Ask any estate agent: most potential house buyers arrive with a detailed list of criteria for their new home, only to end up buying a property which meets almost none of them. The same is true of dating – few of us are married to people chosen on the basis of an initial checklist. Henry VIII tried this approach and it didn’t turn out well.
You could dismiss this as mere whimsicality. However, the seeming messiness of such decision-making – the fact we refine our preferences in response to what we find available – is what makes consumer capitalism much more innovative than the faux-rational capitalism practised by large organisations. By demanding a problem be defined precisely and inflexibly before you are allowed to solve it, you close the door to more creative solutions. In reality, few breakthroughs emerge as the endpoint of a linear process. Our right-brained messiness in decision-making is an evolved virtue, not an inherited vice.
In advertising, B2C (business to consumer) is what you do when you advertise to an individual consumer – typically a person who will be paying for and using the product or service themselves (think shampoo). B2B (business to business) is when a business sells goods to other businesses. The general assumption is B2C is designed to appeal to the emotions whereas B2B exists to make a rational appeal to the business buyer’s inner accountant.
This is not true. Both kinds of decision are emotional – all decisions are. But the emotions are wildly different. Put simply, a consumer buying a new car is trying to minimise the risk of personal regret, whereas a bureaucrat choosing a supplier is trying to minimise the risk of personal blame.
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