---
title: "Make Users Buy for the First Time, and Make Buying a Habit"
description: "B.J. Fogg, founder of the Persuasive Technology Lab at Stanford University and a pioneer of behavior design, proposed the famous behavior model B=MAP, which states that a behavior occurs when motivation, ability, and prompt are all present. In marketing, the prompt (P) is the most critical factor, and it can be influenced by five scene variables: timing, occasion, emotion, object relationship, and behavior frequency. By designing these scene variables, brands can trigger consumer actions and cultivate long-term purchasing habits."
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# Make Users Buy for the First Time, and Make Buying a Habit

> B.J. Fogg, founder of the Persuasive Technology Lab at Stanford University and a pioneer of behavior design, proposed the famous behavior model B=MAP, which states that a behavior occurs when motivation, ability, and prompt are all present. In marketing, the prompt (P) is the most critical factor, and it can be influenced by five scene variables: timing, occasion, emotion, object relationship, and behavior frequency. By designing these scene variables, brands can trigger consumer actions and cultivate long-term purchasing habits.

B.J. Fogg, founder of Stanford University's Persuasive Technology Lab, is the originator of "behavior design" and has studied human behavior for over 20 years. He proposed a famous behavior design model called B=MAP.
A behavior occurs involving three elements: **Motivation-Ability-Prompt**. Motivation is the desire to act, ability is the capacity to execute, and prompt is the signal that reminds people to act.
For a person to accomplish something, they not only need internal motivation and personal capability, but also external environmental factors to push them. Motivation, ability, and prompt work together; only when all three are present does behavior occur. None can be missing [1].
The Fogg Behavior Model was originally written as B=MAT, where T stands for Trigger. I think "T" is more vivid than "P", but both emphasize that behavior requires a reminder or push.
For a long time, we believed that to change people's behavior, the key was to influence their inner world—motivation and attitude.
However, as the saying goes, "A leopard cannot change its spots." Changing a person's nature and cognition is difficult, but changing the environment is relatively easy. Appealing to environmental factors has a better chance of changing behavior than appealing to internal motivation.
Moreover, a person does not necessarily produce corresponding behavior just because they have motivation. Many people have good intentions, such as reading more, exercising regularly, learning English daily, calling parents more often, watching their diet, not staying up late, drinking more water, etc. We are not lacking in motivation or ability to do these things.
But why don't we do them?
**The key is that there are no good environmental factors to constantly remind and trigger us.** Without prompts, even high motivation and ability are useless. Among the three elements of MAP, P is more important than M and A; it is the decisive factor for behavior occurrence.
Furthermore, American psychologist William James said that 99% of our activities are purely spontaneous and do not involve conscious attitudes and motivations. For example, many people habitually buy a bucket of popcorn before watching a movie, even though they don't usually eat popcorn. This is purely a purchase behavior triggered by environmental factors.
**Therefore, creating positive and favorable environmental factors can trigger consumer behavior. This is one of the important values of scenarios.** Scenarios are the invisible driving force behind behavior. The five major variables in a scenario are all prompts that drive consumers to act.
For an individual to develop good behavioral habits, they need to insert the behavior into the right place in their life, using the five scenario variables to drive themselves to act.
For example, if a person wants to read more, they shouldn't just shout slogans like "I want to read more" every day, but rather tell themselves "I will read for 45 minutes on the subway to and from work every day," integrating reading into their daily schedule and using environmental variables like commuting, subway, and behavior frequency to prompt themselves to act.
**Scenario prompt = Timing + Occasion + Emotion + Object Relationship + Behavior Frequency**. Among these, timing is the behavioral trigger, occasion is the behavioral norm, behavior and its frequency form behavioral habits, and emotion and relationship are efficient catalysts for behavior.
**Timing**
Time variables help consumers preset decisions, reminding them that at a certain point in time, they should do certain things or buy certain products. This saves consumers from repeated deliberation and hesitation in the decision-making process; they just follow the time prompt.
Especially, timing is a natural, unintentional environmental cue that makes behavior happen naturally and form habits.
Earlier, I wrote about the "coffee time" marketing case. John Watson, to promote coffee products, worked to create coffee-drinking moments in consumers' lives, which drove the popularity of coffee in the U.S. market. Watson was the founder of behaviorist psychology and knew very well what factors influence people's behavior.
Nescafé's current advertising slogan is "Remind every day," previously it was "Today, start with Nescafé." It also launched a global relay live broadcast event called "Good Morning World" to convey the brand message of starting a good day with coffee.
This approach is in line with Watson's legacy. Nescafé has thus fixed itself in daily life, becoming an indispensable part of many people's lives.
For example, I now maintain the habit of having an iced Americano first thing in the morning, then going out for a run.
Similar to "coffee time," there is a classic case written into business school textbooks—"Miller Time."
Miller Beer targeted the consumption behavior of American blue-collar workers who habitually went to a bar for a drink after work to relieve the day's fatigue. It created the brand strategy of "Miller Time," turning the evening into Miller's exclusive time, and promoted it widely to encourage more people to develop this consumption habit. This strategy helped Miller rise from a small brewery on the verge of bankruptcy and acquisition to become the second-largest beer brand in the U.S.
In 2023, Carlsberg's brand Chongqing Beer, targeting scenarios like overtime late-night snacks and brother gatherings, partnered with Meituan Flash Purchase to develop an instant delivery service for ice-cold beer and designed creative content and topics like "Jianghu Beer Hero." During the campaign, sales increased by 50% year-on-year.
In 2024, Carlsberg itself renewed a ten-year contract with Premier League club Liverpool and focused on promoting "Watch night matches with Carlsberg" [2]. It can be seen that Carlsberg also follows the classic strategy of Miller Beer, focusing on the night as a core consumption scenario.
I have served wine companies for many years and have planned campaigns for different clients such as "Weekend Gatherings," "Late Nine Action" (offering free drinks and discounts at dining venues at 9 PM), and "Gathering Warms Hearts" (a winter promotion with the theme "No matter how cold the day, the warmth of gathering can't be stopped"). This kind of practice is what we often call finding marketing nodes.
Time is a consumption prompt for consumers and a marketing node for businesses. For a beverage brand, promoting weekend gatherings, dinner and late-night snacks, summer cold drinks, and winter warm drinks, and during festivals like Mid-Autumn, Spring Festival, and Father's Day, promoting gifts for elders and family gatherings, constitutes a simple but basically complete annual promotion plan.
Timing embeds the brand into daily life, creating opportunities to consume products, and is an important marketing lever. Certain festivals, months, and seasons in a year, weekdays and weekends in a week, and certain times of the day can all become marketing nodes to create sales opportunities.
For example, there is a yogurt brand named "One Hour After Meal"; KFC's "Crazy Thursday," Xiaomi's "Red Tuesday" for open purchase and "Orange Friday" for weekly system updates; and Laoxiangji's "New dishes on the 1st of every month," McDonald's "Let's be together for the year," "Six Blessings for Spring Festival Homecoming," and "Bring Chacha when going home for the New Year" are all examples.
**Occasion**
Different consumers have different lifestyles, social relationships, and statuses, so the occasions they frequent are also completely different.
Therefore, by targeting different occasions, brands can find different consumers. For example, morning exercise occasions reach the elderly; drinking parties and outdoor fishing reach middle-aged men; workplace, late-night snacks, and camping mainly reach young people.
By making good use of these different occasions, brands have the opportunity to reach different groups and expand business opportunities. For example, Guoquan Shihui operates a hot pot and barbecue ingredient supermarket. Initially, Guoquan focused on the home scenario with themes like "Eat hot pot at home, find Guoquan" and "Eat at home, find Guoquan."
Later, it began to focus on the camping scenario, changing the theme to "Camping food and drink, Guoquan one-stop solution," and launched a "Take Guoquan Camping" tour activity, creating new growth points.
On the other hand, I have also analyzed that occasions represent group norms. Different occasions have different social etiquette, dress codes, behavioral norms, and life rituals. As the saying goes, "When in Rome, do as the Romans do." We adjust our words and actions according to the occasion.
Moreover, occasions not only regulate behavior but also subtly influence our way of thinking, because in different occasions, we want to leave different impressions on others and want others to see us differently.
A simple common sense: many people have significantly different dress styles at home, in the office, when shopping, on dates, and when gathering with friends. So, for clothing brands, they must consider the difference in occasions.
In different occasions, consumers have different needs and purchase behaviors for the same product. Brands should make good use of occasions to plant the brand in the right position in consumers' lives.
I often cite the gum case. The two major gum brands, Wrigley's Doublemint and Extra, are very familiar to everyone.
Doublemint's product selling point is "fresh breath," so its main scenario is social interaction. This is because when interacting with others, it's inappropriate to have bad breath, dandruff, or visible nose hair... These are social etiquette.
In social occasions, we feel the value of Doublemint most, and we have the most pain points about oral odor. So Doublemint has long appealed to "Fresh breath, brings us closer."
Extra's product selling point is "protecting teeth," so its main scenario is dining. We have been taught since childhood to wash hands before meals and rinse after meals; these are habitual actions that accompany eating.
In dining occasions, we are more likely to evoke health awareness about cleaning the mouth and protecting teeth, and generate demand for gum. So Extra's long-used slogan is "No matter sweet, sour, bitter, or spicy, there's always Extra," and it reminds consumers to "Chew 2 pieces after meals."
Both are gum, but their brand building and marketing methods are very different. This case illustrates how occasions influence people's way of thinking and behavior. Even a tiny piece of gum, occasions affect our needs and perception of brand value.
In June this year, I saw a new Doublemint ad in the community elevator: "Bring Doublemint, go to the appointment fresh." It still focuses on social interaction; dates require fresh breath.
In addition to this scenario, Doublemint has also spent a lot of effort in dining scenarios in recent years, such as promoting "Chew Doublemint after meals, fresh and closer," inviting Tengger to shoot and sing the "Doublemint Post-Meal Divine Song," and cross-industry collaboration with the luosifen brand Haohuanluo to launch a co-branded limited gift box with the appeal "One arrow to the heart, like-minded in smell."
Consumers also have the need for fresh breath after eating strong-flavored foods. Another occasion is smoking. Doublemint launched two new products: Doublemint Herbal Lozenges and Pop Rock Gum, with packaging printed with "Designed for smokers," allowing smokers to not worry about smoke odor. This is also a product development guided by scenario.
For consumers, occasions are where consumption occurs, representing need arousal and purchase generation; for businesses, occasions mean promotion channels and sales terminals, and are the source of business.
As in the above case, Doublemint can place advertising materials in restaurants, do scenario-based product displays, carry out promotional activities like giving gum with meals, and even distribute directly to restaurants and tobacco and alcohol specialty stores for sale.
Creating new consumption occasions is very helpful for companies to expand channels, seek growth, enhance terminal vividness, and design user experience.
**Emotion**
The book "Fogg Behavior Model" mentions that **behavior design is essentially emotion design**. Anything that brings positive emotions and creates instant pleasure can reinforce behavior. Typical examples are people being addicted to online games and unconsciously scrolling short videos for hours. Moreover, the continuous positive feedback from emotions can solidify behavior into habits.
For each of us, to develop good habits, we need to find ways to build an emotional reward system for ourselves.
As a psychological phenomenon, when we study emotions, we always try to understand people's complex inner world. But in fact, I wonder if you realize that emotions are closely related to environmental factors. Different scenarios evoke different emotions, which in turn trigger different behaviors.
For example, Lay's, based on Meituan's scenario marketing data, found that when the same consumer is in different scenarios, product needs change accordingly. In the late-night snack scenario, consumers prefer novel flavors like spicy crayfish, charcoal-grilled pork belly, and spicy hot pot flavored chips; in travel scenarios, they prefer regular flavors like original and cucumber; in home gatherings, they prefer large packages; and in gift-giving scenarios, they like multi-flavor combination packs [3].
The reason consumers behave this way is mainly due to different emotions. For example, at night, after a day of work, the body is tired and the mood is low, craving relaxation, enjoyment, and self-compensation. They are more easily attracted to heavy and stimulating flavors and are prone to impulse buying. In travel scenarios, the consumption psychology is mainly about safety, so they choose light flavors to reduce gastrointestinal irritation and avoid inconvenience during the trip.
At gatherings, consumers want everyone to share and create a happy atmosphere; in gift-giving scenarios, a variety of flavors and product combinations better express thoughtfulness and reduce the risk of error when the recipient's taste is unknown.
For scenario design, brands must carefully study the subtle differences in consumer emotions in different scenarios. As mentioned at the beginning of this article, when different beverage brands promote in dining scenarios, the emotions they appeal to are also very different, including positive emotions like excitement and joy, and negative emotions like fear and dread. With the help of dopamine and adrenaline, emotions stimulate the brain to react quickly and take action.
Emotion relates to pain points and itch points, and is the key to hitting consumers' psychology. Enterprises should use emotion as an entry point for refined scenario operations, creating perfect scenario experiences for consumers. Moreover, if people can have strong emotions about a behavior, they can quickly form habits.
**Therefore, providing continuous emotional rewards is also very important for user loyalty management.**
**Object (and its) Relationship**
Behind emotions, there is also a key factor: the target object's social relationship. Scenarios are slices of life, cross-sections of social relationships. Many scenarios in our lives are social in nature and contain different social relationships. And the target object, facing different social relationships, will also produce different emotions.
The influence of scenarios on emotions includes both natural and social factors. If we can make good use of this social relationship, we can better touch users' emotions and create better content creativity. Therefore, in scenario design, target object selection and user relationships represent consumption insights and are also a source of inspiration for brand communication and content creativity.
Let's look at the product portfolio strategy and corresponding communication strategy of the premixed cocktail brand RIO.
RIO mainly has three product series: 3-degree tipsy, 5-degree refreshing, and 8-degree strong, with different alcohol content. In addition, there are classic glass bottles, low-sugar light packs, and Meizhimei green plum wine. I won't discuss these supplementary products.
Among the three main series, the 3-degree tipsy focuses on personal home drinking, mainly targeting women, with the claim "One person's little drink." Zhou Dongyu and Zhang Zifeng have successively served as spokespersons for this series, producing many wonderful ads and copy.
For example, "What makes me blush, is it you or the wine?" "It's really strange, before this drink, I didn't seem to like you that much" "A little tipsy, a little happy," etc.
The 5-degree refreshing focuses on leisure social scenarios like chatting with friends, office leisure, and outdoor camping, with the claim "Open the can, instantly refreshing."
This series also launched a beer-flavored product, which in communication combined with competitor and workplace culture, appealed to "Good-tasting wine, no need to suffer," attempting to replace beer. The product also combined with dining channels, focusing on hot pot time and happy skewers, promoting "Perfect with barbecue."
The 8-degree strong focuses on passionate social scenarios like brother gatherings, meal times, and gaming sessions, targeting more male groups, with the claim "Strong enough, one can is enough." RIO Strong also launched a "Don't Believe the Challenge" on Douyin, calling on consumers to participate. If you don't believe the strength of Strong, one can will get you drunk, then come and try.
It can be seen that the alcohol content difference of RIO products is just the basic starting point; the key product portfolio strategy is that each consumption scenario has its own focus. This not only differentiates the product lines, each with its own target audience and market, avoiding self-competition, but also in communication strategy, the value and image of different series are clearer and more distinct, with targeted content and activity tone, each with its own style.
The different social relationships driving scenarios lead to differences in emotional expression and content tone. Personal drinking reflects the little thoughts and small happiness of being alone; this is RIO Tipsy.
Ordinary friends and colleagues in daily life and social interactions, with a focus on peace and relaxation, this is RIO Refreshing.
And RIO Strong is about brotherhood between close friends, so the emotional expression is more intense and unrestrained. It writes in copy like "Men's Carnival Night," "Hot and Exciting," "Screaming and Cheering, Breaking Through the Roof," "Hot E-sports, Fighting Together," etc.
Different object relationships represent different consumption tasks and emotional attitudes. By carefully studying these relationships, you can find the right emotions, find inspiration, create insightful content, and thus better stimulate purchase behavior and form consumption habits.
**Behavior (and its) Frequency**
The last variable in scenario design is behavior and its frequency.
To drive consumers to act, using specific behavioral actions as prompts is the most direct way. Just like memes such as "early C late A," "stove-boiled tea," and "mulled wine" can be imitated by many and become behavioral habits, the key is that they directly issue behavioral instructions through action prompts.
Another example is Oreo's "Twist, Lick, Dunk," which makes eating cookies more fun and stimulates people's desire to try. KitKat uses "Have a break" to occupy the moment of rest in daily work and life, helping consumers develop the habit of having a KitKat during work breaks.
To make it easier for consumers to accept, brands can also bind to a habitual action in consumers' lives, using their existing behavior to prompt them to take necessary actions to cultivate new habits. For example, Safeguard has been continuously building the marketing theme "Wash hands, eat," associating two actions with the dining scenario, not only embedding the product but also embedding emotion.
In scenario design, prompts for action directly drive consumers to act and create a sense of consumption ritual. Moreover, brands can also use reminders of behavior frequency to fix the need in consumers' lives, stimulate long-term repeat purchases, and form a fixed purchase rhythm.
For example, "Daily Nuts" uses "daily" as a consumption frequency prompt, creating a new snack market worth tens of billions. The nut market has existed for a long time, and many people know that eating nuts is good for health, but people often forget to eat nuts.
Daily Nuts uses behavior frequency reminders and the convenient design of one pack per day to help consumers develop the habit of eating nuts. In this way, it can gather users, stick with fans, and become part of people's lives.
If it simply promoted that nuts are healthy, or emphasized large size and original ecology, it might strengthen people's motivation to eat nuts, but people would still easily forget to buy and eat nuts.
Frequency prompts are not necessarily the higher the better. For example, "Visit Hailan Home twice a year" is twice, not four times, because male consumers mostly buy clothes only when seasons change in spring and autumn, which is the time to visit Hailan Home.
Another example is DR diamond ring, which can only be customized once in a lifetime. The association with behavior and the emphasis on frequency further strengthen the behavior. Behavior frequency is the formation of consumption habits, which can effectively stimulate repeat purchases and form continuity.
For marketing, there are four basic questions: Who is most likely to buy my product? Why do they buy? How to make them buy now? How to make them keep buying?
**The first question concerns target audience and market segmentation.** The basic concept of scenario marketing, "people are divided by scenarios," answers this question. We need to find target consumers through scenarios.
**The second question concerns user needs and differentiated value.** "Scenarios create needs" partially answers this question. We need to stimulate consumer needs through scenarios, and then influence user decisions through labels.
**The third question involves conversion and purchase, and is especially important for marketing.** The five major scenario variables are all key factors driving consumers to take immediate action. Scenarios tell consumers "do it now," serving both as the consumption reason for "why buy" and the consumption command for "buy now."
**The fourth question involves loyalty management and consumption habit formation.** In this article, I have mentioned the word "habit" many times. For individuals, developing good habits benefits a lifetime; for enterprises, if they can cultivate consumers' repurchase habits, they can reap customer lifetime value.
The main task of marketing is to stimulate demand and influence decisions, and extending decisions further is to build habits. This is especially important for brands because when a person makes a decision to buy a brand for the first time, they usually think carefully, weigh various brands, and compare product parameters and indicators. Once a habit is formed, consumers no longer need to make decisions; they just follow environmental prompts and buy out of inertia.
Scenarios help the brain establish an automatic cruise system, directing consumers to automatically complete purchases again and again subconsciously, without thinking or considering. In one sentence, scenarios shape behavior: they issue commands to make consumers buy immediately, and they cultivate habits to make consumers keep buying.
B.J. Fogg is also known as the "millionaire maker" because his behavior design doctoral students became millionaires after starting businesses. Behavior design is a very practical discipline, and scenarios that can effectively shape behavior are also full of treasures for marketing.
Notes:
[1] B.J. Fogg, "Fogg Behavior Model," Tianjin Science and Technology Press, 2021-10;
[2][3] Meituan, "Scenario Marketing: Insights and Actions," 2024-07-18;


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