Over the past decade, many companies had perfected the art of creatingautomatic behaviors habits among consumers. These habits have helpedcompanies earm bllions of dollars when customers eat snacks or wipe counters almostwithout thinking, often in response to a carefully designed set of daily cues.
"There are fundamental public health problems, like dirty hands instead of asoap habit, that remain killers only because we can't figure out how to changepeople's habits," said Dr. Curtis, the director of the Hygiene Center at the LondonSchool of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.“We wanted to learn from private industryhow to create new behaviors that happen automatically."
The companies that Dr. Curtis turned to - Procter & Gamble, Colgate-Palmolive and Unilever 一had invested hundreds of millions of dollars finding thesubtle cues in consumers ' lives that corporations could use to introduce new routines.
If you look hard enough, you'll find that many of the products we use every day- chewing gums, skin moisturizers, disinfecting wipes, air fresheners, water purifiers,health snacks, teeth whiteners, fabric softeners, vitamins are results of manufacturedhabits. A century ago, few people regularly brushed their teeth multiple times a day.Today, because of shrewd advertising and public health campaigns, many Americanshabitually give their pearly whites a cavity-preventing scrub twice a day, often withColgate, Crest or one of the other brands.
A few decades ago, many people didn't drink water outside of a meal. Thenbeverage companies started bottling the production of far-off springs, and now officeworkers unthinkingly sip bottled water all day long. Chewing gum, once boughtprimarily by adolescent boys, is now featured in commercials as a breath freshenerand teeth cleanser for use after a meal. Skin moisturizers are advertised as part ofmorning beauty rituals, slipped in between hair brushing and putting on makeup.
“Our products succeed when they become part of daily or weekly patterns," saidCarol Berming, a consumer psychologist who recently retired from Procter & Gamble,the company that sold $76 billion of Tide, Crest and other products last year.“Creating positive habits is a huge part of improving our consumers' lives, and it'sessential to making new products commercially viable."
Through experiments and observation, social scientists like Dr. Berning havelearned that there is power in tying certain behaviors to habitual cues through ruthlessadvertising. As this new science of habit has emerged, controversies have eruptedwhen the tactics have been used to sell questionable beauty creams or unhealthyfoods.
