Old Wine in Old Bottles?

Ad Age published a book review this week. The book, Stopwatch Marketing, a tome on marketing strategy, appears to highlight time as the key differentiator in the consumer's buying decision. The authors propose that there are four classifications of shopper: impatient, recreational, reluctant and painstaking. Their key differentiator, according to the review, is time.

Now the four typecasts they create are nothing new. But time as they fashion it is a dependent variable and hardly the most important variable in the mix. For example, their last classification, the painstaking shopper, is "characterized by fear of making the wrong decision." Their thesis is that because of that fear the marketer has more time to convince the buyer. But because of the fear, the buyer may leave with remorse.

They then offer a case history featuring Lexus, which due to their dealer training, reduces this remorse by recognizing the fear.

Just what does this have to do with time?

I have several friends who purchase cars every two years. They take their time because they really enjoy the process of shopping -- the test drives, the comparison of specs, talking with the sales people. They can shop for weeks before their purchase. After they purchase, they have little remorse.

Yet another friend is terrified of purchasing a car and always asks friends to go along. He is just not confident about evaluating cars. But once he decides he's going to go out and buy a car, he takes considerably less time than my first friend. And afterwards he, too, has little remorse.

Then again, I've had lunch with friends who have buyer's remorse after ordering a sandwich at Subway. Hey it's a sandwich. It's only a few bucks. But there's remorse.

Time and again in the examples highlighted in the review (and this assumes the review accurately reflects the book) time is just not a critical factor.

So much has been written about purchase behavior, and so many consultants have proffered hypothesis on why and how people buy that I'm not sure we need another. And when that other is parsing purchasing behavior based on time, well, there seems to be little that's new.

And somehow I think I've read this before.