Gad Saad Quotes

My theory was that what I had to do was make a study of human behavior.

No longer do companies study consumers' psyches only by asking people what they think about technology and how they use it. Now they conduct observational research, dispatching anthropologists to employ their ethnographic skills by interviewing, watching and videotaping consumers in their natural habitats.

The pull, the attraction of history, is in our human nature. What makes us tick? Why do we do what we do? How much is luck the deciding factor?

Companies are very, very good - better than consumers themselves - at knowing what consumers are actually craving.

I haven't figured out why people like what they like. I don't know. I wish I did. I could sell that to everybody, man, and be a millionaire.

How do you know what people value? Well, you watch what they buy. How do we know what products to create? Well, it's based on what they value.

In America, they never make anything without first having a market survey to ask the public what they want. People only ask for things they already know about, so you don't get anything new that way. That's why American fashion is stuck.

Economists think about what people ought to do. Psychologists watch what they actually do.

Customers don't know what they want. There's plenty of good psychology research that shows that people are not able to accurately predict how they would behave in the future. So asking them, 'Would you buy my product if it had these three features?' or 'How would you react if we changed our product this way?' is a waste of time. They don't know.

When companies try to guess what consumers want, they essentially make the choice for consumers.

All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire.

If you think you know the consumer better than anyone, then you're in real trouble. So we take a close watch. You spend time in stores.

The twentieth century may well find historical status as the epoch in which man began to study himself as a scientific phenomenon.

I don't really follow market research. In the end, I respond to my own instincts.

I used to think that capitalism was human nature. Now I know that it is culture.

Motives are often more important than actions

Looking at the stock market to understand the economy is like studying a manic depressive in order to understand human nature.

We need to be in front of consumer trends and translate those trends into insights and foresights.

Women have an instinct for what the market is. We have tremendous insight in terms of understanding products and consumerism.

You don't need Math to do business reporting. Business is all about choices that consumers make.

What I'm trying to do is teach people how to actually get individuals in organizations to do the kinds of things to make a difference. It starts with not just studying the mechanics but really understanding how people operate.

The only way to find out why someone decides to engage in armed combat is to look at their individual personality.

We're guided by consumer data, and it helps give us the confidence to invest where the consumer is going.

I still ponder what gets in people's minds and souls, why they do the things they do.

As a consumer goods company serving billions of consumers every day, Unilever understands the drivers and motivations that create the norms that lie behind people's behaviour.