New neuroscience proves the clearer your position, the easier the decision.

Here’s an experiment I love.

Researchers recently showed people circles filled with hundreds of parallel lines.

Each participant had to learn an invisible rule:

Lines tilted one side of a particular angle belonged in Category A, while lines tilted the other way belonged in Category B.

The dividing angle could be something totally random, like 73 degrees.

Nobody was told what it was.

Through trial and error, most people learned their personal boundary fairly quickly. Then something weird happened.

When the lines were 45 degrees away from the boundary, people categorized them quickly and accurately.

When they were only two degrees away, decisions became slower and harder.

EEG measurements showed the same pattern inside the brain.

A signal associated with accumulating evidence built more rapidly when the evidence clearly favoured one category.

The researchers concluded that the brain can apply the same general decision machinery to newly learned, arbitrary rules that it uses for basic sensory judgments. 

The study wasn’t specifically about shopping, but I couldn’t help thinking about positioning.

Customers create invisible boundaries too:

Like safe or risky.

Premium or ordinary.

Professional or mickey-mouse.

And worth $500 or definitely NOT worth $500.

And they accumulate evidence until your product lands somewhere.

Consider good ol’ Volvo.

Decades of vehicles, advertising, crash testing and product decisions taught buyers an extremely simple rule:

If safety is especially important, Volvo belongs over here.

The FARTHER a product sits from the customer’s mental dividing line, the LESS work the decision requires.

That helps explain why fuzzy positioning can be so expensive.

If buyers encounter mixed signals, vague claims or a product that could plausibly sit in either category, they have to keep collecting evidence.

More comparison.

And additional research.

Probably more hesitation.

Which means more opportunity to leave without buying.

One of the ideas I explore in I Need That is that customers don’t evaluate products using the same internal criteria the product’s creators do. They develop their own rules from experience, culture, competitors, reviews and everything you’ve taught them about the category.

Your job isn’t merely to provide evidence.

It’s to understand the invisible line they’re judging you against, then make your position unmistakable.

The brain is remarkably good at learning new categories.

That’s useful.

Because product marketers spend a surprising amount of time trying to teach ‘em.

If you’d like help creating and marketing products people feel compelled to buy, the product marketing consultants at Graphos Product can help.