Current Topic: Strategy

If you need to buy a running T-shirt, which one would you choose? One with a solid, neutral color or one with a bright, colorful pattern?  Which choice will give you more satisfaction one year later?

Research has found that our buying decisions are often inconsistent with what we prefer in the long run. Most people tend to choose T-shirts with a simple design and a neutral color, believing they would be happier with their choices later.  However, in reality, people experience more long-lasting satisfaction with bolder, attention-catching designs and colors.

A box of chocolates weighs 500 grams. The hotel is only a 400 meter walk away from the center. The mansion is over 6,000-square-foot big. From weight to size or distance; customers are constantly exposed to quantitative information in their decision making.

However, as it turns out, our brain is awful at processing this quantitative information. We prefer information to be more discrete and sparking the imagination, say a box of 10 chocolates, a hotel that’s only a 5-minute walk away from the center, or a mansion of 10 bedrooms…

This finding applies to other quantitative information as well and has intriguing implications for nudging consumer behavior both for marketeers as well as public policy makers.

By letting customers build their own products, IKEA is able to sell their furniture for low prices since construction is one of the most costly aspects of furniture. Additionally, their customers have a higher liking for the IKEA products, because they have to build it themselves. This sounds contra-intuitive: We like it when others cook for us or clean for us, so why would we prefer to construct a table ourselves?

Advertisers and researchers have long known of the effect that ambient music has in guiding a customer’s subconscious. New studies suggest that this effect also includes music volume, and that a simple turn of the volume button may significantly affect sales. That probably sounds like music to any managers’ ears!

So what volume should you adopt to boost your sales?

Let’s take a look at one of the latest findings on music volume and their implications for your food venture.

How would NIKE in uppercase fit differently to both men and women consumer decisions, compared to head & shoulders in lowercase? And what subtle effects had switching PEPSI to pepsi in 2004, after the brand case had been uppercase for 32 years? The present research in neuromarketing explains what effects letter case might have on consumer decisions. UBER and lyft seem to provide similar services, although their brand case might appeal specifically to either men or women.