Blog

A TikToker recently posted her displeasure at price ticketing in a grocery store. The deal was “any 2 for $11”, but thanks to the format of the price ticketing, at a glance it looked like $11 was the price per item.

While I wholeheartedly agree, that’s not the only mistake the retailer made, because according to new research, they could have sold more had the price been $12 rather than $11. Here’s why.

Price divisibility

Bundle offers are a common marketing tactic to sell more product...

We think having the idea is the difficult part.

No.

Getting buy-in is what’s difficult.

Think about all the time and effort you expend creating emails, proposals, business cases or presentations in the hope others will support your plan.

Now reduce that time by half.

Just imagine the great things you can do with 50% of your time back.

That’s what knowing how to influence action can give you.

That seems expensive.

Have you ever thought that? Have your customers?

Here’s an example.

YouTubers Trent and Allie are self-building their home in the Utah mountains. After receiving a quote for drywall (plastering), this was some of their reaction:

“It came back super high…”

“They’re trying to charge us double…”

“It doesn’t make sense…”

“So we’re in the market for some other quotes…”

It’s the reaction you’ll receive, too, if you fail to do two things.

1. First, you have to conte...

"I have noticed that even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road." 

Stephen Hawking

❌ Businesses who don’t know any better focus on customer beliefs.

✅ Business who do, focus on customers looking before they cross.

“We have long assumed that those who rise to high office will be ‘good chaps’, knowing what the unwritten rules are and wanting to adhere to them.”

So writes British constitutional historian Peter Hennessy, whose “good chaps” theory of government (or as I’m calling it, good eggs) has been under considerable strain. 

This is not new to managing a business, of course.

We often have to decide whether to structure around good eggs or bad apples. Striking a balance between freedom and regulatio...

Managing people can be frustrating. You just want them to turn up and do a good job. While it sounds simple, getting employees to turn up can be surprisingly difficult, and unplanned absences can negatively impact your customers, your team’s morale and your stress levels. So, will a bonus for attendance encourage employees to turn up?

That’s what researchers were interested in testing.

Working with a large German supermarket retailer, 346 junior staff (“apprentices”) were assigned to one of...

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

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

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

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

But the money spent getting to the airport and feeding himself? Completely different...

This is a cruel god.

Millions of us try to curry favour with the god through performance.

We do as we think the god desires, but have no way of knowing because the god never proclaims what is expected.

Just when we think we know, the god changes the rules and those who were in favour now flounder in the shadows.

This is the god of algorithms.

Social media is wild, isn’t it? If your friend were in a relationship with someone who changed their mind on  a whim, blew hot and cold and never e...

In 2002, then US Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld baffled the world with his statement that there are unknown unknowns.

Parodied at the time, his insight wasn’t wrong.

In fact, it’s been turned into the Rumsfeld matrix.

• Known knowns - things we are aware of and understand e.g. using behavioural science everyday to improve interactions
• Known unknowns - things we are aware of but don’t understand e.g. You have heard about behavioural science but don’t know how to apply it in and to...

When you are a business owner, is it good to drive an expensive car or not? Will it attract customers by signalling your success or will it remind them they will be funding your lavish lifestyle?

I’ve often wondered this about real estate agents, for example, the majority of whom seem to drive late model European vehicles.

So I was interested to read new research that probed the benefits and risks of signalling your success as a service firm. In particular, the researchers investigated two ...