Imagine an independent bookshop located just a few metres from a major retail chain. It sells the same books in an environment where price is not the main source of differentiation. Across the street, the larger competitor has more space, greater visibility, a highly developed commercial system and a particularly powerful promise: simplicity. Walk in, find the book, pay and leave.
This was the starting point of a story I originally wrote as a business tale. At first, the bookshop did what many companies do when they feel threatened: it watched the successful competitor and tried to resemble it. Similar displays, similar rankings, similar codes and similar arguments, but with fewer resources to execute them.
The problem was not that the bookshop was doing things badly. The problem was more uncomfortable: it was trying to become a smaller version of its competitor.
When being comparable becomes the problem
We often reason as though customers objectively ranked competing offers. A better product, a better argument or a better promotion should logically produce a better outcome for the company. Real decisions are far less linear.
Research into value-based decision making shows that people do not assign value to options solely from their objective characteristics. Value is subjective and emerges from the integration of information, individual preferences, context and the goals pursued by the person making the decision.
Decision neuroscience has examined mechanisms associated with the construction and comparison of subjective value. This clearly does not mean that observing the brain could tell us which bookshop someone will choose. That would be an unjustified extrapolation. It suggests something more useful: value is not entirely contained within the object being sold.
Two identical books remain physically identical. Yet the reason for choosing them, the attention given to them and the value assigned to them can change with the context in which they are presented. This is where the bookshop in our story was fighting the wrong battle: it was trying to change the perception of its offer while remaining almost entirely on its competitor's decision-making terrain.
A single question can change the entire decision-making terrain
In the original story, the shift begins with something almost trivial. When someone enters the bookshop, the question is no longer: “What are you looking for?” It becomes: “Who is it for?”
This is more than a better opening line. “What are you looking for?” immediately places the product at the centre. The task is to identify a title, an author, a genre or a reference. “Who is it for?” introduces a person, an intention, a relationship and sometimes a story. Is it for a teenager who never reads? A mother who enjoys historical novels? A friend going through a particular period? Or for oneself, with the desire to discover something one would not normally choose?
The book has not changed. The problem being solved has.
Research into contextual decision making points in a similar direction: an option is evaluated in relation to the situation, personal goals and what matters to the person at the moment of choice. Other research also suggests that the personal implications of a decision can influence how people search for information.
The bookseller's “Who is it for?” is therefore not a scientific recipe. It illustrates a broader mechanism: an offer can acquire different value when it enters the world of the person who has to decide.
Preference cannot be declared. It has to be built.
This is where the subject connects directly with Market[SELL]ing™. A company can have a good product and still not be preferred. It can be right in its argument and still not be chosen. It can even be objectively comparable to another option and discover that comparability itself has become the problem.
Buying ultimately requires selection: among several acceptable possibilities, one option has to become preferable.
Consumer neuroscience examines how processes involving value, emotion, attention, memory and reward can contribute to decision making. Such research can be useful, but it also has limits. It is neither a magical reading of the consumer's mind nor an automatic machine for predicting purchases.
Market[SELL]ing™ does not attempt to predict the customer's brain either. It proposes looking at what happens within the decision. In our bookshop, the shift becomes visible: the question is no longer merely “Which book can we sell this person?” but “What could make this particular book meaningful to this particular person?”
That is a question of preference before it becomes a question of persuasion.
Autonomy is also part of the buying experience
Another element deserves attention: the space left for choice. Research into consumer autonomy treats autonomy as an important dimension of consumer decision making. People do not merely seek a satisfactory outcome; being able to feel that a choice belongs to them can itself matter in the decision experience.
This connects directly with an earlier reflection on why selling too soon can prevent a purchase.
A good bookseller does not necessarily need to become the person who knows which book the customer should buy. They can instead make the choice easier to understand, open possibilities, reformulate the need, explain why a book might fit and ultimately leave the reader to build their own preference.
The distinction matters. In one case, the seller seeks acceptance of a recommendation. In the other, the seller helps a preference to form.
Customers do not necessarily need more choice
One could argue that the major retailer still has a significant advantage: it probably offers a wider range. That is true. But more options do not automatically make a decision easier or more satisfying.
Research into choice overload is more nuanced than the popular claim that “too much choice kills choice”. Outcomes depend on factors such as context, decision complexity, how options are organised and whether preferences are already well formed.
This matters for our bookseller. The potential advantage is not necessarily offering less. It is helping to make the choice more relevant.
A major retailer can serve someone who already knows exactly what they want extremely efficiently. It would be absurd to deny that. But someone looking for “something for my father, who rarely reads, likes history but hates biographies” is no longer simply conducting a product search. They are presenting a situation. And that situation opens a different decision-making terrain.
Experience is not the decoration around the purchase
Customer experience is sometimes reduced to aesthetics: a pleasant environment, a coffee, attractive lighting or a warm welcome. These can be parts of the experience, but they are not necessarily its core.
Within Market[SELL]ing™, experience becomes particularly interesting when it changes the state of the decision. A question can clarify a need. A recommendation can strengthen projection. A comparison can reduce resistance. A story around a book can create preference. A conversation can provide evidence that the bookseller has understood the real intention behind the purchase.
This is where the Desire-to-Buy Gauge™ becomes especially useful. An experience does not mechanically make a gauge rise. The Gauge™ is not a scientific measuring instrument. It invites us to observe a dynamic: what in this interaction strengthens desire? What increases or reduces resistance? At what point does the customer begin to project themselves with one option rather than another?
The bookshop is no longer merely changing its merchandising. It is changing what it observes.
Change the terrain instead of trying to win the same game
In the original story, the bookshop eventually understands that it will not defeat the large retailer by playing the same game with fewer resources. It stops building its difference around what it owns and begins building it around what the customer experiences while choosing there.
At this point, the story stops really being about bookshops. A small or medium-sized company facing a major group can encounter the same problem. So can a manufacturer whose competitors are technically comparable, or a service company in a market where everyone promises expertise, responsiveness and support.
When everyone describes themselves using the same criteria, it becomes extremely difficult to create preference simply by adding another argument.
The question may no longer be “How can we prove we are better?” It may become “What do we actually want to be chosen for?”
This question connects directly with the role of the Market[SELL]ing Manager. If desire to buy is influenced by multiple interactions — marketing, product, sales, experience and service — each function cannot look only at its own part. Someone also needs to observe what their combination creates for the person who has to decide.
Difference only becomes strategic when it becomes a reason to choose
A company can be different without that difference mattering at all to its customer. It can be older, smaller, more local, more innovative or more experienced. None of those characteristics is automatically a reason to buy.
A difference becomes interesting when it enters the decision. In our story, the bookshop's small size is no longer a weakness to justify when it enables a different quality of conversation. Its knowledge of books matters not merely because it demonstrates expertise, but because it helps the customer find a book that can be connected to a person, an intention or a story.
Differentiation therefore no longer lies only in what the company is. It lies in what that difference enables the customer to decide.
Perhaps that is what our bookshop eventually understood. It did not need to defeat the major retailer. It needed to become preferable for certain decisions.
That is a very different ambition.
Research references
Subjective value and decision making. Brosch, Coppin, Scherer, Sander and colleagues examine neurocognitive mechanisms associated with value construction and value-based decisions. Read the publication →
Context and personal goals. Suomala's Consumer Contextual Decision-Making Model examines consumer decisions through the interaction between context and the goals pursued by the decision maker. Read the publication →
Consumer autonomy. Wertenbroch and colleagues examine autonomy as a dimension of consumer choice and the ability to make and enact one's own decisions. Read the publication →
Personal relevance. Hess and colleagues show that the self-related implications of a decision can influence the information-search strategies used to support that decision. Read the publication →
Consumer neuroscience: value and limits. Haidinger and Koller discuss the potential additional value of consumer neuroscience for marketing while emphasising the importance of methodological limits and complementary approaches. Read the publication →