Catriona Nunn Why do we reach for a Coke without thinking or feel oddly loyal to brands we barely remember choosing? In Why Did You Buy That Drink?: The Surprising Science Behind Everyday Purchases, York alumnus Mehdi Bouhassoune (International Relations, 2019) peels back the illusion of rational choice to reveal the hidden forces shaping our everyday purchases. From supermarket aisles to social pressure, beliefs, habits and subtle cues quietly steer what ends up in our baskets and ultimately, our lives. Drawing on cutting-edge consumer psychology, Mehdi invites us to question not just how markets work, but how well we really understand ourselves as consumers.
What hall were you in? When did you graduate and what did you study?
“I did my Master’s in International Relations from 2016 to 2018, part time. I was part of Alcuin.”
Did your time at York influence your decision to write this book in any way?
“I’ve always had a deep interest in how markets work. At York, I even tried to join classes on economics. However, it’s the political economy courses that really answered the questions I was pursuing. York represented my transition from an English undergraduate degree to an International Relations Master’s, and with it, a more thorough exploration of how markets work and influence the fabric of our societies. This interest would continue in my work life, although less on a macro level and more at the individual level, with my graduate program at YouGov following my Master’s at York.”
Your subtitle is The Surprising Science Behind Everyday Purchases. In your view, what are the most surprising forces or influences that shape even small buying decisions (like sodas, toilet paper, etc.)?
“We like to think of ourselves as independent and in control of our lives. However, even the simple fact of having other people in a shop as we ourselves make purchases can sway our decisions. Over the last two decades, Dahl and Argo have been fleshing out the social influences nudging our purchases. Condescending salespeople in the luxury context led to more sales. Customers that felt like they already owned a product in a store reacted negatively if it was touched by a salesperson. People shopping in groups would have more positive feelings towards the shop. Shopping with close friends reduced impulsive purchases. Customers were more likely to pick neutral, non-expressive products if a salesperson was close by.In the context of something as mundane as toilet paper, it is possible that if purchased next to a salesperson, a consumer would pick a plain, non-descriptive toilet paper, as opposed to a colourful, perfume-imbued one.”
How do the meanings we attach to brands affect our purchasing behaviour more than we realise?
“We’re constantly swimming in a world of meaning. As soon as, as children, we develop the cognitive and social abilities to enter the world of branding, there’s no going back. We can never see a watch as a watch, we see it as a Rolex. We won’t be able to appreciate textures, product quality, or our own naked tastes without the tainting of branding and its socially charged meanings. The overwhelming evidence is that very early in life, we adopt the value structure that branding has worked hard to embed in our consumer culture, and these values follow us our entire life and guide our purchases, whether we like it or not.”
You write about timing, social circles, and beliefs as hidden forces in decision-making. Which of those do you think people underestimate most, and why?
“People underestimate beliefs because they’re unaware of them. We all carry beliefs as we live our consumer lives. It may be that new brands shouldn’t be bought in the first few months in case a recall is announced. It may be that fizzy drinks are good for tummy aches. It could even be religious or ethical beliefs. They shape our decisions, but because they’ve been part of our personalities for so long, we tend to forget that they’re there. The truth is that beliefs are everywhere, and a good example would be the beliefs that spread in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, rightly or wrongly impacting millions of purchases across the country. The other point is that beliefs are sticky, they last a long time. I’d assume that many Covid-19 era beliefs are still being practised to this day. It’s another reason why beliefs are the most underestimated force, they’re in the background, and they stick around for long.”
How much of what we buy is driven by rational need vs emotional or social impulses (or subconscious factors)?
“There’s very little rationality in our purchases. This is what makes this topic so interesting, and advertising so profitable. We’re easily tricked into buying more expensive products than required, or jumping on a trend we have no true interest in. What’s more, as we’ll evidence throughout the book, people make non-rational decisions all the time. This is why studying humans is interesting. They make decisions that visibly make no sense every single day. Sodas when on a diet. Expensive drinks when on an aeroplane. Alcohol ahead of exams. They buy things they don’t need because of some discount or fear of missing out.
In addition, rational purchases require deliberate thought, but a large chunk of our purchases have no such thoughts. There’s a difference between the scene and the story. We’re all navigating scenes as consumers (e.g. a supermarket) but our interpretations, the stories in our head, filter these scenes (e.g. the bottle on the shelf risks making me diabetic later in life). Rational purchases require a story of maximisation of utility (e.g. this is a great deal because I have searched for a while) but such rationales are a minority. In fact, we sometimes think that as long as we focus on the price, we’re being rational. Price can increase and lead to fewer purchases, but it can also lead to more purchases. Price increases can be used as a signifier of status, quality, investment quality, or other rationalizations that end up derailing the expected simplistic view that an increase in price equals a reduction in consumption. The basic logic on rationality, often focused on prices, falls short of explaining how consumers really act in markets. We’re just too irrational to predict accurately with a single theory of human behaviour.”
Are there particular mental shortcuts, biases, or heuristics that consumers lean on frequently – ones that make them behave in predictable ways?
“As consumers we carry a lot of mental shortcuts, but they’re not all of our own making. The ultimate goal of brands is to own the link between internal feelings (e.g. I feel thirsty) and purchase decisions (e.g. I will get a Coke). Even before the cognitive and social skills necessary to fully appreciate them, brands can sponsor specific highways within our brains, in the synapses between our neurons. They start to own, day after day, the connections between a product and dopamine, between a package and serotonin. Brands stop being some external, anonymous codes, instead they materialise into the internal passwords to our feelings. As in a game of monopoly, brands start to own sections of our reality. These become shortcuts. Neural paths of decision making carved over time. They become automatic. We sit down and order a Coke. We walk towards our cupboard and think of Kinder. It is our habits that tend to create the most recognisable shortcuts, and as anybody who has a favourite meal at a favourite restaurant would admit, these habits can make use highly predictable.
How do environment or context (for example: store layout, online vs in-store, what’s around us) sneakily shift what we purchase?
“As I mentioned above, we all navigate scenes with stories in our heads. The scenes are important. A store with an overwhelming availability of diet drinks will be seen by our eyes and enter our brains, potentially making it into our thoughts and decision-making. But the stories these external stimuli encounter in our heads is what is really interesting. Humans are not simple machines that take stimuli and create actions on the other end. They think. They can see a shop full of diet drinks and think that aspartame is just as bad as sugar, or they can think that their bedtime is coming up and wouldn’t want to have a soda. This is why the exact same scene leads to very different purchasing patterns across consumers. Consumers come with their own pre-installed filters on reality, and although the environment is often the starting point of purchasing decisions, it cannot be their final answers.”
To what extent does culture (national, regional, subculture) influence our purchase decisions? Can you share examples where the same product is bought for wildly different reasons in different contexts?
“We live in a consumer culture. Pretty much everything we do is consumption, from our leisure time to our sporting activities, to even our love lives. Underpinning all this consumption are brands. The narrative and messages brands send are not even owned by the brands themselves. They’re co-created by all of us, they are part of society, of culture.These narratives are the building blocks of our consumer culture. What this means is that brands have shaped culture: For this reason, you pay close attention to how others, besides yourself, decipher the social meaning of brands. You might not like Rolex watches at all and prefer Swatches, but even if you tried hard to flex your Swatch, you won’t be able to reformulate society into having the same view as you do. Since the globalisation of the early 2000s, international brands have impacted cultures around the world, as I reference the book The McDonaldization of Society by George Ritzer. So, culture is extremely important in our purchase decisions, and a lot of culture is becoming homogenous across the world. Yet, smaller brands do carve a niche, often claiming authenticity, and are able to capitalize on subcultures or cultural differences across people, languages, and regions. A good example for the U.K. is Aldi, a discounter in the U.K. but seen as a more premium retailer in China. Similarly, Oppo is seen as a strong brand with premium products in Asia, but more of a random brand in Europe. Because our consumer culture is based on brands, the social credit we get for certain purchases is highly context dependent.”
How do peer groups, family, or social media shape not just what we buy, but why we buy it?
“If you enter a shop and an attractive person has just tried the piece of clothing you’re interested in, you might be willing to pay an extra 30 to 40% for the item. When asked how much they’d pay for the T-shirt as part of the bogus marketing study, they mentioned a median average of $12.45 for the average shopper. For the highly attractive shopper; however, this jumped up to $17.09. An increase of nearly $5, or a whole 37%. It paid to be pretty. So not just our peers, but pretty much anybody can influence our purchases. When it comes to why we buy, having people around us or even in our thoughts prime us to make purchases that are more socially rewarding. For example, at a business meeting with colleagues, we might order a more expensive wine than we usually do. We might even switch from a beer to a wine, to keep our image in check. In this case, our motivation completely changed from “the drink I typically like” to “the drink that will help me get a promotion later on.”
In what ways do societal values (e.g. sustainability, prestige, minimalism) start to change how people decide what to buy?
“Our consumer cultures are always witnessing trends. The trends can be based on values, or they can simply be ideas that have gone viral. It is easy to have them start to change how people decide what to buy. What is difficult is to have people continue to change their behaviours. Trends are easily bought into. They’re open to most people. They are not gate-kept. You can follow a trend by fulfilling a simple order on Amazon or by visiting your local store. For these trends to have an impact, they need to be embedded into our culture. The goal for these trends is for them to become communities. Groups need to be created and associated based on this new consumption pattern, and these groups need their own value systems. In sustainability, this is for example a local group coming together to clean the riverbanks, and have their own internal values on what to consume. Within these groups, self-monitoring is high, and consumption patterns are likely to stick over time. In the mainstream world, it is harder to achieve broad and long-lasting change. This is certainly where regulations come into play.”
What are some of the unintended consequences of the consumer behaviour patterns your book describes – on people’s finances, wellbeing, or on society more broadly?
“As consumers we have goals. We want to save for retirement and complete a diet. We also have other goals that are more immediate goals, such as quenching thirst or fulfilling a craving. These goals are in tension. The most top-of-mind goals lead to availability bias. In other words, the more prominent the goals in our heads, the more they shape what we see, pay attention to, and eventually consume. Goals created a reality where red wasn’t just a colour, it was a Coke, and it was thirst-quenching. They created a reality where, walking through busy crowds, a bell wasn’t just some background noise, it was the sign of an ice cream truck during a particularly hot day. Goals also, in their priming for supporting elements to the goal, blurred everything else. The unintended consequence is that we’re getting dragged to consumption patterns we try to avoid. We’re struggling to fulfil our bigger goals because more immediate goals shape our reality and prime our decisions.”
Do you think most people are aware of how much they’re being influenced in their purchases? If not, what stops them from being more aware?
“It is extremely difficult to know, even for experienced market researchers. It is also not fair to assume consumers can decipher their own purchases. I compare this to psychotherapy: It is a therapy patient with no particular self- awareness laying down the justifications behind their actions with complete confidence, blissfully unaware of the underlying triggers.Purchases are at the intersections of most of our needs and triggers. They combine our conscious and subconscious. This is why this book is important. It is a very difficult task and the more we know, the more we’re able to raise our awareness and discover patterns. What stops people from being aware are the incentives. Our consumer culture provides little incentive in terms of asking questions and to self-reflect on our purchases. This is the first hurdle. But even with this hurdle cleared, it remains difficult to understand our purchases. It requires time and resources, and mini experiments. My hope is that the book will open a window on some of these underlying drivers and reasons, and lead to more curiosity in the aggregation of little purchase decisions that eventually create our lives.”
What are some unhealthy or harmful habits tied to consumer decision-making that you think deserve more attention?
“The research on consumers is often justified by its help offered to consumers. Indeed, some of the first studies within the Journal of Consumers Research, in the 1974 issues, were about understanding the origin of harmful choices (an example is found in the very first issue of the journal, a study on the beliefs and behaviours of smokers by Olshavsky and Summers). The very motivation behind the creation of the field was the perceived imbalance between the knowledge and tools available to consumers, and the ones available to marketing and business executives. It was thought that consumers deserved more support, they deserved a level playing field.Although this book is not a self-help book, consumer research is seen as a tool consumers need to make the most optimal decisions for themselves. I would say that harmful habits are context-specific, but in a society with rising levels of physical and mental issues, we can all take a look at our consumption and optimise for better outcomes.”
For readers who want to become more mindful or intentional in their purchase decisions, what small changes would you suggest?
“There are different selves that shape our decisions. The present, future, internal and external selves. As consumers, we can become more mindful by self-switching. For example, if I am at a fancy dinner with colleagues, I can ask myself what would I order if I were by myself? If I feel hungry and cranky, I can ask myself what do I typically order when satiated. If I always get a certain drink on my way to work, I can try to take a different path, without the reminders, and see if I still get a similar drink. At the end of the day, we become mindful when we purposely change our internal needs and external context, and observe whether or not our purchasing patterns change.”
How can individuals resist the subtle pressures (marketing, social expectations, etc.) that push them to buy things they don’t really need?
“This book is not a self-help book. However, I would foresee consumers to apply some of the research for themselves.. The cheat day during diets is useful. It helps replenish our self-regulatory resources, while having little impact on our overall goal (as we’re just missing one day out of six). It also helps reframe the cheat day as part of the overall goal, rather than a piece of evidence for failure that we subsequently use to give up entirely, leading to all seven days of a week being misaligned with our goal. Everybody can work on limiting their exposure to consumptions they want to avoid, but in certain cases, building pressure valves into our new consumption patterns helps sustain our goal over time.”
Do you believe there is a role for regulation, policy, or business ethics in helping shift consumer behaviour for the better? If so, what might that look like?
“There is absolutely a need for regulation in consumer markets. In fact, as I retrace the history and rise of consumerism, I look at how it started, where regulations were virtually non-existent. I talk about “The Chamber of Horror”, an FDA display with deceiving and dangerous products, most notably an eyelash dye that caused blindness. I also talk about the rise of regulations for advertising aimed at children, the GDPR around cookies, and even the fact that nudge campaigns may fall short of true regulations, such as bans. I am lucky enough to have lived in three countries, and I have observed how a society without the pitfalls an unregulated market may produce is an easier one to live as an individual, family, and society.”
Has your own purchase behaviour changed since writing/ researching the book? Can you share an example?
“An interesting realisation while writing the book is that there is no ultimate purchase behaviour for humans. We need novelty, we need surprise, and we need our purchases to evolve as we ourselves evolve. Our belongings are extensions of our selves, as I quote Russell Belk’s research, and need to adapt to these different selves throughout our lives. I did think previously that some of my habits and purchase behaviours were optimal. But working on the book, I came to realise that they will always be in movement. Even if I may believe I have found the perfect breakfast solution or afternoon pick-me-up, the need for novelty and the different stages I may go through in life call for change. Humans are ever-evolving, and their purchases need to follow.”
Do you think what motivates your own buying differs in any way from what motivates people generally?
“I don’t think I am any different than the average consumer. We’re all swimming in the same consumer culture, have virtually identical DNA, and share the same sets of needs. This is why I mention in the author’s biography that I am a consumer myself. There’s no avoiding the way our reality has been shaped. More awareness can help us, patterns and triggers can be found. But even after seven years in market research, hundreds of brands advised, and this book published, I do not see myself as operating from outside of our common consumption reality.”
Looking to the future, how do you see consumer behaviour evolving (e.g. with technology, climate concerns, changing values)?
“Everybody is talking about AI. It has become a very important way for consumers to search and learn about products. As I mentioned before, as consumers we live in a variety of scenes where we discover products and interact with what the market has to offer. These scenes are now overwhelmingly online and shaped by algorithms and generative AI. The technology is therefore capturing a larger section of our experiences as consumers. This has repercussions on what ends up on our shelves, in our food, and in our bodies. In the future consumer behaviour risks merging and mirroring algorithms. In a way, this is why this book is so important: it is a lot about psychology, awareness, and the human beings behind the decisions. In a world where there’s an algorithm behind many of our decisions, understanding and reclaiming some of our drivers are skills we cannot ignore. My hope is that the future of consumer behaviour leans towards more conscientiousness, rather than the automatic, fast, and guided behaviours we can often observe in ourselves. But achieving this conscientiousness won’t be easy and the book is my attempt at providing some steps towards this reality.”
