consumer psychology

October 28, 2013

What Do You Fail to Notice When You’re Hard at Work?

83% of two dozen radiologists who were searching for a lung nodule didn’t see the white outline of a standing gorilla that researchers had inserted into a computed tomography scan, even though it was 48 times the size of the average nodule, says a team led by Trafton Drew of Harvard Medical School. All of the participants reported seeing the gorilla when, after the experiment, they were shown the CT scan and asked if they noticed anything unusual about it. Past studies have demonstrated that people who are engaged in a task often fail to notice unrelated images and occurrences; the current finding suggests that this “inattentional blindness” affects even experts.

SOURCE: The Invisible Gorilla Strikes Again: Sustained Inattentional Blindness in Expert Observers

October 25, 2013

Media Coverage of Terrorist Attacks Creates Its Own Adverse Effects

Watching 1 to 3 hours of TV coverage per day in the week after the 9/11 terrorist attacks predicted a 20% increase in reports of physician-diagnosed physical ailments such as asthma and hypertension 2 to 3 years later, says a team led by Roxane Cohen Silver of the University of California, Irvine. This and other findings from their survey data on more than 1,700 people strongly suggest that widespread media coverage of terrorism can have negative mental- and physical-health consequences over time, even for people not directly exposed to attacks.

SOURCE: Mental- and Physical-Health Effects of Acute Exposure to Media Images of the September 11, 2001, Attacks and the Iraq War

October 21, 2013

Sales Alert: Making Eye Contact May Not Be Such a Good Idea

After gazing at the eyes of speakers who were trying to persuade them, research participants showed an average attitude shift of just 0.14 on a seven-point scale, compared with 0.6 if they had stared at the speakers’ mouths, says a team led by Frances S. Chen of the University of British Columbia in Canada. This and another experiment show that contrary to popular belief, eye contact decreases the success of attempts at persuasion, at least in the cultural context of the European university where the study was conducted. Because direct gaze has evolved in many species to signal dominance, eye contact may provoke resistance to persuasion, the researchers suggest.

SOURCE: In the Eye of the Beholder: Eye Contact Increases Resistance to Persuasion

October 4, 2013

Women Lose Out to Men on Competitive Exam After Doing Better on Noncompetitive Test

Women perform more poorly than men on the highly competitive entrance exam for French business school HEC Paris, even though the same women had performed significantly better, on average, than the same men on France’s pass/fail, less-competitive national baccalauréat exam two years before, says a team led by Evren Ors, a professor at the school. As a consequence, the pool of admitted candidates contains more men than women. Once women are admitted to HEC, they tend to outperform their male classmates. Tournament-like competitive contests may lead to gender differences in performance, the authors say.

October 2, 2013

Consumers Go Out of Their Way to Pay in Round Numbers

Consumer behavior: 56% of purchases at a self-service gasoline pump in upstate New York ended in .00, well above what would be expected by chance, and an additional 7% ended in .01, likely reflecting failed attempts to stop the pump at whole-dollar amounts, says a team led by Michael Lynn of Cornell. The findings, along with data on tipping and a pay-what-you-want online scheme, show a pronounced consumer preference for round-number payment amounts, the researchers say.

October 1, 2013

High Deductibles Make U.S. Men Less Willing to Be Treated for Health Emergencies

As American employers shift health-care costs onto workers, more have been offering health plans with high deductibles. But those deductibles discourage male patients from seeking treatment, even for serious problems like kidney stones and irregular heartbeats. In the year following a transition to a high-deductible plan, men reduced their emergency-department visits for “high-severity” ailments by 34.4% in comparison with a control group, says a team led by Katy Kozhimannil of the University of Minnesota. Women, by contrast, continued to go to the ED for high-severity ailments, although they reduced low-severity visits.

SOURCE: When Health Deductibles Rise, Men Delay Emergency Care

September 19, 2013

Consumer Behavior: An Upside of a Long Recession: A Deepening of Personal Trust

The longer a recession drags on, the greater the growth of interpersonal trust among the population, according to an analysis of survey data from 10 Latin American countries by Elizabeth A.M. Searing of Georgia State University. For each additional year of a recession (holding all else constant), the probability that people will agree that “most people can be trusted” increases by 9.03%. A long recession may bring communities together and encourage social investment, Searing suggests.

SOURCE: Love Thy Neighbor? Recessions and Interpersonal Trust in Latin America

September 16, 2013December 23, 2016

Commercial With Emotional Connection

Every time we talk about consumer psychology and NeuroMarketing we talk about the importance of creating an emotional connection with your audience. It can be done in any touch point with your audience.
Here is a commercial in Thailand from a telecommunication conglomerate called True that did an amazing job in creating an emotional connection on a low budget film.
It is spectacular!