{"id":896,"date":"2023-05-05T16:30:24","date_gmt":"2023-05-05T16:30:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/?p=896"},"modified":"2026-05-31T08:33:32","modified_gmt":"2026-05-31T08:33:32","slug":"involvement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/involvement\/","title":{"rendered":"Involvement"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Introductory mystery<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Several years ago as I was walking to my office (it was the week before semester started, and there were things to prepare) I saw something that made me stop. I pulled out my phone for a picture. It was this:<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"568\" height=\"369\" src=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/05\/dominos-promotion.jpg\" alt=\"A street scene. A man is standing outside a Domino's restaurant dressed as a large blue fake pizza box, on which is written &quot;FREE PIZZA HERE&quot;, underneath the Domino's logo. About a dozen students are visible waiting to go in.\" class=\"wp-image-902\" style=\"width:568px;height:369px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/05\/dominos-promotion.jpg 568w, https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/05\/dominos-promotion-300x195.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 568px) 100vw, 568px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">The streets of Manchester, England, around the mid-2010&#8217;s<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The more I thought about this promotion, the more I realized how expensive it must be:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As you can see, there was a line out the door, so Domino&#8217;s were buying lots of ingredients and giving them away. But not before spending money on fuel to heat it, employees to cook it (and clean up after), and even more employees to stand out in the damp promoting it, dressed in designer fake-pizza-box wear. On top of all that, Domino&#8217;s were paying what our economist friends call an &#8220;opportunity cost&#8221; for the food that they COULD have sold if they hadn&#8217;t fed people for free instead. If you add it all up, that&#8217;s a lot of money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Why would they do this? What possible reasons can you think of?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I sometimes ask my classes this same question, and I&#8217;ve put some of their more popular answers below&#8230; But I&#8217;ve also hidden those answers in an accordion to give you a chance to think of your ideas first. Go on, how many can you get#up?<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"brxe-div footnote_anchor\"><div class=\"brxe-div footnote_shifter\">\n<pre class=\"wp-block-verse\">#down. active learning works <strong>much<\/strong> better than passive watching<\/pre>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-pb-accordion-item c-accordion__item js-accordion-item no-js\" data-initially-open=\"false\" data-click-to-close=\"true\" data-auto-close=\"true\" data-scroll=\"false\" data-scroll-offset=\"0\"><h5 id=\"at-8960\" class=\"c-accordion__title js-accordion-controller\" role=\"button\">Click for their most common answers&#8230;<\/h5><div id=\"ac-8960\" class=\"c-accordion__content\">\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>They were trying to get people to learn their brand<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>They were trying to teach people how good their food tasted<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>They were trying to get people to like them with the gift of free food<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">How did you do? If you had ideas that aren&#8217;t on this list, please post them in a comment at the bottom of this page (posts are private, and are hidden from the other students).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Those usual answers are all pretty sensible, but let&#8217;s also ask some questions about them: <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Do Domino&#8217;s need to do much to get people to learn about their brand? They have probably nearly 100% name recognition (even for new students), and if anyone did need to learn who they were, wouldn&#8217;t it be cheaper to put out just a big picture of a pizza?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Perhaps people who take Domino&#8217;s offer will indeed discover that it is the tastiest pizza they&#8217;ve ever had, and return again and again for more. But really, this is DOMINO&#8217;S pizza. Reactions to it are going to range from &#8220;it&#8217;s fine I guess&#8221;, to outright snobbery from the foodies (you know who you are).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Maybe some people will appreciate the free food and like Domino&#8217;s for it. But how long will that last when they get charged for their food next time? It would have to last quite a while because, as we said, it&#8217;s a pretty expensive promotion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So why <strong>did <\/strong>they do it? Do you know?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Let&#8217;s talk about some consumer behaviour, and then we&#8217;ll come back to this later &#8211; we&#8217;ll see if we got anywhere new.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">A simple decision model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Imagine product X. You don&#8217;t own it today, but a week from now you are finished with owning it and are throwing it away. What steps will you have likely just gone through?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This isn&#8217;t a trick question. There is no hidden secret here &#8211; it&#8217;s just shopping like you have done many times in your life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Well, you must have bought it at some point. And before that, you had to realize that you wanted to buy it. Then you probably did some research and made your decision. After your purchase, you used this thing, and maybe you liked it or maybe you didn&#8217;t. And then you threw it away. If you mapped it all out, it would look something like this:<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"323\" height=\"453\" src=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/05\/decision-model-simple-1.jpg\" alt=\"A series of 5 boxes. The first says &quot;problem recognition&quot; then an arrow pointing ot the next box which says &quot;information search&quot;, then an arrow pointing to the box &quot;evaluation of alternatives&quot; then an arrow pointing to &quot;product choice&quot; and finally an arrow pointing to &quot;outcomes&quot;.\" class=\"wp-image-913\" style=\"width:242px;height:340px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/05\/decision-model-simple-1.jpg 323w, https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/05\/decision-model-simple-1-214x300.jpg 214w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 323px) 100vw, 323px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">A very simple decision model<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This is the most famous slice of the famous Engel Kollat Blackwell (&#8216;EKB&#8217;) model <span class=\"zp-InText-zp-ID--4193465-7IJE374F--wp896 zp-InText-Citation loading\" rel=\"{ 'pages': 'np', 'items': '{4193465:7IJE374F}', 'format': '%d%', 'brackets': '', 'etal': '', 'separator': '', 'and': '' }\"><\/span>, and every CB textbook has some version of it (it&#8217;s practically compulsory). <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Real-life marketing practitioners are more likely to talk about ideas like the &#8220;customer journey&#8221;, with multiple &#8220;touch points&#8221; between a customer and a firm, but it is simpler to start with considering just a single purchase on its own. You could say that it&#8217;s too simple#up &#8211; if you explained it to your grandmother she would probably just nod at you, then smile kindly and say: &#8220;You went to university to learn that, did you dear?&#8221; But, the best ideas are often simple ones that reveal more than at first appears, so let&#8217;s dive in and see what a closer look might show.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"brxe-div footnote_anchor\"><div class=\"brxe-div footnote_shifter\">\n<pre class=\"wp-block-verse\">#down. To be fair, the full EKB model has other elements too, but most books zoom in on just this slice of it<\/pre>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Problem recognition<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What makes us want to buy something? There is a long tradition in consumer behaviour of imagining that purchasing happens when consumers go on little quests to make their life better <span class=\"zp-InText-zp-ID--4193465-ZTFKHTN9--wp896 zp-InText-Citation loading\" rel=\"{ 'pages': 'np', 'items': '{4193465:ZTFKHTN9}', 'format': '(%a%, %d%, %p%)', 'brackets': '', 'etal': '', 'separator': '', 'and': '' }\"><\/span>. A common way of expressing this is to say that people are motivated when they experience some kind of &#8220;discrepancy&#8221; (a gap) between their &#8216;actual&#8217; state (i.e., how they currently are) and their &#8216;ideal&#8217; state (i.e., how they would like to be). <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For example, if my ideal state is that I want to own a car, and my actual state is that I do, in fact, own a car then there is no discrepancy, and so I&#8217;m not motivated to do anything. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-group definition_block has-background is-content-justification-left is-nowrap is-layout-flex wp-container-core-group-is-layout-14d7fe8f wp-block-group-is-layout-flex\" style=\"background-color:#fcb90017\">\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"definition_term wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Actual-ideal discrepancy<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"definition_definition wp-block-paragraph\">A gap between how we perceive the world to be, and how we would ideally like it to be. The assumption is that we will be motivated to find ways to close that gap.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"550\" height=\"367\" src=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/05\/car-burning-pexels-david-henry-8540598.jpg\" alt=\"A car on a city street that is engulfed in flames. A firefighter is spraying a hose into it from close range\" class=\"wp-image-916\" srcset=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/05\/car-burning-pexels-david-henry-8540598.jpg 550w, https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/05\/car-burning-pexels-david-henry-8540598-300x200.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 550px) 100vw, 550px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">&#8220;Oops. Well, I DID own a car&#8230;&#8221;<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If something really horrible happens to your car, then your <strong>ideal <\/strong>state of owning a car no longer matches your <strong>actual <\/strong>state of having one. A <strong>discrepancy <\/strong>has opened between them, and this should (in theory) motivate you to want to acquire a replacement car. In marketing jargon, when a gap opens because your actual state gets worse, this is a &#8220;<strong>need recognition<\/strong>&#8220;#up.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"brxe-div footnote_anchor\"><div class=\"brxe-div footnote_shifter\">\n<pre class=\"wp-block-verse\">#down. You might wonder whether it is a 'need' every time something in your life gets worse in some way. We'll have a deeper think about this in our chapter on motivation.<\/pre>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Here is another example: imagine standing in line to pay at the supermarket, and right next to the checkout counter you see this:<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"500\" height=\"335\" src=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/05\/candy-bars.jpg\" alt=\"Many chocolate bars and other sweets on display by a supermarket checkout\" class=\"wp-image-985\" srcset=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/05\/candy-bars.jpg 500w, https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/05\/candy-bars-300x201.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">&#8220;I just want to pay for my food, and, waaait, what&#8217;s this? Mmm.&#8221;<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In this scenario, your actual state has not changed at all, but your ideal state has if it&#8217;s now shifted to a future that includes chocolate (&#8220;CHOOOOCOLATE&#8230;&#8221;). We are now back to having a gap between your actual and ideal state. In this case, the gap came from your ideal state getting better (in marketing jargon you had an &#8220;<strong>opportunity recognition<\/strong>&#8220;), but either way, a gap should provide motivation towards buying something (whether or not you act on that motivation).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-pb-accordion-item c-accordion__item js-accordion-item no-js interest\" data-initially-open=\"false\" data-click-to-close=\"true\" data-auto-close=\"true\" data-scroll=\"false\" data-scroll-offset=\"0\"><h5 id=\"at-8961\" class=\"c-accordion__title js-accordion-controller\" role=\"button\">Does the choice of the term &#8216;problem recognition&#8217; say something about marketers?<\/h5><div id=\"ac-8961\" class=\"c-accordion__content\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What&#8217;s that? You say that marketers are tempting people to eat unhealthy food that will be bad for them? Oh my goodness, no! We&#8217;re just helping them identify a snacking opportunity! It&#8217;s nice of us!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And you say that marketers are nudging people towards driving larger vehicles than they need, that damage our planet? Oh my, what a cynic you are! We are only helping them identify hypothetical future scenarios in which their car might not have enough power&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And if I, the marketer, just so happen to make money off these transactions &#8211; ones in which other people (and\/or planets) pay a significant price? Look, who is to judge me for solving people&#8217;s problems?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At least, that&#8217;s what these terms imply. Isn&#8217;t it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">See our chapter on Market Structure Problems for a deeper analysis of these sorts of ethical issues.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Problem recognition is, at root, about motivation, and we will do a much(!) deeper dive into that in our next chapter. For now, then, let&#8217;s move on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Information search<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Let&#8217;s take our car example forward. We have realized we want one, so our next step is an information search. CB has a whole vocabulary for describing the ways in which this can happen:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Search can be <strong>internal<\/strong>, within our own selves. We can mentally search through our past experience with the product, or recall things people have said about it, or messages from advertising about it, or anything else that we have experienced. We&#8217;ll discuss a lot more in the memory chapter, how complete this information tends to be, and what form it tends to exist in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Search can be <strong>external<\/strong> to ourselves. This can be browsing through shops, or asking a friend (or a shop assistant, or the random person next to us). It can be reading user reviews, or looking at expert testing sites (of <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.which.co.uk\/\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.which.co.uk\/\" target=\"_blank\">which<\/a> <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.consumerreports.org\/\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.consumerreports.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">there<\/a> are <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.expertreviews.co.uk\/\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.expertreviews.co.uk\/\" target=\"_blank\">many<\/a>), or some combination of the above.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"600\" height=\"347\" src=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/05\/consumer-reviews-istock_s.jpg\" alt=\"hands typing on an open laptop. In the air are a number of speech bubbles that each look like a blank 5 star review (they have an empty placeholder logo of a person logo, 5 yellow stars, and 2 blank lines that would hold text)\" class=\"wp-image-917\" srcset=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/05\/consumer-reviews-istock_s.jpg 600w, https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/05\/consumer-reviews-istock_s-300x174.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">External search in action<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Usually, we will narrow down our search fairly quickly: eliminating brands that we haven&#8217;t heard of, or that aren&#8217;t available, or that don&#8217;t do the things we need (if you want a discount supermarket near your house then your choices are probably already somewhat limited). Of the entire set of options that we bring to mind (known as the <strong>evoked set<\/strong>) we quickly ditch options that we don&#8217;t like, or that don&#8217;t work for one reason or another, and settle on a <strong>consideration set<\/strong> that we actively look into. You might think that people would consider a lot of options, especially in the internet age when the world&#8217;s collected wisdom is instantly searchable with a brush of our fingertips. That would make sense. But we don&#8217;t. Ninety percent of searches are of three options or less; partly because suitable and available options can be limited, but also partly because people find research to be a bit of a drag <span class=\"zp-InText-zp-ID--4193465-HNAHNRNQ--wp896 zp-InText-Citation loading\" rel=\"{ 'pages': 'np', 'items': '{4193465:HNAHNRNQ}', 'format': '(%a%, %d%, %p%)', 'brackets': '', 'etal': '', 'separator': '', 'and': '' }\"><\/span>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-group definition_block has-background is-content-justification-left is-nowrap is-layout-flex wp-container-core-group-is-layout-14d7fe8f wp-block-group-is-layout-flex\" style=\"background-color:#fcb90017\">\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"definition_term wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Consideration Set<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"definition_definition wp-block-paragraph\">The brands that someone actively considers when they are making a purchase<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Evaluation of alternatives, &amp; Product choice<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So you&#8217;ve researched a couple of options, but now what? Again, marketers have developed a somewhat elaborate language for the different ways in which this can happen, but we&#8217;ll try to move through this pretty quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Generally, the assumption is that the products you are considering differ from each other on a small-ish number of meaningful <strong>attributes<\/strong>. For instance, if you are considering different phones, then some options will be lighter vs. heavier, have bigger vs. smaller screens, be faster vs. slower (though <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.popsci.com\/test-smartphone-speed\/\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.popsci.com\/test-smartphone-speed\/\" target=\"_blank\">measuring phone speed<\/a> turns out to be more complicated than you&#8217;d think), and so on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When you look at the attributes that your different various phone options differ from each other on, then maybe you can work out that one phone &#8216;dominates&#8217; the others (i.e., it&#8217;s the same or better on every attribute). If not (and it&#8217;s usually not), then you need some kind of &#8216;decision rule&#8217; to help you decide. These, again, come in different flavours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-pb-accordion-item c-accordion__item js-accordion-item no-js understand\" data-initially-open=\"false\" data-click-to-close=\"true\" data-auto-close=\"true\" data-scroll=\"false\" data-scroll-offset=\"0\"><h5 id=\"at-8962\" class=\"c-accordion__title js-accordion-controller\" role=\"button\">Decision rule flavours: compensatory or non-compensatory<\/h5><div id=\"ac-8962\" class=\"c-accordion__content\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Some rules are <strong>non-compensatory<\/strong>, meaning that you aren&#8217;t willing to have good scores on one attribute &#8216;compensate&#8217; for lower scores on another one. What that means in practice is either that you either just pick one thing as most important and pick based on that (e.g., &#8220;I&#8217;m just taking whichever is cheapest&#8221; or &#8220;whichever is fastest&#8221;, etc), or that you filter out the products that don&#8217;t meet certain scores for some of their attributes. That sounds complicated, but think about setting an online retail shop to only show you the phones whose price is within a certain range, who got at least 4 stars, and which belong to a certain brand. What you are telling the web page there is: &#8220;if it doesn&#8217;t meet these criteria then don&#8217;t even show it to me.&#8221; <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.productchart.co.uk\/smartphones\/\" target=\"_blank\">This page<\/a> has a beautiful example of an interface for setting non-compensatory filters to choose smartphones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Alternately your decision rule can be <strong>compensatory<\/strong>, meaning you are willing to make trade-offs to get more of one thing by accepting less of something else. Maybe you are willing to trade a higher price for a phone that was faster and smaller. Maybe you&#8217;d put up with it being a bit bigger than you want if it&#8217;s really blazing fast. The extreme version of this would be typing all the attribute scores into a spreadsheet, and calculating which product is best across all of them, on averages (maybe also weighting some attributes to be more important than others &#8211; for instance, you might accept it being a little bit more expensive but only if it is a LOT faster). Normal people probably don&#8217;t use a literal spreadsheet like this under most circumstances (though business-to-business customers might), but we might be doing rough equivalent things, if tacitly and in our heads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">These rules can also be combined. Perhaps you start off with some non-compensatory filters (e.g., at least 4 stars, and the price below X), but once you have eliminated the options that don&#8217;t fit those rules, then you are willing to trade off something with a worse screen to get a slightly better camera, etc.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Finally, you make a choice and buy a product &#8211; or not. This takes us to:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Outcomes<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Once you get to using your product then you find out how much you like it. From the consumer&#8217;s point of view, this is usually the fun part &#8211; the owning, the doing, and eventually the disposing (do you recycle it? Does it have to go sit in the bottom of a pile in your room where you forget about it?).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">From the firm&#8217;s point of view, they want two outcomes to happen: One is that you like their product so much that you buy it again (and again and again). Two, you like it so much that you tell the whole world to buy it too (marketers call this &#8220;<strong>word of mouth<\/strong>&#8220;, even when it happens over social media, on screens, and involves no physical mouths doing any talking).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This seems like it should be pretty straightforward: if it was a good product then you buy it again and say nice things about it, and if it wasn&#8217;t good then you won&#8217;t. This is a nice simple story, with easy-to-follow practical implications (&#8220;just make the best product possible, get people to try it, and ka-ching!&#8221;). It only has one real drawback. Which, unfortunately, is that it isn&#8217;t very accurate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If that is surprising to you, consider two people listening to the same pair of headphones; One thinks they sound pretty good, and the other is unimpressed. Both people are hearing the same sounds out of the same speakers &#8211; the product&#8217;s level of &#8216;goodness&#8217; is the same! But one is a lot more satisfied than the other. This happens all the time. Just look at movie reviews on <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.rottentomatoes.com\/\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.rottentomatoes.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">rottentomatoes.com<\/a> &#8211; there are almost no films that everyone agrees are good or bad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">How is this possible? There are a few possibilities, but a very famous one in marketing is that how satisfied you are with a product is less about its absolute quality, and more about how that <strong>quality compares to your expectations <\/strong><span class=\"zp-InText-zp-ID--4193465-A3ALKTEX--wp896 zp-InText-Citation loading\" rel=\"{ 'pages': 'np', 'items': '{4193465:A3ALKTEX}', 'format': '(%a%, %d%, %p%)', 'brackets': '', 'etal': '', 'separator': '', 'and': '' }\"><\/span>. You can even write this as a formula:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-preformatted\">Satisfaction = product experience - expectations<\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If the product experience is the same, but one person was expecting the speakers to be great then maybe they feel let down by them. If the other person expected them to be terrible then maybe they are pleasantly surprised. Similarly, a 5-minute wait to pay at the supermarket could be seen as annoying by a person who expects to walk straight through, but as almost enjoyably quick by someone who was braced for 15 minutes of tedium.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-pb-accordion-item c-accordion__item js-accordion-item no-js understand\" data-initially-open=\"false\" data-click-to-close=\"true\" data-auto-close=\"true\" data-scroll=\"false\" data-scroll-offset=\"0\"><h5 id=\"at-8963\" class=\"c-accordion__title js-accordion-controller\" role=\"button\">So&#8230; I&#8217;d like every movie if someone would just tell me they were all terrible first?<\/h5><div id=\"ac-8963\" class=\"c-accordion__content\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">No, of course not. People can have different tastes too (some people tend to enjoy romantic comedies, some prefer action films, etc). But look back at the equation:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-preformatted\">Satisfaction = product experience - expectations<\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There are two things that can matter here. If the movie is a type you don&#8217;t like, then that might make your product experience worse. But if that poor product experience beats your low expectations then you should be satisfied with it regardless! (or, at least, that is what this theory predicts).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Think of it this way: There was a time in the 1960s when people would have been perfectly satisfied with this TV:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"850\" height=\"689\" src=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/05\/old-TV-kovacs__mate-G8RqzA8-YoE-unsplash.jpg\" alt=\"Image of a 1960's color TV sitting on a wooden cabinet. It is boxy but with rounded corners, brown and beige in colour, and showing a screen from a TV show of the era. The show appears to be of an audience of white middle aged men wearing suits. The image is slightly blurry and purple-tinted.\" class=\"wp-image-981\" srcset=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/05\/old-TV-kovacs__mate-G8RqzA8-YoE-unsplash.jpg 850w, https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/05\/old-TV-kovacs__mate-G8RqzA8-YoE-unsplash-300x243.jpg 300w, https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/05\/old-TV-kovacs__mate-G8RqzA8-YoE-unsplash-768x623.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 850px) 100vw, 850px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It was in colour! It had stylishly rounded corners! It was a fashionable shade of beige! <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">You probably wouldn&#8217;t be satisfied with it today, though. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Partly this is because fashions have changed (its colour combination won&#8217;t be seen as exciting and modern, the way they once would have#up). Partly also, our expectations for the performance of TVs have increased dramatically; we have become used to huge thin screens with pin-sharp pictures and near-perfect colour reproduction. <\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"brxe-div footnote_anchor\"><div class=\"brxe-div footnote_shifter\">\n<pre class=\"wp-block-verse\">#down. Maybe the combination of beige, mustard yellow, and lacquered dark brown wood will come back some day. Maybe, but we hope not <\/pre>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So both factors have now changed to work against this TV: The product experience is worse (it doesn&#8217;t look very fashionable) and its picture no longer lives up to our expectations, because those have increased so dramatically. No wonder we would see it as so unsatisfying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now some modern consumers might still enjoy buying this TV, but as an antique, rather than as their daily TV entertainment device. In other words, they are finding an entirely different <a href=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/core-benefit\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/core-benefit\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">core benefit<\/a> to appreciate it for. If the core benefit is different (&#8220;it&#8217;s part of my authentic old fashioned style!&#8221;) then they could want very different actual product features in order to create that benefit (i.e., genuine oldness! A &#8220;glorious&#8221; 1960&#8217;s colour scheme!), and their expectations would also shift accordingly (&#8220;look at how wonderfully fuzzy that picture is! That&#8217;s exactly how they were!&#8221;). Such a person might be very satisfied with this purchase.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This idea has become such an orthodoxy in marketing that if you look up &#8220;satisfaction&#8221; in a lot of textbooks, they define it precisely as this: a discrepancy between a customer&#8217;s expectations and their experience of the product.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Still, if you look closer it&#8217;s not a perfect idea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For one thing, it implies that you would really like your customers to have low expectations of your product; that will help you beat their expectations by more, making them more satisfied! Other theories make the opposite prediction, suggesting that you should want your customers to expect good things because that might help them appreciate the product experience more (in our perception chapter we will discuss one of these called &#8216;assimilation&#8217;). Spreng and Page <span class=\"zp-InText-zp-ID--4193465-66D76M8C--wp896 zp-InText-Citation loading\" rel=\"{ 'pages': 'np', 'items': '{4193465:66D76M8C}', 'format': '(%d%)', 'brackets': '', 'etal': '', 'separator': '', 'and': '' }\"><\/span> for example, show that you can do a more consistently good job of predicting how satisfied customers will be with a product if you ask them both whether the product they got is different from their expectations, but also how good or bad that discrepancy made them feel#up (they show this across several different kinds of products).<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"brxe-div footnote_anchor\"><div class=\"brxe-div footnote_shifter\">\n<pre class=\"wp-block-verse\">#down. They show several different ways of calculating satisfaction that can get this superior performance, but what these methods all have in common is that they don't assume a discrepancy is good<\/pre>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Another issue, perhaps a bigger one, is the research questioning how much satisfaction even matters at all, in terms of creating product loyalty. There are studies showing that while it is certainly a problem if your customers are dissatisfied, once they reach some basic level of liking of your product, then loyalty doesn&#8217;t grow any higher if you do the work to make them even more satisfied beyond that point <span class=\"zp-InText-zp-ID--4193465-NRR2Q8MF-_-4193465-BWKWZRT3--wp896 zp-InText-Citation loading\" rel=\"{ 'pages': 'np', 'items': '{4193465:NRR2Q8MF},{4193465:BWKWZRT3}', 'format': '(%a%, %d%, %p%)', 'brackets': '', 'etal': '', 'separator': '', 'and': '' }\"><\/span>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There is also some research suggesting that satisfaction is not the whole story, and that delight with a product might matter too <span class=\"zp-InText-zp-ID--4193465-DN2FF4KJ--wp896 zp-InText-Citation loading\" rel=\"{ 'pages': 'np', 'items': '{4193465:DN2FF4KJ}', 'format': '(%a%, %d%, %p%)', 'brackets': '', 'etal': '', 'separator': '', 'and': '' }\"><\/span>. The key here is that delight isn&#8217;t just &#8220;lots of really high satisfaction&#8221;, but rather seems to be an emotional component that is different from satisfaction&#8217;s more rational calculation of a product working well. So, for instance, you might be delighted by finding a rare model 1 iPhone, even if you wouldn&#8217;t be very satisfied with using the product itself (after all, it had fixed icons that you couldn&#8217;t change &#8211; no downloading the apps of your choice). Indeed, there is evidence suggesting that delight does seem to provoke some level of loyalty above and beyond satisfaction. Delight, too, though, seems to have a ceiling &#8211; some delight is good, but lots more doesn&#8217;t seem to provoke any extra loyalty <span class=\"zp-InText-zp-ID--4193465-NRR2Q8MF--wp896 zp-InText-Citation loading\" rel=\"{ 'pages': 'np', 'items': '{4193465:NRR2Q8MF}', 'format': '(%a%, %d%, %p%)', 'brackets': '', 'etal': '', 'separator': '', 'and': '' }\"><\/span>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It may seem strange that customers don&#8217;t become particularly more likely to keep buying your product when they are extra satisfied (and delighted) with it, but keep a few things in mind: <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">First, we live in hyper-competitive capitalist countries (or, at least, these research participants did), where good products are largely taken for granted. If people think your product is good then that&#8217;s nice, but they probably assume that most of their alternative choices are going to be good too. And even if you made your product vastly better than the others, consumers probably expect the others will catch up fairly quickly, because they usually do in competitive markets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Second, as we learned earlier in this chapter, the real value to consumers lies in its core benefit, not the actual product. Even if you make your product 10% better, it still only fills the same niche in people&#8217;s lives, so it isn&#8217;t as if it makes their whole life 10% better. The only difference to the consumer is that one small element of their life (a meal, a ride, etc) got slightly more enjoyable (or less painful), and this is only one small thing in the larger context of their daily lives. So it&#8217;s a dramatic shift for the firm, maybe, but only a little one for the consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Still, there is some good news for marketers who are ever driven to make their products even better. Remember how we said that there are two things that marketers want from satisfied consumers? While extra satisfied customers might not become much more loyal in their purchasing, there is some evidence they do become more likely to pass along good word of mouth <span class=\"zp-InText-zp-ID--4193465-6RV9HZ6S--wp896 zp-InText-Citation loading\" rel=\"{ 'pages': 'np', 'items': '{4193465:6RV9HZ6S}', 'format': '(%a%, %d%, %p%)', 'brackets': '', 'etal': '', 'separator': '', 'and': '' }\"><\/span>. So maybe putting out a really good product is as much about acquiring new customers as it is about retaining old ones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-pb-accordion-item c-accordion__item js-accordion-item no-js understand\"><h3 id=\"at-89612\" class=\"c-accordion__title js-accordion-controller\" role=\"button\">Just one person? (AKA: &#8216;roles&#8217;, AKA: &#8216;customer vs. consumer&#8217;)<\/h3><div id=\"ac-89612\" class=\"c-accordion__content\">\n<pre class=\"wp-block-preformatted\">AKA: \"Also Known As\"<\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Imagine a family at a pet store. The youngest kid sees an indoor fake tree their cat could sit in, recognises the need, and asks for it. They are playing the <strong>initiator<\/strong> role. There&#8217;s no role name for the dad pulling out his phone and looking up prices of alternate trees, but if the older sibling begs for it to be bought, they are playing an <strong>influencer<\/strong> role. When the dad says &#8220;ok, fine, we&#8217;ll get it&#8221;, he is being the <strong>decider<\/strong>, and when the other dad takes it to the checkout counter with a credit card, he is being the <strong>purchaser<\/strong> or the <strong>customer<\/strong>. The cat who later sits in the tree is the <strong>consumer<\/strong>#up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-preformatted\">#down. Except it's a cat so it would probably ignore the expensive tree and just sit in the box it was packaged in<\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Those roles can all be the same person, or divided in any way between any number of people. But a useful takeaway is that &#8220;customer&#8221; and &#8220;consumer&#8221; don&#8217;t mean the same thing, even though people often use them as synonyms. One is the buyer, and the other is the user.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<h5 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Give me one last example please?<\/h5>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Let&#8217;s go back to your crashed and burned-up car. You start by browsing websites of your favourite brands to find the models you want to look into, you ask a friend who is a car nut, you find yourself taking an interest in <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.autotrader.co.uk\/\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.autotrader.co.uk\/\" target=\"_blank\">car dealing websites<\/a>&#8230; then you settle on a small consideration set, take some test drives, carefully consider your trade-offs in their price vs. their fuel efficiency vs. their storage space, vs. how comfortable they felt, vs. how stylish they looked, and you go back and forth between a few different decision rules, and eventually make your purchase. Maybe you even fill out a market research survey for one of the car brands that is trying to work out which decision rules their potential customers use. Easy, right!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And then you stop by the supermarket to get something for dinner, and while you are waiting to pay you see&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"500\" height=\"335\" src=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/05\/candy-bars.jpg\" alt=\"Many chocolate bars and other sweets on display by a supermarket checkout\" class=\"wp-image-985\" srcset=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/05\/candy-bars.jpg 500w, https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/05\/candy-bars-300x201.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Oh yes, the yum! So we do it all again! You pull out your phone and start searching for reviews of the different brands available. And then you start looking carefully at their attributes, noting how much each bar weighs and how much it costs, how many nuts it has in it, and where it falls in your personal ratings of flavour preferences. Then you start constructing a mental spreadsheet in which you compare&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Wait a minute, stop laughing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So&#8230; Some of you just&#8230; grab one? Without any&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But&#8230; this model&#8230; look, we all agreed there was a model! You have to compare your consideration set on their attributes with decision rules that are compensatory or not, and&#8230; then&#8230; you&#8230;.?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Let&#8217;s draw a picture:<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"655\" height=\"510\" src=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/05\/decision-model-less-simple.jpg\" alt=\"Two columns. The left column has the header &quot;car&quot; and the same decision flow as earlier - problem recognition, then information search, then on through the other 3 steps to 'outcomes' at the end. The second column is labelled &quot;Chocolate bar&quot; and has a simpler flow with &quot;problem recognition&quot; at the top, and an arrow pointing directly at &quot;outcomes&quot;, with no steps in between.\" class=\"wp-image-924\" style=\"width:491px;height:383px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/05\/decision-model-less-simple.jpg 655w, https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/05\/decision-model-less-simple-300x234.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 655px) 100vw, 655px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">A slightly less simple decision model<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There key organizing principle for this section isn&#8217;t the decision model, it is <strong>involvement<\/strong>. It turns out that sometimes we spend lots of time and energy thinking about purchases, and sometimes we really don&#8217;t, and if you don&#8217;t understand this then you are missing one of the key insights about why consumers do what they do &#8211; sometimes we see products as very relevant to ourselves, or what we are trying to do, and other times not so much <span class=\"zp-InText-zp-ID--4193465-5YIEDKCS-_-4193465-9EQBD6KK--wp896 zp-InText-Citation loading\" rel=\"{ 'pages': 'np', 'items': '{4193465:5YIEDKCS},{4193465:9EQBD6KK}', 'format': '(%a%, %d%, %p%)', 'brackets': '', 'etal': '', 'separator': '', 'and': '' }\"><\/span>. Indeed, it is a very old idea in CB that we engage in <strong>extended search<\/strong> for products with which we have high involvement, but only <strong>limited search<\/strong> for products with which we have low involvement, and pretty much non-existent search for (many!) other products with which we have near zero involvement <span class=\"zp-InText-zp-ID--4193465-UPDQILWB--wp896 zp-InText-Citation loading\" rel=\"{ 'pages': 'np', 'items': '{4193465:UPDQILWB}', 'format': '(%a%, %d%, %p%)', 'brackets': '', 'etal': '', 'separator': '', 'and': '' }\"><\/span>. We just buy those on <strong>habit<\/strong> (i.e., taking the same bread you usually get) or on <strong>impulse<\/strong> (e.g., grabbing a chocolate bar from off the rack)#up.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"brxe-div footnote_anchor\"><div class=\"brxe-div footnote_shifter\">\n<pre class=\"wp-block-verse\">#down. Did you know that in the industry, those displays by the checkouts are sometimes called \"impulse racks\"?<\/pre>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-group definition_block has-background is-content-justification-left is-nowrap is-layout-flex wp-container-core-group-is-layout-14d7fe8f wp-block-group-is-layout-flex\" style=\"background-color:#fcb90017\">\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"definition_term wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Involvement<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"definition_definition wp-block-paragraph\">How personally relevant a thing is perceived to be <\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-pb-accordion-item c-accordion__item js-accordion-item no-js understand\" data-initially-open=\"false\" data-click-to-close=\"true\" data-auto-close=\"true\" data-scroll=\"false\" data-scroll-offset=\"0\"><h5 id=\"at-8964\" class=\"c-accordion__title js-accordion-controller\" role=\"button\">Does involvement end at purchase?<\/h5><div id=\"ac-8964\" class=\"c-accordion__content\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Sometimes. Involvement can be situational or enduring <span class=\"zp-InText-zp-ID--4193465-IJCDLEDZ--wp896 zp-InText-Citation loading\" rel=\"{ 'pages': 'np', 'items': '{4193465:IJCDLEDZ}', 'format': '(%a%, %d%, %p%)', 'brackets': '', 'etal': '', 'separator': '', 'and': '' }\"><\/span>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Many years ago I spent a sizable chunk of my money on a touring bicycle (camping holidays seemed like a good idea). I went from knowing very little about bikes to being able to recognize subtleties like the geometry of seat height (higher seats force you to lean further forwards, making you more aerodynamic &#8211; good for fast racing on roads, but bad if you are going over lots of bumps or want to be comfortable on long rides). All of a sudden I was spotting bikes everywhere as they rode past me. I was suddenly noticing the ones that had flattened spokes (expensive racing bikes do this to get more streamlined), or fancy rear wheel suspension for bouncing over bumps. This high involvement was situational for me &#8211; a few months later I was back to ignoring everyone who rode by. My friend, though, was such a bicycle enthusiast that he used to read manuals on how to fix them, just for fun. His involvement with bikes was (and still is) enduring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The world is full of people who have enduring involvement with different product types. Dig a little and you will find them. Some are antique car enthusiasts, some are photography buffs, and many are deeply involved in entertainment forms like anime or social media. Involvement research has tended to focus on this more enduring form, with some scholars also trying to divide it into sub-types, depending on which particular types of motivation it stems from &#8211; e.g., emotions vs. identity, etc <span class=\"zp-InText-zp-ID--4193465-HRESKPTT--wp896 zp-InText-Citation loading\" rel=\"{ 'pages': 'np', 'items': '{4193465:HRESKPTT}', 'format': '(%a%, %d%, %p%)', 'brackets': '', 'etal': '', 'separator': '', 'and': '' }\"><\/span>. We will come to those different types of motivations in the coming chapters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Enthusiasts are great people to get buying advice from. They often even enjoy dispensing advice, as being the local expert can be part of their enjoyment.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-pb-accordion-item c-accordion__item js-accordion-item no-js understand\" data-initially-open=\"false\" data-click-to-close=\"true\" data-auto-close=\"true\" data-scroll=\"false\" data-scroll-offset=\"0\"><h5 id=\"at-8965\" class=\"c-accordion__title js-accordion-controller\" role=\"button\">Is involvement only a thing that happens about buying decisions?<\/h5><div id=\"ac-8965\" class=\"c-accordion__content\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">No, researchers have long talked about involvement in many contexts &#8211; from being involved with a brand to being involved with media campaigns (do you have any favourite adverts you like?), and so on <span class=\"zp-InText-zp-ID--4193465-5YIEDKCS-_-4193465-HRESKPTT--wp896 zp-InText-Citation loading\" rel=\"{ 'pages': 'np', 'items': '{4193465:5YIEDKCS},{4193465:HRESKPTT}', 'format': '(%a%, %d%, %p%)', 'brackets': '', 'etal': '', 'separator': '', 'and': '' }\"><\/span>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Right now in this chapter we&#8217;re talking about involvement with making decisions, but if you think about it, our decisions will often be affected by other types of involvement. You might buy cars differently, for instance, if you are involved with a brand (e.g., Ford) or a category (e.g., old cars).<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So sometimes people search more, and sometimes they search less hard. Is that all there is to it? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Well, maybe. But first, let&#8217;s go shopping for phones! What fun!<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><a href=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/05\/phone-compare-3-socialcompare.com_.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"800\" height=\"959\" src=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/05\/phone-compare-3-socialcompare.com_.jpg\" alt=\"large table comparing product details of google pixel 7 phone, iPhone 14 pro Max, and a Galaxy model. Table has 30 rows with attribute details (height, wi-fi, pixel density, etc), and gives stats for each phone on these. It is a large image that will require scrolling down on most phones. The exact numbers are not important for us here - just how overwhelming it is.\" class=\"wp-image-928\" style=\"width:400px;height:480px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/05\/phone-compare-3-socialcompare.com_.jpg 800w, https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/05\/phone-compare-3-socialcompare.com_-250x300.jpg 250w, https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/05\/phone-compare-3-socialcompare.com_-768x921.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">click to embiggen<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Thanks, <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/socialcompare.com\/en\/comparison\/popular-smartphones\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/socialcompare.com\/en\/comparison\/popular-smartphones\" target=\"_blank\">socialcompare.com<\/a> for making that handy summary chart! <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Actually, they are making it so easy that we can do better. Why stop with those three? No problem, they have more!<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-large is-resized\"><a href=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/05\/phone-compare-7-socialcompare.com_.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"560\" src=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/05\/phone-compare-7-socialcompare.com_-1024x560.jpg\" alt=\"Like the last table, except adds 4 more columns, for a total of 7 different phones. The image is so large that anyone on a non-enormous screen will have to scroll across it.\" class=\"wp-image-929\" style=\"width:512px;height:280px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/05\/phone-compare-7-socialcompare.com_-1024x560.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/05\/phone-compare-7-socialcompare.com_-300x164.jpg 300w, https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/05\/phone-compare-7-socialcompare.com_-768x420.jpg 768w, https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/05\/phone-compare-7-socialcompare.com_.jpg 1500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Click for the big version (even then your browser might not make it full size till you click it again)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now&#8230; how did it feel browsing through that big table? Easy? Fun?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Really? Tell the truth, now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It was miserable, wasn&#8217;t it#up.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"brxe-div footnote_anchor\"><div class=\"brxe-div footnote_shifter\">\n<pre class=\"wp-block-verse\">#down. If you did enjoy it then you are unusual, at least in the statistical sense of the word. Why are you that way? We'll talk about that in a little bit<\/pre>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Let&#8217;s be real: If you were buying a phone, would you REALLY have kept working through it? Some people would, but an awful lot more wouldn&#8217;t. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There&#8217;s an important lesson here: You might have thought that only small things like sweet treats would get the low involvement treatment, but often it can be really big things that cost quite a lot of money!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This is one of the reasons that you really want to make sure you know how involved consumers are. The answer can be surprising, and it shapes a lot about how willing they are to take even small steps to learn about a product. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This is a place where a lot of real-world marketing goes wrong. Business people usually care a lot about their own products, but don&#8217;t realize how different this is from some\/many\/all of their consumers (it varies a lot). Even if they do know this, some of them still don&#8217;t realize how much this means that their customers see their products, shops, and messaging very differently than they do themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Here&#8217;s an example: If you work selling &#8216;bathroom furniture&#8217; then you will have spent a fair amount of time thinking about how your goods (sinks, baths, toilets, etc) connect to a house&#8217;s plumbing. When you look at, for instance, the toilets you sell, it will be immediately obvious to you that some are built to connect to a drain pipe that disappears into the wall behind them, whereas other toilets are built to connect to a pipe that goes into the floor below, and still others are built to hide their entire water tank inside the wall. To your professional eyes, this will be one of the most immediately obvious things about every toilet you see: where is the connector? Your customers, though, probably think about toilets a lot less than you do. The relationship that most of them have with toilets involves only three steps: 1. use it, 2. flush it, 3. try not to think about it. If you don&#8217;t understand this difference, then you might be perplexed by how often customers return toilets for not fitting into their house, because they bought one that &#8220;obviously&#8221; has its connector in the wrong place (well, it&#8217;s obvious to you, anyway).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Here is some homework for you: Visit a bathroom furniture store and see if they have realized this. You&#8217;ll be able to tell because there will either be clear diagrams showing customers how each toilet connects, or there will be nothing but some industry-jargon words buried somewhere on each toilet&#8217;s label &#8211; they clearly assume customers will notice this and understand what it means. You&#8217;d be surprised at how many shops haven&#8217;t worked this out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">What pushes customers to high or low involvement?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It can be surprising when people do or don&#8217;t have high involvement. On an individual level, it&#8217;s nearly impossible to predict what any one person will do at any one time &#8211; humans are chaotic and messy creatures. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But you can start to pick out some patterns if you look across enough people &#8211; factors that will push them one way or the other#up.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"brxe-div footnote_anchor\"><div class=\"brxe-div footnote_shifter\">\n<pre class=\"wp-block-verse\">#down. To corrupt slightly the phrase that <a href=\"https:\/\/quoteinvestigator.com\/2014\/01\/12\/history-rhymes\/\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/quoteinvestigator.com\/2014\/01\/12\/history-rhymes\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Mark Twain probably didn't say<\/a>: \"people don't repeat, but they rhyme\"<\/pre>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Things that tend to lead to low involvement:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Time pressure\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>In a rush? You&#8217;re probably not going to spend a long time thinking it over<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Need for closure\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Some people really hate uncertainty and want to settle on a firm answer fast and move on<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Positive mood\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Does this surprise you? We&#8217;ll explain it more in our mood chapter<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Things that tend to lead to higher involvement:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Risk\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>There are lots of kinds of risks when you buy things.\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Financial risk &#8211; if it costs a lot then mistakes are expensive!<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Social risk &#8211; if people see you wearing this shirt and say: &#8220;How did you choose THAT?&#8221; then it would hurt, right? Better think this one through more carefully<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Time risk &#8211; you are going to have this ladder in your shed for years? Don&#8217;t get stuck with a bad one!<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>etc<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Fun\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>If you find it enjoyable to shop for a thing, to read about it, talk about it, and read magazines about it&#8230; well it&#8217;s not a chore anymore, it&#8217;s a hobby. It&#8217;s recreation. Some people shop for clothes recreationally, others for consumer electronics. Other people just hate shopping in general!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>If the decision task feels hard\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>See below about why this may be<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Sadness\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Again, this may be surprising to you. We&#8217;ll talk about it more in our emotions chapter.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"system_1_2\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">A related theory: System 1 and 2<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Remember that big table of phones? Why was it such a grizzly hard job to trawl through it? It turns out that there&#8217;s an interesting idea behind this, and it has quite a few consequences that we might care about. In fact, it&#8217;s one of the most famous ideas to come out of modern psychology and is one of the few that has crossed over enough into the business world that a lot of practitioners have heard of it (even if they don&#8217;t always understand it quite perfectly).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Here is the claim: We have two different modes of thinking: <strong>System 1<\/strong> is quick, intuitive, easy, and efficient. <strong>System 2<\/strong> is slow, deliberative, careful, and hard work <span class=\"zp-InText-zp-ID--4193465-QKMBG6XR-_-4193465-XYQU9NDJ--wp896 zp-InText-Citation loading\" rel=\"{ 'pages': 'np', 'items': '{4193465:QKMBG6XR},{4193465:XYQU9NDJ}', 'format': '(%a%, %d%, %p%)', 'brackets': '', 'etal': '', 'separator': '', 'and': '' }\"><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">System 2<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Grinding through that big table of phones is an example of thinking that used system 2 style processing. It was slow because you needed to make a lot of effortful choices about how you were even going to try to read it. That slow deleberate effort is the hallmark of System 2. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What do I mean by making choices about how to read it? Well, even with a lot of missing entries, there are well over a hundred squares containing information in that table (7 phones x nearly 30 attributes each). That is more than your brain can handle at once, so it starts generating clever strategies: Maybe you scan across each row, just looking for the one entry with the best number. Unfortunately, that probably won&#8217;t do it for us &#8211; it&#8217;s unlikely that one phone would be best at everything, and even if it was it would likely cost a fortune. So then you have to get more creative. Maybe you pick only a few attributes to focus on, and\/or only a few phones. Even then you might still get stuck: is 512 pixels per inch (PPI) really meaningfully better than 456 PPI? Or even 411 PPI?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We can do this processing at all because our system 2 thinking is really quite clever. It can do lots of clever things too: solving mathematical problems, writing reports, even trying to work out if your roommate is stealing your shampoo (&#8220;maybe if I put a tiny mark on the bottle to record its level&#8230;&#8221;). <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A good dose of System 2 thinking might also leave you feeling like you deserve a bit of a break afterwards, though because it can be tough work!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-group definition_block has-background is-content-justification-left is-nowrap is-layout-flex wp-container-core-group-is-layout-14d7fe8f wp-block-group-is-layout-flex\" style=\"background-color:#fcb90017\">\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"definition_term wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>System 2<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"definition_definition wp-block-paragraph\">A mode of mental processing in which our brain takes on a problem with deliberation; deciding on strategies and trying to follow them through<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So let&#8217;s give your brain a proper workout, then. Here are some thinking tasks for you:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">2 + 1 = ?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Read this word out loud: &#8220;hello&#8221;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Put your hand on top of your head#up.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"brxe-div footnote_anchor\"><div class=\"brxe-div footnote_shifter\">\n<pre class=\"wp-block-verse\">#down. If you can't do that, for whatever reason, then pick your own personal equivalent<\/pre>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There, you poor thing, you must be exhausted from all that thinking&#8230; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Wait, you&#8230; you could do this all day?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Ah ha. That&#8217;s because you were able to use: <\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">System 1<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">System 1 is the fast version of thinking. I find the most useful way of thinking about how it works is to realize that brains are built to be very fast and efficient at matching patterns. When you look at a question like 2 + 1, or reading &#8216;hello&#8217;, your brain has seen these so often that it doesn&#8217;t even have to pause to work out which rules it needs to apply. It just recognizes straight away what the answer is, and pops it directly into your head without any effort. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That effortlessness is the defining feature of System 1. If you aren&#8217;t sure which system is being used, then ask yourself: Does an answer immediately and effortlessly present itself as being seemingly obvious? If so, that&#8217;s system 1. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Our brains are incredibly flexible at this pattern matching. Here, take a look at these squiggles#up:<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"524\" height=\"182\" src=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/05\/letter-a.jpg\" alt=\"the letter a repeated in different fonts 14 times in lower case and 14 in upper case. Some versions look very different to others. Some look hand drawn in fancy ways or childish ways, others with computer precision. Some have serif accents, others don't. Lower case a's cover both shapes (i.e., some a circle with a flat side, and others have that plus a big curl that comes up from the right side and extends all the way over the top, but doesn't touch on the left side\" class=\"wp-image-945\" style=\"width:393px;height:137px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/05\/letter-a.jpg 524w, https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/05\/letter-a-300x104.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 524px) 100vw, 524px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Are these all the same, or all different?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n<div class=\"brxe-div footnote_anchor\"><div class=\"brxe-div footnote_shifter\">\n<pre class=\"wp-block-verse\">#down. I chose not to subject you to my (truly horrendous) personal handwriting on humanitarian grounds. You are welcome<\/pre>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I just showed you 28 different shapes, but if you are literate in the English alphabet you instantly recognized all of them as the same letter, &#8216;a&#8217;. This isn&#8217;t because you memorized a list of rules for how to interpret the many ways that straight and curly strokes can be combined. Can you even imagine what the list of rules would have to be, if you were trying to program a computer to reliably tell the difference between all the many different ways that humans write the letter &#8216;a&#8217;? Especially if it had to not confuse it with any of the different ways that people can write a &#8216;d&#8217; or &#8216;9&#8217; or &#8216;c&#8217;? Your list would be staggeringly long, and probably get things wrong quite a lot#up. But recognizing patterns like this is what brains are good at &#8211; even pretty vague patterns like this, that have a lot of wiggle in them (no pun intended). If the patterns are familiar enough to us, our brain makes the matches effortlessly.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"brxe-div footnote_anchor\"><div class=\"brxe-div footnote_shifter\">\n<pre class=\"wp-block-verse\">#down. Computers have become very good at reading handwriting, of course, but they don't do it with programmed lists of rules. Instead they usually use 'neural network' software that mimics how brain cells work. You 'teach' neural networks by feeding them thousands of practice examples, and tweaking them slightly every time they get the 'wrong' answer. You keep doing this until they appear to be reliable at making the distinctions you want. This is tricky, and can go wrong in unpredictable ways. I was taught this decades ago in a class with Geoff Hinton, who I had no idea would go on to be <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/world-us-canada-65452940\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/world-us-canada-65452940\" target=\"_blank\">a pretty big deal<\/a>.<\/pre>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-group definition_block has-background is-content-justification-left is-nowrap is-layout-flex wp-container-core-group-is-layout-14d7fe8f wp-block-group-is-layout-flex\" style=\"background-color:#fcb90017\">\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"definition_term wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>System 1<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"definition_definition wp-block-paragraph\">A mode of mental processing in which our brain recognizes that a problem fits a familiar pattern,  and pops its answer quickly and effortlessly into our mind.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">When do you use system 1 or 2?<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Psychologists say that System 1 is our default mode. It&#8217;s the one we generally try to use first, and we only switch to system 2 when it isn&#8217;t giving us a quick usable answer <span class=\"zp-InText-zp-ID--4193465-ZYSGDZA6-_-4193465-XYQU9NDJ-_-4193465-QKMBG6XR--wp896 zp-InText-Citation loading\" rel=\"{ 'pages': 'np', 'items': '{4193465:ZYSGDZA6},{4193465:XYQU9NDJ},{4193465:QKMBG6XR}', 'format': '(%a%, %d%, %p%)', 'brackets': '', 'etal': '', 'separator': '', 'and': '' }\"><\/span>. That&#8217;s why they gave it the number one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">From our perspective, if we make low-involvement purchases with little effort, then they are likely drawing heavily on system 1, whereas high-involvement purchases are ones we think about more carefully, and so likely draw on a blend of the two systems. So it&#8217;s not QUITE as simple as high involve = system 2, but it&#8217;s very much in that direction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Ok, but who cares about this, I hear you saying. What does it matter? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We will talk about three things:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>System 1 shapes some particular ways consumers make decisions. We will talk about habits, skills, and heuristics<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>They make for different ways that thinking goes wrong for consumers<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>They suggest different ways that we need to learn about consumer&#8217;s motives<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">1. How consumers use System 1: habits, skills, &amp; heuristics<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Well, system 1 thinking can play out in ways that include habits, skills, and heuristics. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Habits &#8211;<\/strong> Most often we buy the same loaf of bread every week in the supermarket. This habit can be seen as a form of pattern recognition: &#8220;This is a thing I like eating, so I&#8217;ll grab it&#8221;. We tend to think of habits as being lazy, and sometimes they are. But imagine if you had to think through your entire diet every time you went to fill up at the supermarket. It would be exhausting, and it would probably get you to about the same answer every week anyway (it&#8217;s not like your nutrition needs change that much on a weekly basis). It&#8217;s far more efficient to just recognize what you are ok with using, and be done with it#up.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"brxe-div footnote_anchor\"><div class=\"brxe-div footnote_shifter\">\n<pre class=\"wp-block-verse\">#down. This is one of the reasons that it is so hard when we DO want to change what we buy <\/pre>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Skills &#8211; <\/strong>Sometimes it takes a lot of time and energy and practice to develop our pattern recognition to a high level. This is a form of skill learning. When you were first learning to read English, it was hard work for you to recognize the letter &#8216;a&#8217; (you probably had to do a lot of system 2 grinding to work it out). Now you have developed the skill, it is easy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This same thing plays out for consumers. When you move to a new country, supermarket shopping is extra hard for a while, because you haven&#8217;t learned all the patterns yet &#8211; where different foods are, which brands you like, what all of the labels mean#up. Consumers who have high enduring involvement with a product (see above) often develop real expertise, and can instantly spot a fake Rolex, or a car that has been restored with inauthentic parts &#8211; it just leaps out as them as instantly obvious: system 1 pattern matching!<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"brxe-div footnote_anchor\"><div class=\"brxe-div footnote_shifter\">\n<pre class=\"wp-block-verse\">#down. In the UK there is a snack food that you put in sandwiches called Marmite. Brits in North America have to learn to look in the foreign food aisle, or with the baking good (nobody bakes with it, but one of its main ingredients is yeast, so you can see the shop-keeper's thinking)<\/pre>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\" id=\"heuristics\"><strong>heuristics &#8211;<\/strong> This is where it gets a bit more complicated. Sometimes there isn&#8217;t one answer which is <strong>the<\/strong> thing to recognize. Sometimes the patterns are more general &#8216;rules of thumb&#8217; that tend to point in the right direction. Psychologists call these &#8216;heuristics&#8217;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That might sound a bit exotic, but it is a thing that you do. Personally, yourself. Often. We all do. Here are some common ones:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul id=\"availability-heuristic\" class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Brands\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Not sure which phone to buy? Pick a brand you know. Does that mean it&#8217;s definitely a good phone? Not really. Does it mean it&#8217;s the right phone for you? Possibly not. But it wouldn&#8217;t be a well-known brand if lots of other people didn&#8217;t like it. And if they started selling really bad phones people would probably have noticed and stopped buying them, so the general pattern is that good brands probably sell reasonably good products. That&#8217;s good enough for a lot of consumers, a lot of the time.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Price\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Which phone to buy? Well if I buy a really cheap one it&#8217;ll probably work badly and fall apart quickly. And if I buy an expensive one then that probably means I&#8217;m getting good quality <span class=\"zp-InText-zp-ID--4193465-VDELZY6F--wp896 zp-InText-Citation loading\" rel=\"{ 'pages': 'np', 'items': '{4193465:VDELZY6F}', 'format': '(%a%, %d%, %p%)', 'brackets': '', 'etal': '', 'separator': '', 'and': '' }\"><\/span>. Now that is not <strong>necessarily<\/strong> true#up, but often it tends to be.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>A related price heuristic is that if I&#8217;m going to buy a cheap option, perhaps I shouldn&#8217;t buy THE cheapest one, because it&#8217;s probably the cheapest for a reason. So one thing consumers that are overwhelmed with choice will do is pick the 2nd cheapest available option. Some canny retailers know this and will position a product they really want to sell a lot with the 2nd cheapest price<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>There is debate in the marketing literature about why (for at least a century) so many prices have ended in .99. It turns out to be somewhat complex <span class=\"zp-InText-zp-ID--4193465-57SNKM82-_-4193465-5LEFAAC7--wp896 zp-InText-Citation loading\" rel=\"{ 'pages': 'np', 'items': '{4193465:57SNKM82},{4193465:5LEFAAC7}', 'format': '(%a%, %d%, %p%)', 'brackets': '', 'etal': '', 'separator': '', 'and': '' }\"><\/span>, but one big reason is that consumers tend to see prices that end in .99 as being cheap, and this can make things attractive when cheap is what they are looking for <span class=\"zp-InText-zp-ID--4193465-EN6S7FG6-_-4193465-4743PKBY--wp896 zp-InText-Citation loading\" rel=\"{ 'pages': 'np', 'items': '{4193465:EN6S7FG6},{4193465:4743PKBY}', 'format': '(%a%, %d%, %p%)', 'brackets': '', 'etal': '', 'separator': '', 'and': '' }\"><\/span>. This makes sense as a pattern &#8211; retailers who are trying to sell cheap goods will often price something at $4.99 instead of $5.00 because it LOOKS cheaper (hey look, it&#8217;s only 4 big currency units instead of 5!), while still paying them essentially the same amount of money. So consumers spot that things ending in .99 tend to be cheap options, and when they see something with that on its price tag, System 1 completes the pattern for them. Sometimes retailers will try to use this to their advantage too, putting a .99 price on things that they <strong>want <\/strong>to be seen as cheap.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>To put a bow on it: when you listen to marketers discussing how to set prices, one of the common terms you will hear is &#8220;psychological pricing&#8221;. This is essentially a reference to these various ways of appealing to price heuristics!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Experts\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Still not sure which phone to buy? Just ask your tech nerd friend! If they say that a model is good then it probably is! Even if it isn&#8217;t perfect, they&#8217;ve spent a lot more time learning about this than you have, so simply following their recommendation is probably a way you can improve your decision quite quickly.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Availability\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>The availability heuristic is one of the most famous in all of social psychology. It says that the easier it is for you to think of a thing, the more likely you are to think that it is important or meaningful. This makes some sense &#8211; after all, we tend to pay attention to things that are meaningful, so if it comes to mind easily then that&#8217;s probably why.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>If a product is very easy to bring to my mind, then the availability heuristic suggests that I will imagine that it must be a pretty important or meaningful one. A lot of marketing hinges on this concept &#8211; it will become a big theme when we talk about memory, and about communications. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">2. Ways they go wrong<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"> So if system 1 can do all these clever things, why not use it for everything?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Your brain does try to! As we said above, it&#8217;s considered the default choice for processing things. But it can&#8217;t always use system 1, and when it does, there are things that can go wrong. Let&#8217;s reconsider habits, skills, and heuristics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h5 class=\"wp-block-heading\">System 1 &#8211; Habits<\/h5>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Habits are very efficient. When they have us efficiently doing things that are healthy and productive, then they are wonderful. Most of the time they are neutral &#8211; it probably doesn&#8217;t matter if you buy bread A or B each week. But sometimes they lead us to efficiently and repeatedly do bad things. Maybe we&#8217;ve settled on a bread brand that is overpriced or unhealthy, and we never stop to re-evaluate. Maybe our habits have us eating too much unhealthy junk food, and not getting enough sleep or exercise. Habits are hard to break, and that is a virtue when they have us doing good things, but a curse when we are doing unhelpful or unhealthy things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h5 class=\"wp-block-heading\">System 1 &#8211; Impulses<\/h5>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I didn&#8217;t list these above as one of the functions of system 1, because you can debate how functional they are&#8230; but impulses CAN have drawbacks (though they are often pretty harmless). Putting lots of tasty sugar next to a supermarket checkout is one way of putting people in a position of regularly having unhealthy impulses. So much so that the UK government has actually <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/news.sky.com\/story\/shops-in-england-banned-from-displaying-junk-food-near-entrances-and-tills-from-today-12708831\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/news.sky.com\/story\/shops-in-england-banned-from-displaying-junk-food-near-entrances-and-tills-from-today-12708831\" target=\"_blank\">forbidden shops <\/a>from doing this. Here is what the impulse racks at my local market look like now:<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" src=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/05\/local-supermarket-racks.jpg\" alt=\"racks by a supermarket checkout. Products are deodorants, hand sanitizers, toothpaste, and some lower calorie snacks\" class=\"wp-image-1030\" style=\"width:600px;height:450px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/05\/local-supermarket-racks.jpg 800w, https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/05\/local-supermarket-racks-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/05\/local-supermarket-racks-768x576.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Supermarket impulse rack<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We&#8217;ve got some deodorant, toothpaste, hand sanitizer, and some healthier snacks (just one naughty packet of sugary candy in the bottom left). The art of the impulse rack is to put things that people didn&#8217;t necessarily come looking for, but might see and think &#8220;ah ha, yes, I need one&#8221;&#8230; So how do you think they are doing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h5 class=\"wp-block-heading\">System 1 &#8211; Skills<\/h5>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Skills are also lovely things to have. It&#8217;s possible for skills to be unhelpful. When you move to the UK from almost anywhere else in the world you have to unlearn your skill of driving on the right side of the road, and learn to drive on the left instead &#8211; it&#8217;s really not helpful if you momentarily revert to your old &#8216;wrong&#8217; skill in a moment of stress or boredom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Far more often, though, the problem with skills is when you don&#8217;t have them, or they get disrupted. Have you ever used a software program (or app) which got updated with a &#8220;new and improved&#8221; interface for you to use? Where your brain used to cruise through in system 1, automatically reaching for the right controls in the right places, all of a sudden your skills are broken, and you get jolted into system 2. The symptoms: Stopping what you are doing to stare and say to yourself &#8220;wait&#8230; how do I&#8230; Is it here? No, ahhhhm. Oh wait, it might be this?&#8221;. The same thing happens on a smaller scale when a store you use frequently moves its merchandise around. You walk to where the eggs used to be, and&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The lesson is that if you ever end up running things that consumers use is that you want to keep your interface as stable as possible. In fact, you want to make your interface work as similarly as everyone else&#8217;s. Design people often get upset when they hear this. They want to win awards for their original take on a stale old interface that everyone is bored of! They want to be creative! Why put that little X that closes the window in the top corner like everyone else does (yawn!) when you could have an exciting button that looks like a guillotine with a sharp blade, right at the bottom of the page so people see it when they are finished reading! Because people are used to it being in the top corner, and that is where they are going to stare in frustration, cursing your name that you have made it so hard for them just to close one little window. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<h5 class=\"wp-block-heading\">System 1 &#8211; Heuristics<\/h5>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Brands can be a useful heuristic, helping you find higher-quality products more efficiently. But sometimes our faith in them can cost us money. For example, a lot of people buy Bayer Aspirin, because they assume that it is a better quality product than the pharmacy&#8217;s much cheaper own brand. The key ingredient in aspirin is acetylsalicylic acid, and the patent ran out on this long ago, meaning that the store brand uses the exact same active ingredient as the brand name drug. When you buy Bayer&#8217;s version you are paying a lot more and the only difference is the ink on the outside of the box that it comes in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There are many &#8216;generic&#8217; drugs that are in this same situation. There is a known brand that people pay more for, and a lot of other companies sell the exact same molecule for a lot less money. Our heuristic that &#8216;brands mean quality&#8217; has bought a lot of nice cars for a lot of pharmacy executives, and arguably not done so much for consumers in return. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Price is a somewhat rough heuristic, because sometimes you get what you pay for (meaning that cheaper options are a &#8220;false economy&#8221; &#8211; they end up breaking more quickly and ultimately costing you more), and other times a higher price is a false signal for higher quality. Some people have even called this the &#8220;<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/bethkobliner.com\/personal_finance\/science-subconscious-bias-money-drugs\/\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/bethkobliner.com\/personal_finance\/science-subconscious-bias-money-drugs\/\" target=\"_blank\">Crown Royale effect<\/a>&#8220;, after a brand of whisky that marketed itself by packaging its bottles in a lovely velvet bag and increasing its price#up.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"brxe-div footnote_anchor\"><div class=\"brxe-div footnote_shifter\">\n<pre class=\"wp-block-verse\">#down. To be fair, <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Crown_Royal#Ratings\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Crown_Royal#Ratings\" target=\"_blank\">wikipedia says<\/a> that this brand does get generally good quality ratings these days<\/pre>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Experts can also be a useful way of getting well-informed answers, but consulting them is hardly foolproof either. For one thing, they might not know you as well as you think they do. Perhaps the expensive running shoe they recommend really does improve the time of elite athletes marginally, but that isn&#8217;t going to matter for you as you shuffle around your block trying to get slightly fitter. Or perhaps the software they recommend really does let you do amazing things to photos, but only if you spend the time learning about the technical qualities of how computers represent light &#8211; where you just want to give a few snaps a quick touch-up. Of course, a really helpful expert will help you identify those wrinkles, but they don&#8217;t all do it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Unlike some of the heuristics above, people often don&#8217;t even realize they are using the availability one. This means it can create some pretty sneaky biases in our judgement. Let me give you an example:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Answer these questions in your head: How long does it take you to brush your teeth? How long does it take to wave at a friend? How long does it take to drink a cup of tea?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Ok, now tell me this: Is 3 days a long time?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A really long time, right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now let&#8217;s try a few more questions: How long does it take to get a university degree? How long does it take to train for a marathon? How long does it take to be old enough to drive?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now tell me again: Is 3 days a long time?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">No, it&#8217;s a blink of an eye, right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So what is going on here. Do you normally change your mind all the time like this? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When I asked you about things that happened very quickly I set a mental &#8216;anchor&#8217; for you. What I was doing was making very short time frames highly available in your mind, so that they became the standard for what was important or meaningful. Three days was much longer than that, so it seemed like an eternity. Then I asked other questions to anchor you on large time scales of months and years, and when they were what seemed important to you, you judged 3 days as very short.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;Well that&#8217;s cute&#8221;, I hear you say, &#8220;but what does that have to do with marketing?&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It&#8217;s a fair question. How often have you ordered things online and seen a menu like this:<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"554\" height=\"239\" src=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/05\/amazon-delivery-times.jpg\" alt=\"A screen capture of Amazon's delivery options for a product. There are 4 options for varying prices: ranging from 5-7 business days, to 3-5 business days to one-day shipping.\" class=\"wp-image-1021\" style=\"width:416px;height:179px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/05\/amazon-delivery-times.jpg 554w, https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/05\/amazon-delivery-times-300x129.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 554px) 100vw, 554px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In your experience, will the chosen option really take 5-7 days to arrive? It seems like it usually comes faster. But if they have anchored you on a longer time horizon, then how are you going to feel about their service? It&#8217;s almost like they tell you a longer time than they expect on purpose&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-pb-accordion-item c-accordion__item js-accordion-item no-js interest\" data-initially-open=\"false\" data-click-to-close=\"true\" data-auto-close=\"true\" data-scroll=\"false\" data-scroll-offset=\"0\"><h5 id=\"at-8966\" class=\"c-accordion__title js-accordion-controller\" role=\"button\">Also the availability heuristic: you&#8217;re scared of flying for the wrong reason<\/h5><div id=\"ac-8966\" class=\"c-accordion__content\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Looked at objectively, flying is a vastly safer way to travel than cars are. Yet far more people are scared of travelling in planes than of cars. Why? Because it&#8217;s very easy to imagine a dramatic and scary aeroplane crash (and when planes do crash they get far more news coverage than the vastly more common car crashes do). That greater mental availability of fiery crash imagery makes people judge airplanes to be riskier &#8211; falsely so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This illustrates one of the big problems with the availability heuristic: We <strong>assume<\/strong> that things are mentally available to us because they are so important that we think about them a lot. But sometimes they are highly mentally available because there is just something particularly vivid or scary about them, or even just because we have been hearing people talking about it recently. People can mistake that for the thing being more important or likely to happen than it really is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So what&#8217;s the right reason to be scared of flying? Because we haven&#8217;t found a way to do it yet that doesn&#8217;t burn huge amounts of carbon. Catastrophic climate change is alarmingly close, so the scientists who study these things tell us.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-pb-accordion-item c-accordion__item js-accordion-item no-js interest\" data-initially-open=\"false\" data-click-to-close=\"true\" data-auto-close=\"true\" data-scroll=\"false\" data-scroll-offset=\"0\"><h5 id=\"at-8967\" class=\"c-accordion__title js-accordion-controller\" role=\"button\">What other biases do we have?<\/h5><div id=\"ac-8967\" class=\"c-accordion__content\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Psychologists have documented dozens of them, such as the &#8216;spotlight effect&#8217; in which we think others notice us more than they really do (i.e., we feel like we&#8217;re in a spotlight). A recent paper <span class=\"zp-InText-zp-ID--4193465-E3QG77CD--wp896 zp-InText-Citation loading\" rel=\"{ 'pages': 'np', 'items': '{4193465:E3QG77CD}', 'format': '(%a%, %d%, %p%)', 'brackets': '', 'etal': '', 'separator': '', 'and': '' }\"><\/span> argues that many of these follow the same basic pattern: We tend to process what we see using the starting assumption that it fits well with a couple of core things that we all seem to believe. Specifically, these beliefs are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>That my own experience (and my groups&#8217;) are a reliable reference point\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>hence the spotlight effect &#8211; I&#8217;m very aware of myself, so I assume others are too<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>That we (and our groups) are good \n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>So our performances are better than others<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>That I make generally correct assessments of the world \n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Other people are biased, but I see it how it is<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>People&#8217;s outcomes are shaped by who they are, more than by their situations\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Oucome bias: If something turns out poorly for you, then I assume it was probably your bad decisions, not luck or the circumstances you were placed in<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It&#8217;s a fun paper and free to read, so we recommend dipping in, if that is the sort of thing you enjoy <\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<h5 class=\"wp-block-heading\">System 2<\/h5>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">System 2 has its own problems. It&#8217;s slow and tiring (remember the people stuck using a new software interface who are constantly pausing to think about what to do next?). And while it can be smart enough to spot the problems that heuristics might create for us (&#8220;wait a minute, maybe that delivery time isn&#8217;t so special after all!&#8221;), it&#8217;s hardly foolproof. How often have you sat down and thought long and hard about a decision only to end up regretting it? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-pb-accordion-item c-accordion__item js-accordion-item no-js interest\" data-initially-open=\"false\" data-click-to-close=\"true\" data-auto-close=\"true\" data-scroll=\"false\" data-scroll-offset=\"0\"><h5 id=\"at-8968\" class=\"c-accordion__title js-accordion-controller\" role=\"button\">System 2&#8217;s limits: life lessons, dog-owning edition<\/h5><div id=\"ac-8968\" class=\"c-accordion__content\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A long time ago, one of the author&#8217;s friends got a dog. This friend had considered her decision carefully, and realized that she could really help herself here: she wanted to be more physically active for health reasons, so she chose a breed that demanded a lot of exercise. She reasoned that this would force her to get out on those long walks that she was always putting off. This is the kind of forward planning that only system 2 is capable of: visualize a desired future, and find a path that helps you past the obstacles in the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Can you see the drawback to her plan?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Six months later the dog had run her ragged; she was exhausted trying to keep up. She then delivered an immortal piece of advice, one that has stuck in my head these many years since (despite my never once getting close to dog ownership): &#8220;Get a dog for the person that you are, not the person that you want to be&#8221;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The trouble with system 2 is that it&#8217;s only as smart as you are, and sometimes we just aren&#8217;t as smart as we think we are.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The bigger problem with system 2, though, is that it can make so much work for us that we try to avoid decisions entirely. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In a famous study, people were put in a situation they could buy a pot of jam, if they wanted, from 6 available options. Other participants were given the same opportunity, except with a much wider choice &#8211; they had 30 different jams made available. Logically speaking you would expect more sales from the group who were offered 30 different choices, because they had many more opportunities to find an option that was to their tastes. This is not what happened. The group given many options were LESS likely to choose any of them <span class=\"zp-InText-zp-ID--4193465-5J368QNU--wp896 zp-InText-Citation loading\" rel=\"{ 'pages': 'np', 'items': '{4193465:5J368QNU}', 'format': '(%a%, %d%, %p%)', 'brackets': '', 'etal': '', 'separator': '', 'and': '' }\"><\/span>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Logic might have dictated that more options would make people more likely to buy, but psychology dictated the opposite. For better or worse, CB is an area where psychology tends to beat logic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The psychological issue is that it&#8217;s not so hard to decide which option you like the most from among 6 choices. But if there are 30 options then there are probably quite a few that are all very appealing to you, and the difference between how much you like them is very small. That means you have to work extra hard to figure out which is best, and, even worse, whichever one you do choose is going to be disappointing, because buying it means that you have given up several other options you would really have liked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Barry Schwartz calls this the <strong>paradox of choice<\/strong>: People think they want lots of options, but if you give them too many they are not only less likely to choose anything at all, but they are less happy with the option they do get <span class=\"zp-InText-zp-ID--4193465-57SYMI8E--wp896 zp-InText-Citation loading\" rel=\"{ 'pages': 'np', 'items': '{4193465:57SYMI8E}', 'format': '(%a%, %d%, %p%)', 'brackets': '', 'etal': '', 'separator': '', 'and': '' }\"><\/span>. Now think for a moment about modern supermarkets that give consumers a choice from among literally tens of thousands of different products#up.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"brxe-div footnote_anchor\"><div class=\"brxe-div footnote_shifter\">\n<pre class=\"wp-block-verse\">#down. Almost all of which options are owned by a small number of very big firms.<\/pre>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If you think about it in terms of System 1 vs. 2, the problem is that when System 2 gets too many choices it finds itself working far too hard to get to perfect answer that probably doesn&#8217;t even exist. This is the purchasing equivalent of standing on your own shoelaces &#8211; it just lands you immobile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There are two ways out of this paradox, according to Schwartz: Either reduce the number of choices, or use a &#8216;satisficing&#8217; strategy to choose (this is a mix-up of the words &#8216;satisfy&#8217; and &#8216;<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dictionary.com\/browse\/suffice\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.dictionary.com\/browse\/suffice\" target=\"_blank\">suffice<\/a>&#8216;). Satisficing is when you abandon looking for the perfect option, and only bother searching until you find one that is good enough &#8211; then you stop worrying any further and just take it. In our current terms, you make the decision simple enough that system 2 doesn&#8217;t have to work quite as hard, or, ideally, system 1 can take over and just say &#8220;ah ha, Raspberry! I love raspberry!&#8221; and be done with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As a corollary to this idea of helping people make their choices by reducing their decision load, I will point you to <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.smashingmagazine.com\/2017\/08\/designing-perfect-feature-comparison-table\/\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.smashingmagazine.com\/2017\/08\/designing-perfect-feature-comparison-table\/\" target=\"_blank\">this web page<\/a> in which a design expert discusses ways that practitioners can design better product feature tables. It&#8217;s amazing how many of the ideas from this chapter you see being put into practice &#8211; even if he rarely uses the same terms as we do (spotting them is an excellent learning exercise for you#up!). It may seem annoying that he doesn&#8217;t use our same terms, but, in a way, it&#8217;s actually quite reassuring when practitioners keep re-discovering the same ideas you have been talking about.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"brxe-div footnote_anchor\"><div class=\"brxe-div footnote_shifter\">\n<pre class=\"wp-block-verse\">#down. Hint: look for places in which he recommends making the core benefits of features more accessible to readers, or helping them out of the paradox of choice. <\/pre>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-pb-accordion-item c-accordion__item js-accordion-item no-js\" data-initially-open=\"false\" data-click-to-close=\"true\" data-auto-close=\"true\" data-scroll=\"false\" data-scroll-offset=\"0\"><h5 id=\"at-8969\" class=\"c-accordion__title js-accordion-controller\" role=\"button\">Is the paradox of choice real, or just a creation of the replication crisis?<\/h5><div id=\"ac-8969\" class=\"c-accordion__content\">\n<p class=\"interest wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/where-does-cb-knowledge-come-from\/#replication-crisis\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/where-does-cb-knowledge-come-from\/#replication-crisis\">Recall<\/a> from our Intro chapter that many fields have been rocked by a crisis in which many &#8220;known&#8221; effects turn out not to be true &#8211; if you repeat the studies over again, they don&#8217;t seem to replicate. Is this true of the paradox of choice?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Several papers have looked at this <span class=\"zp-InText-zp-ID--4193465-7QWMRC9G-_-4193465-J2297BPK-_-4193465-AMQTQXZR--wp896 zp-InText-Citation loading\" rel=\"{ 'pages': 'np', 'items': '{4193465:7QWMRC9G},{4193465:J2297BPK},{4193465:AMQTQXZR}', 'format': '(%a%, %d%, %p%)', 'brackets': '', 'etal': '', 'separator': '', 'and': '' }\"><\/span>, and the answer is&#8230; probably! Some studies replicate it, and some don&#8217;t. When you try to combine them at first it looks like there isn&#8217;t much there, but a closer looks suggests that this is hiding that it might work, but only under certain types of conditions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The academic knowledge industry has spent decades believing that evidence for things is best decided in one tidy paper that proposes and solves a problem, rather than through grinding accumulation of unbiased data sets, and this has created a bit of a mess &#8211; one that it is now starting to extricate itself from, if somewhat fitfully so. <\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">3. How to learn about consumer motives<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Marketing practitioners often have a strong interest in working out what motivates people to buy their products vs. competing options. To this end they pay for lots of focus groups with consumers, and interviews with them, and even try to engage with online communities that have relevant conversations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This works reasonably well for high-involvement products because consumers can let you into their System 2 thinking. They are deliberately choosing how to process the information they have available, so should be relatively good at reporting on what that information is, and roughly what process they are following.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This may not work nearly so well when considering low-involvement products, because consumers might not have much insight into why they make the decisions that they do &#8211; their brain just pops an option into their head as a good choice, and that&#8217;s about as far as their conscious thinking goes. If I ask you why you like a given chocolate bar, you probably can&#8217;t explain it. It just tastes good to you! Why? Who knows, it just does!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Fortunately, there are other options that may work better here. You can use eye-tracking machines to see where they are looking, you can use text-analysis software that will try to sift through what they have written and identify patterns or &#8216;sentiment&#8217; (positive or negative feeling). You can use simulated buying situations in which you change different things about a product and see if it changes their preferences (even if they can&#8217;t articulate the exact reasons why).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-pb-accordion-item c-accordion__item js-accordion-item no-js\" data-initially-open=\"false\" data-click-to-close=\"true\" data-auto-close=\"true\" data-scroll=\"false\" data-scroll-offset=\"0\"><h5 id=\"at-89610\" class=\"c-accordion__title js-accordion-controller\" role=\"button\">Is it really that simple?<\/h5><div id=\"ac-89610\" class=\"c-accordion__content\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">No, it really isn&#8217;t. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">While it is not controversial that some parts of our thinking happen without awareness and\/or control, where other parts happen in a far more deliberative fashion, the line between automatic and conscious processing seems to be an incredibly complicated, nuanced, and subtle one. Our brains will shift seamlessly between them within even the same thought, and sometimes in pretty nuanced ways <span class=\"zp-InText-zp-ID--4193465-6MPFDEUG-_-4193465-CF2W8ZGL--wp896 zp-InText-Citation loading\" rel=\"{ 'pages': 'np', 'items': '{4193465:6MPFDEUG},{4193465:CF2W8ZGL}', 'format': '(%a%, %d%, %p%)', 'brackets': '', 'etal': '', 'separator': '', 'and': '' }\"><\/span>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The bottom line is that the picture this chapter paints is intended to be broadly accurate, but you would be more than justified in placing a lot of big mental asterisks next to it; It is very much a simplification#up of a more complicated truth.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"brxe-div footnote_anchor\"><div class=\"brxe-div footnote_shifter\">\n<pre class=\"wp-block-verse\">#down. Some would say it is an oversimplification, and perhaps they are right. But for now we will defer the finer points of the debate to psychology journals<\/pre>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-pb-accordion-item c-accordion__item js-accordion-item no-js understand\" data-initially-open=\"false\" data-click-to-close=\"true\" data-auto-close=\"true\" data-scroll=\"false\" data-scroll-offset=\"0\"><h5 id=\"at-89611\" class=\"c-accordion__title js-accordion-controller\" role=\"button\">Is it really so simple? Two common misunderstandings about System 1 \/ 2<\/h5><div id=\"ac-89611\" class=\"c-accordion__content\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">No, it really isn&#8217;t simple at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There is plenty of evidence that some parts of our thinking happens with deliberative awareness, and that other parts happen without awareness and\/or control. That said, the line between automatic and conscious processing seems to be complicated, with our brains shifting seamlessly between them in nuanced ways, even within the same thought <span class=\"zp-InText-zp-ID--4193465-6MPFDEUG-_-4193465-CF2W8ZGL--wp896 zp-InText-Citation loading\" rel=\"{ 'pages': 'np', 'items': '{4193465:6MPFDEUG},{4193465:CF2W8ZGL}', 'format': '(%a%, %d%, %p%)', 'brackets': '', 'etal': '', 'separator': '', 'and': '' }\"><\/span>. Psychologists are still in the early stages of trying to untangle how it all works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The picture this chapter paints is intended to be broadly accurate, but you should put some big mental asterisks next to much of it; We are dealing here in simplifications#up of very complicated things.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"brxe-div footnote_anchor\"><div class=\"brxe-div footnote_shifter\">\n<pre class=\"wp-block-verse\">#down. Some would say \"oversimplification\", and that would be entirely fair of them. But for now we will defer the finer points of the debate to psychology journals<\/pre>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Here are 2 key things to keep in mind though:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>These are not two separate brain areas. There isn&#8217;t a &#8220;system 2&#8221; lobe in your head.\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>It&#8217;s a bit like the difference between walking and running: Yet it&#8217;s true that some brain parts are more closely associated with either system (e.g., your prefrontal cortex has a big role in system 2), but saying &#8220;this is the system 2 center&#8221; would be like saying your arms are your &#8216;running center&#8217;, just because you use them more when running than walking. Both modes draw on a whole range of different parts of your brain\/body. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>There is not a little switch in your mind that turns System 1 off when System 2 goes on (or vice versa). \n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>To continue with our walking vs running analogy, sometimes you mostly walk (like around a shop) and sometimes you mostly run (in a race, to catch a train), but often you need to do both in combination (e.g., when playing a lot of sports you are constantly switch between sprinting, jogging, and walking, sometimes on a step by step basis). It is the same with Systems 1 and 2; They are good at different things, and often that means they often have to coordinate closely with each other.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Recall our mystery?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Remember the mystery we started this page with?<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"568\" height=\"369\" src=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/05\/dominos-promotion.jpg\" alt=\"A street scene. A man is standing outside a Domino's restaurant dressed as a large blue fake pizza box, on which is written &quot;FREE PIZZA HERE&quot;, underneath the Domino's logo. About a dozen students are visible waiting to go in.\" class=\"wp-image-902\" srcset=\"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/05\/dominos-promotion.jpg 568w, https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/05\/dominos-promotion-300x195.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 568px) 100vw, 568px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Why were Domino&#8217;s spending so much on giving away free pizza?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Think about everything we know now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Is Pizza going to be a high or low-involvement decision (is it fun to search? Is it financially risky?)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And if consumers do a low-effort internal search of their memory for places they can order from, who are they going to come up with?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Ah ha.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Review<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">{pods_post_review}<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-dots\"\/>\n\n\n\n<div id='zp-InTextBib-zotpress-76ace9755c83a7c9ff45dccddb9d08e2' class='zp-Zotpress zp-Zotpress-InTextBib wp-block-group zp-Post-896'>\r\n\t\t<span class=\"ZP_ITEM_KEY ZP_ATTR\">{4193465:7IJE374F};{4193465:ZTFKHTN9};{4193465:HNAHNRNQ};{4193465:A3ALKTEX};{4193465:66D76M8C};{4193465:NRR2Q8MF},{4193465:BWKWZRT3};{4193465:DN2FF4KJ};{4193465:NRR2Q8MF};{4193465:6RV9HZ6S};{4193465:5YIEDKCS},{4193465:9EQBD6KK};{4193465:UPDQILWB};{4193465:IJCDLEDZ};{4193465:HRESKPTT};{4193465:5YIEDKCS},{4193465:HRESKPTT};{4193465:QKMBG6XR},{4193465:XYQU9NDJ};{4193465:ZYSGDZA6},{4193465:XYQU9NDJ},{4193465:QKMBG6XR};{4193465:VDELZY6F};{4193465:57SNKM82},{4193465:5LEFAAC7};{4193465:EN6S7FG6},{4193465:4743PKBY};{4193465:E3QG77CD};{4193465:5J368QNU};{4193465:57SYMI8E};{4193465:7QWMRC9G},{4193465:J2297BPK},{4193465:AMQTQXZR};{4193465:6MPFDEUG},{4193465:CF2W8ZGL};{4193465:6MPFDEUG},{4193465:CF2W8ZGL}<\/span>\r\n\t\t<span class=\"ZP_STYLE ZP_ATTR\">apa<\/span>\r\n\t\t<span class=\"ZP_SORTBY ZP_ATTR\">creator<\/span>\r\n\t\t<span class=\"ZP_ORDER ZP_ATTR\">asc<\/span>\r\n\t\t<span class=\"ZP_TITLE ZP_ATTR\"><\/span>\r\n\t\t<span class=\"ZP_SHOWIMAGE ZP_ATTR\"><\/span>\r\n\t\t<span class=\"ZP_SHOWTAGS ZP_ATTR\"><\/span>\r\n\t\t<span class=\"ZP_DOWNLOADABLE ZP_ATTR\"><\/span>\r\n\t\t<span class=\"ZP_NOTES ZP_ATTR\"><\/span>\r\n\t\t<span class=\"ZP_ABSTRACT ZP_ATTR\"><\/span>\r\n\t\t<span class=\"ZP_CITEABLE ZP_ATTR\"><\/span>\r\n\t\t<span class=\"ZP_TARGET ZP_ATTR\"><\/span>\r\n\t\t<span class=\"ZP_URLWRAP ZP_ATTR\"><\/span>\r\n\t\t<span class=\"ZP_FORCENUM ZP_ATTR\">0<\/span>\r\n\t\t<span class=\"ZP_HIGHLIGHT ZP_ATTR\"><\/span>\r\n\t\t<span class=\"ZP_POSTID ZP_ATTR\">896<\/span><div class='zp-List loading'>\n<div class=\"zp-SEO-Content\"><\/div><!-- .zp-zp-SEO-Content -->\n<\/div><!-- .zp-List --><\/div><!--.zp-Zotpress-->\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How much work does it take to buy a thing? Does that matter?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1075,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"chapter":[3],"exclude_from_index":[16],"class_list":["post-896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","chapter-1-decision-making","exclude_from_index-include"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=896"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/896\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4258,"href":"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/896\/revisions\/4258"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=896"},{"taxonomy":"chapter","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/chapter?post=896"},{"taxonomy":"exclude_from_index","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/exclude_from_index?post=896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}