Field notes on behaviour
Why We Buy
How attention, habit, emotion and context shape everyday decisions.
Why We Buy
Why safer products can still feel risky: what passkeys teach us about adoption
Passkeys can reduce phishing risk yet still create uncertainty. Their adoption shows why useful technology also needs comprehensible control and recovery.
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Why We Buy
What happens after we buy? The psychology of buyer's remorse
What doubt, regret and dissatisfaction mean after a purchase—and how honest lifecycle content helps customers realise value or correct a mismatch.
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Why We Buy
Why paying hurts: the psychology of spending money
Why the timing, visibility and method of payment can change spending and enjoyment—and how to make checkout easy without hiding the commitment.
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Why We Buy
The psychology of risk: why buyers fear the wrong decision
How perceived risk turns interest into hesitation, and how useful evidence, clear terms and trustworthy design help buyers decide with confidence.
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Why We Buy
Why we buy who we want to be: identity and consumer behaviour
Why some choices express who we are, where we belong and who we want to become, and how to use identity in positioning without stereotyping the people you are describing.
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Why We Buy
Habits and routines in purchasing decisions
A habit is a link between a context and a response, which is why habits break when the context changes. What the research supports, why the 21-day rule is wrong, and the transition window that is the only reliable moment to win a habitual buyer.
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Why We Buy
Social proof in marketing, and what it proves
Social proof is well evidenced and badly used. What the research supports, where it stops, a table for grading the proof you already have, and what the UK rules on fake reviews now require.
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Why We Buy
How to make your brand top of mind
Top of mind awareness is not built by being memorable in general. It is built by linking your brand to the specific moments when someone realises they need what you sell. What the research says, and how a small business can use it.
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Why We Buy
Choice architecture: guiding consumer decisions
You cannot present options neutrally, so the question is whose interest the arrangement serves. What defaults do and do not do, what the choice overload research really found, and where UK law now draws the line.
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Why We Buy
The role of emotions in purchase decisions
Emotion is not the opposite of reason, and most of the numbers quoted about it are unsourceable. What the evidence supports, the emotions your own buying process creates, and what to do about them.
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Why We Buy
Designing decision interfaces that reduce friction
Most businesses look for friction at the checkout. For a considered purchase it sits earlier, in the part of the journey nobody measures. A friction audit by stage, and why some friction is worth keeping.
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Why We Buy
The psychology of value perception
Value is a comparison, not a property of what you sell. The 2 kinds of value in every purchase, where a buyer's reference price comes from, and which levers on perceived value are safe to pull.
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Why We Buy
Goals: the hidden drivers of consumer behaviour
A purchase serves more than one goal at once, and the buyer will only tell you about some of them. The 4 kinds of goal in a single decision, and a 40-year-old interview technique for finding the ones nobody states.
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Why We Buy
The power of the autopilot: understanding System 1 decision-making
System 1 is the most borrowed idea in marketing and one of the most overstated. What Kahneman claimed, which parts of the marketing canon survived the replication crisis, and what is left that you can use.
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Why We Buy
The science of consumer behaviour
What consumer psychology studies, and how attention, emotion, identity, social influence, risk and context combine to shape what people buy.
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