Fourteen Lectures on Consumer Psychology

Chapter 1 Preface
The main readers of this book are marketing managers, advertisers and salesmen who want to seek innovation in their work.Also, anyone interested in influencing other people's purchasing tendencies is a good read.This book does not teach specific sales skills, because different sales forms have different operating skills, so they are not the same.This book focuses on the skills and principles common to all sales.As we all know, in different forms of sales, the factors that affect the success of sales are common.The objects of these influencing factors are, in the final analysis, the psychological activities of consumers.Whether speaking a word, writing or drawing a word, the mind of a consumer goes through several stages before a purchase takes place.This book will describe and analyze the changing process of mental activities in these stages.

To study the changing process of these mental activities, it is inevitable to deal with many advanced psychological contents, such as attention, interest, desire, confidence, etc. in mental activities.It is impossible to explain these contents clearly in a few words.In order to enhance the readability of this book and avoid boring readers, I have abandoned the esoteric and complex psychological terminology in my writing and used some easy-to-understand modern business language instead.

For important phenomena or problems, I will cite a large number of psychological facts and theories to demonstrate and explain them.During the writing process of this book, I conveyed two unique ideas through repeated and repeated examples: one is to tell readers how to think about sales in business from a psychological point of view, and the other is how to use science and A quantitative approach to the study of psychological phenomena in sales.

When psychologists read this book, they will find that the book rarely mentions proper terms or concepts related to mental activities.The brain is considered in this book as one of the bodily organs.Although it is necessary to introduce the function of the brain, as an applied psychology book, it does not make any sense to explain the detailed function of the brain in the body, because those esoteric terms and questions related to the complex cooperative relationship between the brain and the body will scare away no one. Readers with knowledge bases in psychology.In doing so, I can avoid metaphysical debates, highlight the research on consumer behavior, and help maintain the consistency of the content of the book before and after.Replacing too many esoteric discussions of psychological terms with objective descriptions can make this book highly readable while maintaining scientificity, making it easier for readers to accept.

Many thanks to JB Lippincott & Co. for allowing me to quote portions of the book A Guide to Psychological Research in Sales and Advertising.At the same time, I am also very grateful to the editor of "Science Monthly" for allowing me to quote some chapters of the magazine in Lecture No.13.I would also like to thank the editor of "Western Advertising" for allowing me to reproduce part of the content that appeared in the fifth lecture.In addition, Professor WB Booker read the manuscript of this book and provided many valuable comments, for which I am deeply grateful.Finally, I would like to thank my students at the University of Chicago and Indiana State University. It is their interest and enthusiasm for scientometrics that inspired me to continue to explore consumer psychology from a scientific perspective.

Harry D. Kayson
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