other customers say is incredibly influential on our buying behavior. But there is a touchpoint that is even more influential, which marketers rarely think about and almost never measure: observing what other customers actually do.

Read the full article at Harvard Business Review.