Happiness research, also known as positive psychology, has grown rapidly as an area of academic study in recent decades, resulting in some fascinating findings about what can influence our level of happiness. These findings suggest that certain decisions like whether to get married, moving to the suburbs, or choosing a high paying job can have [...]
Understanding the important concepts in psychology can help marketers better understand how their customers think and how this affects their decisions. In his books Predictably Irrational and The Upside of Irrationality, Dan Ariely focuses on our tendency to make decisions that seem irrational. Many economists believe that individuals decisions are based on the rational choice, [...]
Time is something that I think marketers often ignore or take for granted. Many marketers continue to push out a flood of messages through various channels like television, newspapers, and email although consumers do not have the time to receive these messages. Additionally consumers often will choose saving time over the added benefit of switching [...]
This is a great presentation by Scott Berkun, who is the author of the book Confessions of a Public Speaker. The talk which is titled “How to Call BS on a Social Media Guru” makes some interesting points about marketing and cognitive bias. SMC Seattle May Event: How to Call BS on a Social Media [...]
Scientists at Cal Tech and Stanford have discovered that wine tastes better when it is more expensive. Subjects preferred wine labeled as $90 dollars over wine that was labeled as $10, even though they were the exact same Cabernet Sauvignon. The functional magnetic resonance imaging of the subjects showed that more blood and oxygen was [...]
It would seem logical that people would choose happiness over status but many consumers choose the latter. According to Dacher Keltner, Psychology professor at Berkeley, the data across studies show that once people have made it to the middle class, there is a very small correlation between money and happiness (he states a correlation of [...]
