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Examples of mental accounting don’t get better than this:

“Me at the airport at 6am after eating my $30 meal, drinking my $12 water, and spending $80 on an Uber…all because I booked a 6am flight to save $50”.

What is mental accounting? Our tendency to weight money differently according to where it’s come from and where it’s going.

The $50 he saved was a win for the “paying for my flight” mental account.

But the money spent getting to...

Stop promoting your product. Start promoting your process.

New research suggests a powerful way to stand out in a cluttered market is to share how you make your product, not just what it is.

Consumers perceive traditionally made products as having better quality and being better for society.  For example, chocolate described as being made with a “traditional” process was believed to be of higher quality by research participants, and they were willing to pay 10% more...

94% of consumers said they were willing to pay a price premium for an energy efficient lightbulb, but only one-third actually purchased the product.

This is the problem of “Willingness-to-Pay (WTP)” research, and why not all behavioural studies are the same.

When people are asked a hypothetical, like “would you buy this product?” or “how much would you pay?”, they give you their best guess. As well intentioned as their answer might be, it...

Have you ever experienced that bittersweet feeling when you are watching a TV series or reading a book you love?

You don’t want it to end but you also can’t wait to see how it does.

Our customers experience this too.

It’s called the One-Away Mere Completion effect.  In short, people feel most engaged in something just before they complete it.

This is exciting, because it tells us two things:

1 Pay attention to what completion means. For example, would buying this...

When someone says "I'll be honest" or “I don’t want to be mean…” before criticising a product, they're actually increasing others’ desire to buy it.

By using dispreferred markers like these, the reviewer is softening what they are about to say, and increasing how likeable they seem as a result.

It’s a social risk to be negative, so proclaiming their willingness to say it anyway enhances their credibility.

But what does it do to the product...

Is the world moving more quickly, really?

I've been thinking a lot about the speed of change lately, largely because every book or podcast seems to lament how quickly things are moving and the challenge this poses in keeping up.

You've heard it too, no doubt. "Things were so much simpler 10, 20, 50 years ago".

Yes and no.

What if the pace of change is an illusion?

Like this. The image appears to be moving, but it's actually not.

Why we never get ahead of the curve

Where a lot of...