Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products
Nir Eyal with Ryan Hoover
CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (2013)

How to manage consumers’ habits to your advantage

Since the bazaars in antiquity, marketing’s objective has remained the same: create or increase demand for whatever is offered. What Nir Eyal offers in this book is a four-phase process by which to design habit-forming products that will attract and then sustain a tight relationship with customers.

1. A Trigger attracts consumer attention and creates initial interest such as the aroma of fresh-brewed coffee.

2. Consumer takes Action to learn more about what is offered, often by clicking on a website link or calling a toll-free number.

3. The Variable Reward offers several possibilities to attract as many different people as possible (e.g. a state lottery).

4. The last phase, Investment, illustrates that people who assemble furniture (e.g. IKEA) attach greater value to it than they would if it were already assembled.

As in residential real estate and the chestnut that suggests “for every house there’s a buyer,” I am convinced that, for those in need of forming and then sustaining tight customer relationships, “for every book there’s a reader.” Who knows? For some who read this review, the “Hook Model” may be exactly what they need.