TL;DR
- WPP Media and the Marketing Faculty at Said Business School, Oxford University analysed more than 1.2 million purchase journeys worldwide for a study called "How Humans Decide", reported by Marketing Oops on 19 August 2026.
- 84% of purchases go to a preference formed before the need arose; most shoppers enter the active stage already carrying at least three brands and buy the one they are most biased toward.
- Priming bias by category: soft drinks 97%, quick-service restaurants 85%, baby care 84%, personal care 83%, oral care, financial services and telecoms 82%, automotive and consumer electronics 81%.
- Wanruedee Siriwatwechakul, Chief Client Officer at WPP Media Thailand, said a brand outside the consumer's top three during priming finds it 10 to 14 times harder to win at the point of payment.
- The receptivity curve: the top 10% most receptive consumers click and buy readily but build little brand value and tire of frequency fastest, while 23% of the market skips ads in the active stage regardless of frequency.
WPP Media and the Marketing Faculty at Said Business School, Oxford University analysed more than 1.2 million purchase journeys worldwide for a study called "How Humans Decide", and found that 84% of purchases go to a brand preference the shopper formed before the need arose. Marketing Oops reported the findings on 19 August 2026. The study splits every purchase into a Priming Stage, when the consumer is not shopping but is absorbing brand impressions anyway, and an Active Stage, which can run from a few seconds to several months.
What WPP Media and Oxford's Said Business School measured
The research, run by WPP Media with the Marketing Faculty at Said Business School, Oxford University, covers more than 1.2 million purchase journeys worldwide. As reported by Marketing Oops on 19 August 2026, the model divides the journey in two. The Priming Stage is the long stretch when a person has no active need and is simply accumulating impressions of brands. The Active Stage begins when the need appears, and the study notes it can last anywhere from seconds to months depending on the category and the purchase.
The headline number is that 84% of purchases go to a preference formed during the priming stage rather than during the active search. Most shoppers, according to the study, enter the active stage already carrying at least three brands in their head, and they usually buy the one they are most biased toward. The active stage, in that reading, is less a decision process than a confirmation process.
Priming bias runs from 81% to 97% depending on category
The study reports how strongly priming bias determines the outcome in specific categories. The table below carries the category figures as published in the 19 August 2026 report.
| Category | Priming bias |
|---|---|
| Soft drinks | 97% |
| Quick-service restaurants | 85% |
| Baby care | 84% |
| Personal care | 83% |
| Oral care, financial services, telecoms | 82% |
| Automotive, consumer electronics | 81% |
The spread is the interesting part. Soft drinks at 97% is close to a foregone conclusion, which fits a category bought in seconds at a cooler door with no comparison step at all. But the floor is not low either. Automotive and consumer electronics, the two categories where buyers do the most research, still sit at 81%. Even in a purchase people spend weeks reading about, four in five outcomes were effectively settled before the reading started. Whatever the research phase is doing, it is mostly ranking a shortlist that already existed.
The 10 to 14 times figure came from WPP Media Thailand
Wanruedee Siriwatwechakul, Chief Client Officer at WPP Media Thailand, said a brand that is not already in the consumer's top three during the priming stage finds it 10 to 14 times harder to win at the point of payment. That is the single most operationally useful sentence in the coverage, because it puts a cost on absence rather than a value on presence.
Labelled analysis, not a study finding: a 10 to 14 times penalty at the point of payment is roughly what a performance team experiences as an unexplained rise in cost per acquisition. If your brand is outside the shopper's mental shortlist, the bottom-funnel ad has to overcome an existing preference rather than simply catch an undecided buyer, and the price of that work shows up in the media metric rather than in the brand metric. The dashboard reports it as a bidding problem. The study suggests it is a memory problem.
Retargeting and discounting compete over the remaining 16%
If 84% of purchases resolve to a preference formed before the need arose, the arithmetic leaves 16% genuinely in play during the active stage. That 16% is the territory the entire bottom of the funnel fights over: retargeting pools, brand-plus-competitor search terms, last-click promotions, cart recovery flows and price matching.
Labelled analysis: this reframes rising costs in demand capture. Once a channel is competing over a fixed and small slice of outcomes, competitive pressure on that slice raises the price without anything about the buyer changing. The study does not make this argument. It reports a ratio, and the ratio is what makes the argument available.
The obvious wrong conclusion is to read this as a case against performance marketing. It is not. 16% of purchases still turn on the active stage, that share is worth a great deal of money, and losing it through weak search coverage or a broken checkout is a self-inflicted loss. The study also does not say that brand spending converts at any particular rate, does not report a recommended budget split, and does not quantify what a given amount of priming investment buys. Anyone converting the 84% figure directly into a budget ratio is adding a claim the research did not make.
The receptivity curve, and the trap at the top of it
The same study maps a receptivity curve across the market. At one end, the top 10% most receptive consumers click and buy readily, but build little brand value, and are the most easily annoyed by ad frequency. At the other end, 23% of the market is least receptive and skips ads during the active stage regardless of how often those ads are served.
Labelled analysis: the top 10% is the group that makes a media buy look excellent. They respond, so the click-through rate rises. They convert, so the cost per acquisition falls. Any optimisation loop that rewards immediate response will find them and keep buying them, because that is what the loop is for. The study's point is that this group contributes little to brand value while being the quickest to tire of frequency, so the same buying pattern that flatters the dashboard also erodes its own returns over time.
The 23% at the other end matters for a different reason. If nearly a quarter of the market skips ads in the active stage no matter what, then frequency against that group during the active stage is spend with a known ceiling. The study does not say those people are unreachable. It says they are not reachable that way, at that moment.
What the study did not say
This is agency-group research. WPP Media is a global media agency group with a commercial interest in the case for brand investment, and a finding that says 84% of purchases are decided before the shopping starts is a finding that argues for more upper-funnel media. That does not invalidate the data, and the academic partner at Said Business School, Oxford University is a meaningful check, but the framing was chosen by an interested party.
The 1.2 million purchase journeys are described as worldwide, and the reporting did not break them out by market, by channel or by the period they were collected in. There is no Thailand-specific dataset in what was published beyond the framing given by the WPP Media Thailand executive. The category percentages are reported without sample sizes per category. The study also does not describe what counts as a brand impression during the priming stage, which means it does not tell you which media actually did the priming, and that is precisely the question a planner would want answered.
What this means for Thai marketers
For a brand competing in Thailand, the practical translation of the 84% figure is that the shortlist is the asset. If you are not one of the three brands a Thai consumer already carries when the need appears, the work of getting bought happens in a much more expensive place, which is the 10 to 14 times harder point Wanruedee Siriwatwechakul described.
Reasoning from the study rather than reporting it: Thai media consumption concentrates heavily in feeds and short video, which are environments people scroll while having no need at all. That is a priming environment by definition, and it is usually bought and measured as a performance environment, judged on clicks and cost per result within the campaign window. A campaign judged only on immediate response will systematically undervalue the impressions doing the priming work, because the priming work does not show up until a need arises weeks later. The study did not measure Thai media specifically, so treat this as an inference about the mechanism rather than a finding about the market.
The other Thai-specific consideration is category. If your business sits in a category near the top of that table, such as packaged food and drink or quick-service restaurants, the priming bias reading suggests the outcome is close to settled before anyone opens an app. If you sit in automotive, consumer electronics or telecoms, the 81% to 82% band still leaves the largest active-stage share the study found, which is where comparison content, review presence and search coverage earn their place.
Where the two stages actually get built
The priming stage and the active stage need different work, and the failure mode is doing only the second one. Priming is built by consistent presence in the places people spend attention when they are not buying, which is where content marketing and always-on paid social do their work, and where frequency needs a ceiling given the study's finding on annoyance among the most receptive 10%. The active stage is built by being findable and credible the moment the need appears, which is a search and comparison problem more than an advertising one, and it is where organic search visibility carries the shortlist into a result page.
A short list of things worth checking against your own plan, based on the two-stage model:
- Can you name the media in your plan that reaches people with no current need? If every line item is targeted by in-market signals, you have no priming budget at all.
- Do you know whether your brand is in the top three considered in your category? The study says the shortlist decides most outcomes, so unaided consideration is a more useful tracking number than campaign reach.
- Is frequency capped anywhere? The study reports that the most receptive 10% are the most easily annoyed by ad frequency, which makes the responsive audience the wrong group to hammer.
- Are your active-stage assets ready for a shortlist that already exists? Comparison pages, product detail, review presence and search coverage serve people confirming a preference, not forming one.
- Is anyone measuring the priming stage at all? If the only reporting is last-click, the 84% is invisible in your numbers by construction.
FAQ
Does this mean I should cut performance marketing?
No, and the study does not say that. 16% of purchases still turn on the active stage by the study's own arithmetic, and the research reports no recommended budget split between brand and performance at all. It is an argument for funding the priming stage as well, not for defunding demand capture.
Is the 84% figure specific to Thailand?
No. The study covers more than 1.2 million purchase journeys worldwide, and the reporting did not break the data out by market. The only Thai element in the coverage is the framing given by Wanruedee Siriwatwechakul, Chief Client Officer at WPP Media Thailand, who described the 10 to 14 times harder penalty for brands outside the top three.
What exactly is the priming stage?
It is the period when a consumer is not shopping but is still absorbing impressions of brands, as defined in the WPP Media and Said Business School study. The Active Stage follows, starting when the need appears, and the study says it can last from seconds to months.
Why does the study say the most responsive audience is a problem?
Because the top 10% most receptive consumers click and buy readily while building little brand value, and are the most easily annoyed by ad frequency. Buying heavily against that group produces strong immediate metrics with weak durable effect, which is a measurement trap rather than a media one.
Do I have to change anything right now?
Nothing is required, since this is research rather than a platform or policy change. It is a reason to check whether any line in your media plan reaches people with no current need, and whether you track unaided consideration alongside campaign performance.
The shortlist is the asset
Read plainly, the WPP Media and Oxford finding says that most of the buying decision happens while nobody is selling, and that the moment of purchase mostly ratifies a preference that was built earlier and elsewhere. 84% of purchases go to a brand chosen before the need existed. Priming bias runs from 81% in automotive and consumer electronics up to 97% in soft drinks. A brand outside the top three faces a 10 to 14 times harder task at the point of payment. If you want a second opinion on whether your plan is funding the stage that decides most of your outcomes, our team is happy to look at it with you.
