Push for a pizza, swipe for a cleaner and tap for a taxi. The rise of apps like Uber is facilitating the culture of ‘I want it, and I want it now’. For digital-savvy city-dwellers from London to Beijing, everything you need – from your dinner to a ride home – is just an app away.

Mobile commerce is still unchartered territory for many retailers, but it’s predicted to be worth more than $3 trillion by 2017. 'Tinder for shopping' app Grabble is luring shoppers in with a swipe-based interface that brings a whole new meaning to the term ‘impulse buy’.

As the smartphone becomes an increasingly useful way to make purchases online, research shows that mobile shopping drives more impulse buys than any other platform. The Europe-wide study found that of 13.5 million mobile shoppers, 42% regularly buy ‘on impulse’ via smartphone.

From understanding buyers’ eye movements to measuring brain activity when we’re shopping, decision science is becoming a market research norm. Author Phil Barden sheds light on the methods and approaches used by Decode Marketing to understand why people do the things they do.