The ground is beginning to shake ...

 Traditional marketing theory tells us that the purchase is the successful outcome of consumer-directed messages that create awareness which begets interest, desire, and action.

What happens when that is wrong?  What does marketing do when it STARTS with the purchase?

So wrote blogger Joel Rubinson a couple of months ago
http://blog.joelrubinson.net/2010/07/what-if-it-all-starts-with-the-purchase/

Joel is more than "just" a blogger on market research, of course. Beyond having his own market research consultancy, he is also Chief Research Officer for the ARF (Advertising Research Foundation).  With a "bent" for advertising if you will and his background in consumer research, his several posts on the sales impact of in-store conditions may be a further eye-opener for more traditional (i.e. advertising focused) marketers.  In this particular post he goes on to say

... based on shopper insights research I have conducted, I believe that, for grocery products, over half of first-time purchases are unplanned; in fact, the shopper might not even have been aware of the product before buying it.  In those cases, it all STARTS with the purchase and ENDS with awareness.  The purchase funnel is totally flipped.

The traditional ground really began to shake, of course, back in 2005 when P&G (usually North America's largest major media advertiser) was featured in a front page article in the Wall Street Journal about P&G's "First Moment of Truth" (shoppers making their buying decision in 3-7 seconds in the store) and the growing emphasis FMOT was playing on the marketing of its products.  While this isn't news for many people, for others to have P&G seemingly acknowledge that advertising wasn't the biggest factor in the consumer's final buying decision was a shocker. 

It's a slow process, but marketing mankind does evolve.

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