E029 – Consumer Behavior Change

now on to this episode.

Hi. This is James and Jane, and here we are again with another episode of The World of Work podcast, and now we are all equipment up. It's kind of fun. Yeah, it's weird because we're on separate microphones. First time we've we've got our own. And for those of you that know me, you won't be you won't be surprised to know that I've already managed to damage one. Oh, it's pretty good. How long have How long have we had them? Well, we've had them for several hours, but I think the damage occurred in what the first eight to 10 seconds of having it out of a box, I would argue, 30. Okay, okay, I would argue it took me a little bit of time to get a plastic off. Yeah? And I just, this is a shout out to everyone who's ever worked on the events. I'm sorry that I broke things so consistently, but now I get to break my own stuff. Yeah, it was good work. Well done. Well done. All right, they're good though, aren't they? I'm really enjoying them. So although you feel very far away, yes, it's a bit of a distance, but I think we'll get used to it's fun. Anyway. What are we talking about today? So today we are carrying on with our episode looking at behavior. Sorry, our series looking at behavior, obviously, our third series, all about behavior, behavior change and things like that. And today's episode is really focusing on something that we're loosely calling something like consumer behavior influence. So where, in the past, we've looked at things like nudge and we've looked at ways that individuals can affect their own behaviors and make behavior change and things like that, today, we're going to look at how, predominantly, retailers and marketers use some of the knowledge from psychology and behavioral economics to try and influence the behaviors of individuals and consumers in the marketplace. So it's a bit of a fun subject, we think. So hopefully that's pretty good. We'll jump into that in a minute. But before we do that, should we let people know how they can get in touch with us? Why not? Why not? So

you guys know the drill. You can find all the information about the episode on our website, www, dot the wild podcast.org, we've also got a new website coming called www. Dot, World of work.io.

We're on Insta, we're on Facebook, we're on LinkedIn, but we particularly, particularly love it when you come and say hello to us on Twitter at the WoW podcast, yeah, that's our favorite, isn't it? Twitter's our favorite little ghost. I like Twitter for the sole reason that I check it the most. Yeah, it's kind of Well interestingly, it's a well designed behavioral product that makes it easy to access for a few

sort of transaction costs for getting involved there. You never frictions removed. You say that, James, I would say it's mostly about ego. Oh, right. Well, interestingly, when we talk about rewards that comes into it as well. Oh, here we go. Relevance of relevance of the episode already. Yeah. Okay, so take us through what we're gonna do today. Yeah, just, can I just say, if anyone's listening and like what we do, can they jump on and give us a review on the on iTunes and stuff like that, on the podcast players? Yeah, whatever your preference is for listening, if you are enjoying it and listening to it, and I now know of at least two people who've told me they've liked it, and I know, and I'm not gonna shout you out and because you that seems unfair, but both of you have told me that you like it and that you've recommended it to people who colleagues or other people you work with, which is really lovely, and I love that. But also, if you fancy writing a review, that'd be fab. Yeah, that'd be good. Cool. All right, so that's kind of like our sort of preamble entry, entry, conversation and stuff like that. What we're going to talk about today, we're going to follow the usual approach. So we're going to do a bit of a definition discussion to kick things off. Then we'll be doing a bit of research Roundup. I'm going to take you through that. We'll talk about a range of different things. Then we've got a list of a week stories from a keyboard, some final thoughts and top tips, and then checking out. So we'll jump onto that in a minute, I guess. Anything you want to check in on. Jane, how's everything going in your world? All right, I am stupidly distracted by the fact I've got a microphone in front of me, which is really weird. Yeah, it's funny. I'm having flashbacks to my event management days, but generally I'm okay. I am still suffering with this ridiculous cold that never really showed up, but doesn't seem to want to leave. But I've been reliably informed by the man at the coffee shop at the end of your road the weather is improving in two days time. Well, that is so I'm excited. That's precision as well. That is good. Did he give you your time or he didn't? But I did tell him I was going to be in on Monday. Oh, right. So I feel like that's, that's like, he must have confidence in it. Well, that's good. Yeah, it's good to know, um, and I've been doing pretty well. I mean, you know, saying all the usual stuff, busy, working hard, preparing a little bit more for holiday, which is good and holiday for, oh, I don't know. I mean, like, I guess holiday is a bit of a big word. I think we'll be away for a while. I'm planning on maybe being away for three or four weeks, but obviously I'll be taking all my stuff with me to work. Work as I'm away. I quite like doing that. Well, we've done that before as well. Yeah, it works pretty well. So looking.

Forward to that little bit of a two round mistakes, I think New York, Chicago, northeast place. So you should, you should definitely put that out on Twitter and see if any of my listeners who want to meet up for coffee. Yeah, I'd love to meet up with people, so I will try and get that out there. I was thinking about doing that actually. I think that's a great idea. Yeah, be really cool to meet people. All righty, so that's a little bit of a check in

definitions in the context of sort of consumer behavior and influencing consumer behavior. How would you like to take us through some of them? Well, we've picked out four today. Okay, I think that's probably the best place to start. One is really close. Well, a couple of them actually really closely related to another episode. But we've picked out behavioral design, cognitive bias, nudge and choice architecture. And those of you who either are planning on or have listened to our nudge episode, we talk about nudge and chalk architecture there too, but we've picked out a couple of different definitions which we thought would be interesting. So if I start with behavioral design, and this definition is from mindthe product.com

behavioral design is design that uses ideas taken from behavioral science, the study of why people behave as they do.

It is nothing more and nothing less than designing products and services with awareness of what people how people behave and why they behave in that way such that you can tweak your designs to better meet your objectives, whatever those objectives happen to be as an organization,

yes, whatever those objectives happen to be. And let's not get into that right now, because intent is important, but not relevant to the definition.

The challenge becomes, though, where intent becomes relevant. So cognitive bias. This definition is from www, dot behavioral economics.com. A website I actually really like, I really like, a lot of their content, very accessible, very easy to understand. And they say a cognitive bias. EG, early 2008 is the one they refer to. But a cognitive bias it's a system i It's a systematic I, non random error in thinking in the sense that a judgment deviates from what would be considered desirable from the perspective of accepted norms or correct in terms of formal logic, right? I'm going to go through that again before you break it down. Yeah, clear as mine, right? Yeah. Well, it's helpful. Is it okay? So a cognitive bias is a systematic error of thinking, right? So this is something that is consistently happening, right? And it's and it's an incorrect bias. So you're, you're thinking something that is not true on a regular basis, right? And

it's an error in the sense that a judgment deviates from what would be considered desirable, from the perspective, from from the perspective of accepted norms, or the correct in terms of formal logic. Now I've got a couple of issues with that, in the sense that I don't know,

I don't, I don't know if accepted norms is a I mean, what does that mean? Yeah, what does it who says, What's accepting? What's not he who shouts loudest? Twitter. Twitter seems to be the popular place. Things like, you know, it makes me healthier, or it makes me more financially secure, or it makes me Yeah, but

generally, the point is that people are making judgments that are either incorrect in terms of logic or are not desirable in terms of accepted norms. And they're doing it systematically, yeah, and they're doing it regularly. And they're doing it because there is a preference in their brain, a bias, a cognitive bias, to do so, right? Yeah, I think

so. In other words, we're all wired a little bit, I always think about a little bit faulty wiring. Yeah, we're all wired to make quick, snap assumptions, judgments, choices, heuristics from the last Yeah, and so much of it is that we as humans, we designed to classify right we classify information. We talk about that all the time. We're sorting machines. So it is almost inevitable that if we are sorting machines, and we do things very quickly based on what we've learned, chances are we're going to build some assumptions and biases, and this one is called the cognitive bias nudge. So this time, we've put out a really simple definition of nudge from dictionary.com and nudge is to push slightly or gently, especially with the elbow, to get someone's attention or prod someone into action. Now if you if you think about what nudge theory talks about and creating nudges in people's behavior. The idea of prodding someone into action is a really interesting one. So I love that. I really love that. And it's a really useful visual image of just using your elbow to give them a little shove. Yeah, it's like when your mum shoves you with the elbow to get in front of the photo a little bit more hiding in the back. Yeah.

And then finally, choice architecture, from economics online.co.uk, choice architecture refers to the physical and symbolic environment that faces decision makers at the point where they make a decision. The decision making environment can have a significant impact on the choices made. I'm just going to go in ahead and say it. They could have just used one word, context. Oh, yeah. Context is a biggie, right? Yeah. So choice architecture is about the environment, and it might be a physical environment, or it might be your state of mind, or it might be the assumptions that your social peer group make, or kind of your digital environment as well. Yeah. And then user design, that's absolutely what they're talking about. They're talking about what you're looking at on screen, what is the environment you face. So those are, those are the four definitions that we think are most useful. I quite like all of them. Yeah. I mean, we could have chosen loads of different the cognitive bias was a little dense. It covers a lot. It's a little dense, but there you go. So how does that lead you on to your research? Round of that's a good question. I think, hopefully it sets the scene for the type of stuff that we're talking about. As I said at the beginning, we're really talking about how the world of, I guess, marketing and retail is looking to influence the behaviors of consumers in certain ways, and how they're using some of the knowledge around behavior, behavior change, behavior modification, nudging, all this type of stuff to influence people to act in certain different ways. So hopefully those definitions help with it. What I was going to do for research roundup this week was look through a few different things. I was going to start off by exploring who out there is trying to use behavioral science and that type of knowledge to influence consumer behaviors or behaviors in general. Break down a little bit of specifically what we're going to focus on, talk at a high level about some of the ways that people are trying to influence and then look at two specific areas in different in a little bit more detail. The first is around product marketing and retailing. So how do retailers and marketers try and influence the decisions that consumers make? And then the next thing I was going to look at in a little bit more detail, bit more detail, was how product designers try and create products that drive certain types of user behaviors. So again, it's how these behavior change, behavior modification, behavior influence tools are used in, I guess, sort of commercial and consumer environment. So hopefully that's what we're going to do. How does that sound to you? James, that sound like someone you'd like to learn about. I'm quite excited about this episode. Yeah. I'm quite excited about this episode. It's good like it's good content. Hopefully we it is. I'm also secretly a bit excited about watching you try to manage your slight frustrations about consumer society. Yeah. So listen out everybody for the slight tension in James's voice if he starts talking about

where consumers are influenced unknowingly. Yeah, yeah. I think James got a special signal signature move that she's gonna do. If I get a bit carried away, we'll see how we go with that. I can't do it anymore because we've got two mics. We're a bit far away. All right. Well, let's get into it and look at this. So so far in this series, we've looked mainly at how you can modify your own behaviors, and we've looked at doing that in a helpful way. So that's things like forming useful habits for yourself. It's understanding behavior change for yourself, it's understanding motivation for yourself and your team and all that kind of stuff. But today, we're really focusing on how others are trying to influence you and change your behaviors. And just before we get into that, I was going to start by running through a list of the types of people who are trying to do this. And obviously some people try and do it in a much more benevolent way than others. So we're fairly sort of agnostic on that set of definitions for the purposes of this conversation. So it's just a case of running through some of those people. So obviously people like marketers and advertisers are looking to influence your behaviors. And you know, that's that's what that role is. It's about adding value through influencing the actions and behaviors of others. Retailers look to do the same thing, and product designers do as well. So that sort of is a group that we're going to focus on in this conversation. But there are lots of other groups that try and do this as well, using a lot of these techniques. So people like politicians and legislators, that's a big sort of playing ground for influence, which is a lot of what this is. So they're trying to influence and change behaviors. Charities do it as well. So in terms of promoting causes, fighting causes, fundraising, creating, volunteering, a lot about is about behavior change. People like urban urban design, city design, they're trying to modify built environments to change behaviors. Campaigners, anyone who's looking to promote specific interests will be trying to use these techniques. And then two other ones I've put up here that I think are interesting are educators. Educators are trying to educate people in certain ways, which is often about behavior and behavior change to some extent. And likewise, health workers, so things like smoking cessation or diabetes management or all those types of things, or health and weight or exercise, there's a lot of stuff that happens in that arena, which is about influencing behavior as well. So that's just a bit of context in terms of who's looking at this type.

Of stuff and using these type of tools to influence the behaviors of others. In terms of what we're going to focus on, as I said in the beginning, we're going to focus on two things. So we're really going to look at product marketing and retailing and some of the tools that are being used in that domain that relate to, I guess, behavioral science, to change behaviors. And then we're going to look at product design, especially sort of digital products, mainly sort of social media type products or games or things like that that benefit from having people looking at screens. So in those areas, what are the types of things that people do to do this? Well, they use their knowledge of psychology. And, you know, Jane likes to talk about hacking my brain.

Yeah, I do. I don't. I just think it's useful concept. Yeah, it's good language. It's helpful. Um, so my academic team professor would definitely not say it's good language. Well, I guess if language is good in that it communicates something that people understand, I think it's probably pretty I'll take that. Yeah, language evolves, right? You know, it's all good. Um, so from that perspective, they use sort of psychology and, you know, hacking your brain type stuff, they use an understanding of cognitive biases to create things that drive certain behaviors. They're very conscious of choice architecture. You know, something I found out about choice architecture like menu design. So restaurant menu design is actually a big business, and the really good menu designers make a big difference to profitability of restaurants through placement, coloring, bowling, sizing, scaling. So if you look at the giant, large scale restaurants, their menus basically direct people to making certain specific decisions for consumption, and often those drive towards margin driven consumables and restaurants. Why does that surprise you? It surprises me that it's big business. It doesn't surprise me. I just didn't think about the scale of it. That's out there. But if you I mean the whole god, this is a really dangerous place. Should we move on? Move on. All right. So yeah, so we'll get back to around choice architecture and then all aspects of design, you know, bring this stuff in, be it, you know, customer experience design, employee experience. So when you think about, thought about the menus, and was surprised, were you? Are you then equally surprised that shop layout? No, I'm less surprised about shop why? Because it's just for microcosm of it and the scale of it through a microcosm. But the way you lay out a supermarket is exactly like perusing a menu. Is it because it's just a piece of paper? I think it's because it's a piece of paper, and I think it's because I don't know, I just was less conscious that that was gonna be such a big part of what people do. Sorry, I'm just interested. That's good.

So, and I actually, I think part of it was the scalability of it. So it's only with really big restaurants, but I think it makes a difference, like the chains, and I hadn't really put it together about that anyway, I think it's a particularly

low, low cost chains where people order a number of products or do it every day, yeah, because then you're creating Yeah, and it's so the one, the reason I'm not surprised is because I remember once reading something about the way McDonald's do their screens above and how the digital change allowed them to test much more quickly. Which, which I thought was really interesting, because I was thinking about that only a couple of weeks ago. I stopped off at service station, okay? And I walked up to my I got really excited at the service station. So sad, yeah, because it's really posh service station, right? And in that highway stop, yeah, even a motorway stop or a truck stop, and it had a really cool salad bar that only exists in London, okay? And then we were in this motorway service station. I went in, and I went up to them, and they had a big sign above them, and it said closed till 11am

and then it said underneath opening hours, seven till something. And I was like, I went up, and I went, Oh, if you just opened? He went, No. And I was like, How long you been or No, I said, What time do you open? Yeah, as if to say, you know what's going on. And he said, We are open. And I went, Oh, okay, can I order? And he was like, yeah. And then pointed at the sign, and he went, I've had to explain why. We haven't had any customers for last three and a half hours. And I was like, Well, that's one way of putting that signage. Yeah, you think you notice it all right? So, yeah, so that's a little bit of an intro stuff. So what I was going to focus on to start with was the sort of Product Marketing and retailing demand. And obviously, I'm not a marketeer, I'm not a retail specialist. And, I mean, like, neither of us are about customer experience at the retail level, so we're just talking about things that we've read up on, that we think is interest of it. We think are interesting. One of my friends, one of my closest friends, is and I haven't told them I recorded this episode, and I'm really worried. All right, that's fine. So we have to be really on it, yeah, or we'll just not let them listen to one of them. We'll nudge them away from it. So, so, yeah, so focusing on product marketing and retailing, a lot of the motivations for organizations involved in this type of work are to do several different things. Obviously, you know, shareholder value maximization means that you want to generate revenue that you can or generate.

Profit that you can send back to your shareholders, and from a marketing and retailing perspective, that brings in several different things, and I've looked at this in three different ways. So I've said part of what people want to do is to create purchasers. So it's about a conversion of a pipeline of potential consumers into purchasers. Part of a work is about trying to increase prices and margins. So how do you create that sense of added value and get people to pay more for the same product. And then the third thing is, I think about increasing volume. So how can you get people to buy more of the same product at the same margin? And if you do all of that stuff, then fundamentally, what you're doing is you're increasing your profitability. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. One thing I'd say, in context of this is depending on organizations, you're either looking for, you know, shorter term or longer term, sustainable profitability. So that's something that sits over the top of all this. But if we look at some of the ways that that organizations do this, I think we see some interesting things, but it's just good to be aware of. So if we look at creating purchasers, how do people get people to make that jump from, you know, a pipeline, a prospect, into an actual consumer and a purchaser. So I've just called out, I guess, five or six things for each of these areas. So for creating purchases, purchasers, one of the ways, but you can do that, is through things like defaults, right? So if you're purchasing something online, and you have maybe a bolt on product, say you buy a flight, and it then gives you an option to buy insurance. If the insurance box is pre ticked, then that's a sort of defaulting thing that would put the act of opting out on the consumer, and that's a way to create a purchaser.

Another thing that people do to create purchasers is to bring in scarcity. So again, if you look at online retailing, be it for say, hotels or clothing or flights, they'll say things like only five left, and they'll create a sense of scarcity over a specific product, which helps move or nudge people from prospects into actual consumers. Another thing that's used to create purchases like this is time pressure. So if you have something like limited, limited offer. You know, offer ends on Monday. Things like that, they create time pressure, which again, nudges people towards making that jump from prospect to purchaser. Another one is loss aversion. So, you know, loss aversion is, I guess, a cognitive bias what people have. It's part of a sort of Prospect Theory view of things, which says that it's it's more painful to let go of something than it is equivalently beneficial to gain something. So loss aversion works from creating purchasers by giving people the trial period, and then if you take away that trial period and take away the, you know, functionality, or whatever that it is that they have, and tell them that they can get it back by staying as a member. They're more likely to pay for that. Another thing around creating purchasers is social proof. So quite often you'll see, you know, 99 other people brought this or sort by popularity and things like that, that creates social proof, that nudges people into becoming purchasers, not prospects. And then lastly, prompting. So prompting is a way to get people to do this and shift people into action. So for example, would you like fries with that? That's a, you know, a classic little prompt, and it just breaks down somebody's motivational barriers to perhaps eat healthily by forcing them to take an action, kind of to not do that. So

those were just some examples of how the retail and marketing world prompts conversion from prospect into purchasing. And I know, I know we're talking about retail, but also there was a great example recently about downsizing. Did you hear about that? No, tell me. So when I was researching the nudge theory episode, I came across an example which we didn't end up talking about, and it was about

a place that what started to and it was an Asian country, and I can't remember which one it was, place in Asia, and they were asking their customers if they wanted to go down a size rather than up a size. Oh, wow. And they found that people were still leaving the same amount of food like there was the same amount of leftovers, so therefore they must be decreasing their calorie consumption. Okay, so there was they were using this stuff, but they were using it to get the outcome that they thought was more beneficial. That's cool, right? Really cool. I know I don't understand. I think it must have been a government thing, because I can't see how a consumer would do that. I liked it. Yeah, I don't see how, as a company director, you could, but it's a really interesting one, because I think there's lots of things that exist in our society that have come about because of these issues. And so, for example, I consistently get given bigger plates of food in restaurants than I want. Yeah, and it's because they need to justify marked up prices that have been you're getting really good value, and it needs to still look like I'd rather just not. I'd rather still pay the same amount and get the amount of food cost on what you consider. So I found that really interesting. That's a nice little example. And, and I also, I love the concept of loss aversion, because I think it strikes at the heart of that challenge around rational behavior. Yeah, it's really because it is rational, but it's different, right? We are all. We all fear losing stuff if it's materially important.

And to us in a way. So, you know, losing 100 pounds is different depending on what your income is, yeah, yeah. But gaining 100 pounds definitely won't be the same as losing, yeah, exactly in the in the sort of magnitude of it frustrated, yeah, in your emotional relationship. We'll do something on an episode on behavioral economics at some point, maybe that would be or just just that, that concept alone, I reckon you could do anyway, pretty good. I love that. So I'm going to run through a similar type of thing, looking at how nudging is used to increase prices and margins for organizations. So a couple of little bits here to think about. One is pricing. So it's like such a classic thing, but if something's 999, we think of it as nine, right? We don't think of it as 10. Even though it's 10, it's just the way the brain works. So pricing at that rate, you know, 2999

anchors us to the 20 pound range, not by 30 pound range. And that's quite a powerful, powerful way to, you know, eke out marginal increases in price. Another piece is price anchoring. And what this is, is kind of the first price you see for something anchors you to a set of value around it. So if you see something, subsequently another product in the same range at a lower price, it seems like good value. So in some retail environments, if you go into a shop, say, you know, a bricks and mortar shop, if you go in, they might have, say, a jacket at the front of a store prominently displayed with a label on it that says $250 for this jacket, right? And suddenly that anchors your pricing to that. So when you're back towards the back of the shop, and you've come up a bit closer and you see a jacket there that's 150 you're like, well actually, that seems much more reasonable. And if that's marked down a little bit to 120 you're like, Whoa. I'm getting a really good deal here. So that's a way to increase the anchoring price, the expectation of what people will pay for stuff. Another thing is around transparency, which is less to do with nudging, but I still think works in this space. So when you have an opportunity to compare apples and oranges, it's confusing for consumers and makes it hard. So things like, you know, if you've got one product measured and priced in per kilogram, and next to it, you've got a product priced in per pound or per ounces, or whatever it happens to be, that makes it hard to compare, and that ambiguity makes it easier to maintain higher prices. So when we talked in the episode about a nudge, about the fact that information is a way to nudge, this is kind of a reverse of that. This is clouding and removing information. Another one is social proof. So to increase prices, you can say, you know, important person, Joe bought this, and you'll think, well, it must be worth more, so that helps increase the price. I don't know who Joe is, by the way,

there's no but Joe sounds like a very valuable guide. So people are pretty valuable, right? You pay a lot for that rebates. So rebates are another way to potentially increase prices and margins, because it puts an action to lower the cost on an individual. So if we see something on sale, or, you know, a product on sale that's got a rebate with it, we anchor it to the rebated price, but we don't always take the action to achieve so the absolute classic of that would be mobile phone companies that used to do this thing where, and maybe they still do where, you could get a phone contract that's the same price as all the others, but they gave you 50% off if you submitted all your paperwork for what You'd used it for, and you had to, it was like a really arbitrary, complex process. And I just imagine no one did it. Yeah, yeah. And people will think they're getting a deal, but they're not really. So it's a price manipulation piece. And another one on price is around layering. So that's around changing what you think you're buying. So for example, with a car, they'll advertise the, you know, the premium with, you know, the special gold plated cup holders, and I don't know chrome exhaust diamonds or whatever it is, you know, the sunroof, it is transparent, and I don't know whatever it happens to be anyway. So they'll price it as that premium. But then sell you the basic and then layer on extra things that lead to sort of increased overall price and or it makes me so mad. Yeah, I can feel my temperature rising as I think about it. Jade's been like flapping her hands in the background, quite literally. I'm trying to not get mad, because two things really frustrate me, particularly about this price manipulation stuff. One is, if you look at significant industries who claim to have been disrupted, actually, that's not what's happened. People have just messed around the pricing. So budget airlines are an absolute classic for this, right? They've just stripped down what they sold you, and then they add on and add on and add on and add on. So the price that you see is never, yeah, and if it is, they'll then penalize you. So they have exorbitant people lost a version piece as well because you've already got a deal and you don't want to, like, not get advantage of a bit, so you'll pay a little bit more pave a little and it frustrates because it's not disruption, and you're not disrupting the system. You're just playing with the money, playing with the prices. So one is that, and the other thing that really bugs me around

the manipulation of pricing is and it is manipulation of pricing is that, and this is why. And I didn't say this because we didn't talk about it when we were writing recording the nudge episode, but the whole point of all of this is to get people to do things that you want them to do right influence. And then what happens is the government have to come through and force you to be more transparent with your pricing, because.

They recognize that people are responding. So there's this real problem where it works, but it's really not in anyone's benefit to have this lack of transparency. Well, it's for the benefit of shareholders, except for the organization's profit line. And you just think. And the problem is that as soon as one does it, everyone else recognizes and to mitigate it. So what happens, really, if they don't yet, you get a race to the bottom. You don't actually get a bigger share of the market, and you don't actually get more people buying stuff. What you just get is everybody doing it. And so there's no transparency. And sorry, but it really bugs me. Sometimes rat one. I thought it was going to go to me, but it's one nil. I was never going to go to you, because you're concentrating on talking. Okay, sorry. All right. So really interesting, though. Hopefully it's interesting. So we talked about the conversion from prospect to purchaser, and how behavioral science is used in that, in that sort of transaction, I guess is over that transition, we've talked about increasing prices and margins. The last little bit I'm going to touch on in for products and retail space is on increasing volumes. So obviously your sort of price or your margin volume mix is what drives your profit. So here we're trying to get people to buy fundamentally more of the same thing, which boosts your profit in a different way. So there are, again, I picked up five things here. One is offers, right? Which there's nothing really bad about offers in lots of ways, except they can drive over consumption. So two for one, three for two, buy one, get one free, whatever you want to call them. Those types of offers lead people to purchase more of something than they might otherwise choose to right? So if, instead of buying having a two for one offer, you had a half price offer with half price, you'd probably buy one of a product and be satisfied with that, and use it and consume it, and maybe not waste it. If it's two for one, you'll buy it because you want to take advantage of that pricing structure and the per unit piece you get. But particularly with perishables, you might not consume it, right? So, so those are ways to modify things, to change behaviors for volume, I'm not to create waste. I mean, that's really what they're trying to do, yeah, with some of this stuff, absolutely so. So I think to some extent it's logical to purchase these things when you have a good offer like that, but only if you actually consume them. And interestingly, two for ones and three for two. In my experience, predominantly exist in the food world, sometimes in like health health products and things like that, but predominantly it's a food related thing. In my experience

next we get bundling. So bundling is a great way to increase volume. And what bundling is about, it's about combining products to increase volumes, not necessarily value. So you can bring in a different type of product into a bundle as well. So classic types of things include services like digital services. So you have to buy a phone line, and you need to buy your, you know, it comes with a bolt on sports viewing subscription and your TV and obviously, so that's an example of bundling, which leads people to buy things that are beyond what they need in an effort to increase volumes. We've talked about choice architecture before to, you know, to change behavior and influence in relation to increasing volumes. You can see this in some really interesting spaces. So if you look at making a purchasing decision from a list of options, so you've got, for example, small, medium and large, people will take the path of least resistance, which is almost always to buy the medium product. And if you look at something like coffee, nearly everyone will buy a medium coffee because they don't want to be an outlier. Be an outlier, right? But what that means is, if you create a product that is your small product, which is actually quite large, and then make an even larger and an even larger one, people will buy the medium product, which is probably more than they really need, and you might habituate that behavior. But fundamentally, what you're doing is you're creating a choice architecture that leads to an increased volume of consumption, and that works in relation to things like coffee. It works in relation to things like soda, but

it also, interestingly, works in relation to things like consumer electronics. So there's a huge range of variety within, say, personal computers or laptop computers. And you'll get an entry level product, and you'll get a top end product, and then you'll get a middle of a red product. And people tend to default to the middle of a red product. Default to the middle of a red product when, in many instances, they don't need that, right? So in effect, you're increasing the, you know, the volume of what people are buying by, you know, upping the upping, I guess, in that instance of the quality of it, pricing is another one. So when we look at pricing in small increments, you can change to increased volume. So cinema popcorn is a great example of this, where, you know, the small popcorn costs, I don't know, $5.50 the medium popcorn costs $6 and the large popcorn costs $6.50

but it's, you know, it's twice as big of a medium one. Now, with products like that that are nearly all margin anyway, the 50% sorry, the extra 50 cents to get to large means that consumers will make that because they get double their value, and it feels good, but that's all all profit for an organization. So the volume is helpful. And then the last thing I'd call out for increasing volume is prompting. So you can prompt people to increase volume. So things like, Would you like to go large?

With that. You know, go large with your order. So asking people if they want to have a bigger volume is a way to do that. So what do you think about that? That's that's looking at creating purchasers, increasing prices and increasing volumes? Any thoughts, Oh, I'm so mad. It's not even true, like it's very hard to take on that volume of information about the way that

people are influenced in their consumption without being very frustrated by it, given the situation we now find ourselves in, which is we have over consumption, overuse of resources, and people generally have too much. I mean, it is insanity that people are taking on storage units to to store their stuff, right? Just, you've got too much stuff. Sorry, but there it is. You've got to, I've got too much stuff, and I've got less stuff than most people. I know the stuff that you own ultimately owns you. As somebody said to my right, that's out there somewhere ripes. That's depressing, yeah. And I just, I think, I think there is,

let's separate the things. I think it is really interesting how all of this stuff can influence us. And I think it is absolutely makes sense that the environment that you create for us

as a consumer and as an organization creates for a consumer absolutely can influence you. I guess I'm uncomfortable

with sales for sales sake. I've always been uncomfortable that that's just who I am. I'm not. I don't really get it. And I what I like about knowing this stuff, and I do, I do know this stuff, is that I deliberately act differently, and that would be what I think it is helpful for so for example, my default is small or extra small, apart from, like, clothes sizes, because I wouldn't fit in. But you know, if I go and buy something smaller, extra, uh, classic, if I do something routine, like go to cinema, I've decided before I walk in there what I'm going to have and if I'm going to have anything, and it's okay not to have anything, because I think there's something that we don't all talk about, which is the expectation to spend, and the embarrassment of not spending? Yeah, I talk, I talk loads to people about how it is implied that, and it's slightly the social proof stuff, and it's slightly the stuff from ciudini. We talked around in large episode about conforming to your social perception, self, self image. I had a conversation with someone who's saving for to get a deposit for a house. Young person, young, well, young next to me, and they were talking about the pressure they felt to go to weddings and spend the appropriate amount of money on the trips and and be seen, to be out on a Friday night and stuff. And they said they feel like, you know, they feel like they're being mean in inverted commas because they're not spending on these group activities. And I was like, I remember, I'm not that old that I don't remember when saving was seen to be a virtuous thing, and that denying yourself, consumption for a future benefit was considered to be a really grown up, like mature thing. And at the moment, I don't feel it's like that. And so I think that all of these things are important for understanding, but I think they all play on a higher thing, which is that ultimately, there is not anything inherently bad about consuming too much, and I would question that. So I think all of them play on the assumption that there that everyone accepts there's nothing wrong with consuming too much. Well, the world tells you that. I mean, the world, yeah, totally Yeah, right. So, I mean, I guess that leads us a little bit on to why we discussed that, right? And I mean, we've said that knowing this stuff is helpful, and it helps you maybe make more more helpful decisions for yourself around your consumer things.

I do have some sort of unfortunate conflicting views on that as well, though, right? So I guess, you know, we're going to talk about happiness in subsequent series. And one of the things I think, is that if people derive happiness from feeling that they've got a good offer, then there must be some intrinsic value in that derivation of happiness in itself. So I think,

as much as I think, there are words of warning around the way that this stuff works, if it creates value and happiness for people, then that's a good product in itself, right? But I don't want to get too sucked into that circular thinking, because I would go nuts and you would all get mega bored. So that's really the end of a product marketing and retailing piece that I was going to look at. What I wanted to touch on now was effectively product design, behavioral product design. So how do you create

things that affect the way that people interact with your products. And I want to touch on two things in this space. One is called Foggs behavior model. It's by somebody called BJ Fogg from 2016 and the other is the hook canvas, which is near Al. I think that's how you pronounce it, n, i, r, new word E, y, a, l, from 2013

and these are both things that influence product design, and I'm just going to touch on them briefly to give you a sense of what they are, and you can start to explore how they're used. I think probably most relevant for this conversation is of a hook model or a hook canvas. But I'm going to start with BJ Foggs work, which I think is really interesting. So what BJ Fogg says is he.

As that an individual's behavior is related to their motivation, their ability and their prompt, right? If you remember, when we started this whole series, we said behavior is a result of C, O, M, so com B was for model we used,

and that was capability, opportunity and motivation, right? And this is motivation prompts and abilities. So if we think of ability and capability is basically the same thing, then here we've got prompts where, in the other model, we had opportunity. But essentially what he says is that people will have a point at which they'll take action, right? And you can kind of draw a graph that has motivation on one axis and ability on the other, and you can draw a sort of a relationship line down which people will divide between those who will take action and those who won't. And when you're creating products, what you want to do is you want to shift people so that they move up and right in your graph and jump over that action line, and at that point they take an action so how do you do that from a product design perspective? Well, you do a bunch of different things. You understand how you can make people more motivated to engage, how you can give them more ability to engage, and how you can use prompts to move them up and over that action line so they engage with your product, right? So you start to understand what motivation is, and people have different types of motivation. So motivations could be from a sensation. So maybe feeling full is a motivation or feeling good post exercise or whatever. You've got different sensory motivations. You've got anticipation related motivations, you've got social motivations. So you get a bit of an understanding of motivations, and that helps you design your products. Then from an ability perspective, you think of, what are the things that help people increase variability to engage with your product, or whatever it is you're creating, and the things that fall calls out are time, money, physical effort, thought, the effortfulness of your thought, social deviance and non routine behavior, and those are all costs that inhibit your ability to do things. So if you design a product that minimizes the time it takes to interact for money, it takes for physical effort, it takes for thought, it takes the social deviance associated with engaging with your product and the non routine nature of a behavior. If you design products that minimize those, then it increases the likelihood of people engaging with your product, and then there's time spent talking about prompts, right? So prompts are things that you can build into products that will prompt the consumer, or potential consumer, into the point of taking action. And there are different types of prompts that he talks about. So again, if you think about our dimensions of motivation and ability, you get prompts that will effectively boost somebody's motivation, and that'll boost them potentially to the point that they're at the tipping point of motivation, and they'll take an action. And he refers to those as sparks. Then there are prompts that will boost somebody's ability or reduce barriers to variability, and those are things that he called facilitators. And then you've got something that are signals that are informed. So if people just don't know something and they're already motivated and have an ability, then you can just send them a signal. So those blend of prompts are the things that you need to build into your product design, and issue those prompts to the right subset or segmentation of your product user to nudge them into the right place. So if we think about it as an example here, so for me, in running, I'm fairly motivated to go running and enter races. I have a fair amount of ability, but I don't always know what runs are near me that I'd want to get involved in. So in that instance, somebody would want to send me a signal as a prompt to say this event is here at this point in time. And that's kind of what I need to do to get it with the action line. However, if we look at somebody who was maybe motivated but potentially less able, then what you might want to do is you might want to send that person something that says, well, let's address some of these barriers. Let's lower the cost for you. Let's give you a price discount that'll increase your ability to do it. So we'll send you a 50% discount on this run, and that might get you over the line, and that's a facilitating prompt for your product engagement. Then we've got something like the sparks, which are about people who have the ability but aren't motivated. So again, if we take running as an example, you might send somebody who's send somebody who's really able to do this and has the money and all that kind of stuff, but isn't motivated. You might send them something that says, you know, all your neighbors are running this event, or, you know, all these great people are doing it. Or did you know that by running this, you'll be contributing to a local charity and improving your life expectancy, and that's designed to increase motivation for that subset of your user population. So from a product design perspective, what you're really looking to do is you're looking to understand the motivations of your users and adjust your product to reflect those and give rewards that are aligned to those. You're looking to make your product easy to use so frictionless by reducing the barriers to use, like time, money, other forms of effort, such as thought, physical effort, social deviance and so on. And you're looking to make sure that you understand your users and create prompts built into your product that affect the right people in the right way, to get them over that action line and convert it into actually taking an action. So that's my sort of I.

Um, interpretation of Bj Foggs behavioral model. Have you seen that one before? Too? It's No, I haven't. And actually, I feel like it's quite similar to some of the things that we talked about previously in prep. But it's not one I'd seen before. We started planning for this, and I quite like it. It's all right, isn't it? And it's kind of in the product design space, which I think is useful. Yeah, I think I've always slightly nervous of everything that's either an equation or a graph, because I feel like they're science both exactly and I feel like it's science ifying What is effectively categorizing information.

So I think they looked at what already exists out there and what is beginning to exist, they've categorized it neatly to make people think about it. Is that a bad thing? No, not necessarily. And I like the language they use. I really like it. I think it's, I think

it sticks in your mind, yeah. I like this idea of sparks. It took me a while to go ahead and facilitators, yeah, because I just have a different idea of what that word means, yes, yes, but, but having seen it, that idea, particularly sparks and signals, I love Yeah. It feels very dynamic. And I think you just live dynamics, very dynamic. And it's kind of iterative, assess, and then you issue a spark, and if that doesn't work, whatever, and you try and place your people. And I think, I think I know

you're going to come on to something else that sounds very similar to either habit, habit form, yeah, the habitable self regulation, which all have the similar cycles. But I do, I always do come back to the fact that it's, it is just an iteration of some of the stuff we've learned before. You know what? There's very little new under the sun. I know it's depressing, isn't it? There is exciting. I don't it's kind of exciting. It gives everybody hope, I guess,

wow, yeah, let's go with that. There's hope, right? It's all new. None of it's new, all right? So that was the behavior folks behavior model, looking at it from a bit of a product perspective. Then we're going to jump forward about six years and look at the hook model, or the hook Canvas from a book called, I think hooked I think was the title of a book I can't remember exactly, by Nir Eyal. And the hook canvas, and this model is something that had a bit of a flurry of attention around a digital world, sort of Silicon Valley, that type of thing, particularly around

sort of social media type products. And what has happened with this book is that near has tried to document how you can basically create habit formation in your users of products. So if you think about things like social media platforms or certain games or things like that, all of those products, of a majority of those products, drive their revenue, and I guess ultimately, their profit, through eyes on screens, right? So you want people to continually be engaged in your product, because it's those eyes on screen that give you the opportunity to serve advertising through it, you generate revenue so, so how do you create products of that ilk that keep people hooked? How do you get people to spend more and more time on your screen looking at your product, and thus looking at more advertising? Well, you do that in several different ways. But what near has done is he's come up with the hook canvas, which is basically a four stage cyclical model to deal with habit formation before we get into it, though, I just want to step back and remind people of the habit, the habit loop that we talked about in a previous episode. So what we said in the habit loop is that when we look at habituation and habit forming, that habits exist where, basically we've got three things, where you've got a prompt that initiates a behavior or reminds somebody of a behavior. As a result of that prompt, people take an action, and as a result of that action, they get a reward, right? So they're all those, all those types of things. So again, if we take running as an example, a prompt might be, oh, I'm a bit tired, or, Oh, I've got some spare energy. That's a bit of a prompt. I want to do something. What's my action? Well, I'll put my shoes on and I'll go for a bit of a run. What's my reward? I feel, you know, I get the sort of slight runners high, I feel motivated, I feel slightly virtuous, and I feel ready to get on with my life, for example. And then that'll go on, and then, you know, the next day or the day after, I'll have that prompt again, and I'll repeat that behavior. And that's your habit formation process. Now, what NIR has done with this hook Canvas is he's built on that model. So instead of prompts, he talks about triggers, then he talks about action, then he talks about variable rewards, then he talks about investment. So that's the hook model of a hook Canvas in a nutshell, trigger, action, variable reward and investment. And we'll look through these in a little bit more detail as different about different parts of a model or canvas, but fundamentally, those pieces fit together to create addictive products and products that keep people's eyes on that screen, predominantly so if we start what we look at is triggers, right? So a trigger is a way to encourage somebody to undertake an action. So these are kind of in built into your product as signals to a user of your product that they should take an action. So if we think about social media things, this is things like notifications, right? You get a notification that triggers you to take an action. It's red, isn't it? It's always red. Flashing red, yeah, with warning, yeah. Do you remember the flashing light on the old blackberries? Black Ray curve, the flash. Oh. Flashing red

light. Those of you, those of you any younger than us, won't have any idea we'll talk about but prior to iPhones and smartphones were blackberries, yeah? And blackberries had a little red light on the top. It would just flash right, and that's, that's a trigger, so that's and vibrate, yeah? And vibrant. The BlackBerry vibration in particular, literally to move across your desk, yeah, like, I'm here, but that red light would flash forever, right? I mean, you could, like, have messages come in and that light's just flashing, like, an hour later. So if you're even not in work, you'll just see that red light go in. And, you know, there's some really important places that that exists, like on your car dashboard when something's wrong and you need to have a service, but maybe not for checking your mobile phone. Yeah, exactly. But that's a great example of a trigger. And all those types of navigations are things that are built into a product designed to trigger a user to take an action. So step one is that trigger, the next thing then is the action right? And then, as a result of a trigger, you want your user to take an action. And when we talk about action in this this world, what we're trying to do is we're trying to create the most frictionless, minimal thing that the user can do to engage with your product. So for example, if we talk about something like Twitter, you'll they'll give you an option to get, say, opt in emails, right? So there's an email that says, here are some things that have happened on Twitter today. And then what's the action? Well, the action they want is for you to go onto their platform and spend time there, and they want that to be as easy as possible. So there's a one click process. You click on something, it will maybe open up the app and take you straight to a page, and then suddenly you're there. So the minimum thing you want somebody to do is the action, and you want that to be as frictionless as possible, which ties into the stuff we talked about in Fox model around ease of ability and stuff. So that's your trigger, and then your action, and then this process of creating addictive products, this hook canvas, says that you want to provide people at that point with a variable reward, right? So, so this is something that's a bit interesting. If you look at some of the work around how rewards and I guess addiction and stuff work, the variability of reward makes something more

more addictive, right? So if I know, but every time I look at your product, I'm going to get the same thing. Then I lose any sort of, I guess, like positive anxiety, I guess about what's going to be there. That uncertainty vanishes, and I know what's there, so that sense of urgency disappears. So when something's variable, there's always a chance, but I'll get a really great payout, and that keeps you always guessing. So if you think about things like gambling machines, you know, slot machines, scratch cards, there's always that chance, but you'll get something really big, right? I mean, if you look at gambling say, their average return on a gambling machine is something like 80% so if you, if you paid in $1 and always got 80 cents, and that was certain, well, one, it would economically make sense. But two, that would take all the excitement out of it is that variability of it creates the excitement around for rewards. If a hook Canvas says that for products to be really addictive, you should build in variability of reward. And if you look at it from a social media perspective, of rewards you tend to get, tend to be things like social validation from others, so likes of things that you've done in Twitter, retweets, likes in your Facebook, whatever it happens to be, sharing of whatever it is. But those rewards are variable, and to some extent, I believe a variability of those rewards is moderated by the algorithms that exist within there. So they want to keep it uncertain, but they want to occasionally have a large payout for one of your actions.

And through that, they make products more addictive, and you'll keep going back in the quest for the high of that one variable reward you had in the past that was really good, and maybe you'll get it again. So that variability is really important. So I read somewhere that somewhere I can't remember what part of the world they had done it so that in casinos, those slot machines paid out at certain times of the day, so that maximum number of people were around and saw it, and therefore they had a heightened, disproportionate awareness of what was going on and the likelihood, I mean, it's not great, is it? It's pretty dreadful. Well, it's dreadful, but it's a great example of what we're talking about with this stuff. Yeah. And that works, right? And then people have seen that variable reward, and I think, oh, it could be mean to me, yeah, and you create that variability and excitement, and then the last part of the hook canvas, or hook model, is this concept of investment. And this links into a couple of sort of cognitive biases and sort of human

psychological things. And what this is really saying is that to create addictive products, you want people to put something into it, right? So you want people to put time and effort, to some extent, at a marginal level, over time that builds up, that makes them think that they've invested in your product, and makes them feel that they've invested. And what this does is it brings in several different things. So it's got the sunk cost nature thing, so people have already put stuff into it, so it's easier to use it in the future, easier to use it, and that breaks down some barriers,

but it also taps into things like some biases that are called things like the IKEA effect, or not invented here, which are human traits whereby, if we create something, we value it more. So the more we put into the things, the more we tend to value and there's some some great research around.

That type of thing, but by building an element of investment into your product, you can make it more addictive. So again, if we look at something like, I guess Facebook, if you create a profile, if you put up your good pictures, if you've taken the time to say what you're you know, who are all the people that you want to follow, you've invested time in that. You've invested time putting up pictures, you've invested time connecting with people. That's all investment, and that all means that that product is more valuable for you.

So again, those are the four bits of a hooked canvas, or a hooked model that helps design addictive products. So trigger, action, variable reward and investment in the product itself. So to create habit forming products, you need to build all those things in, and you need to get them in the right level. And if you do that, you'll probably create a fairly addictive product that will keep people there with their eyes on screen. And that's, you know, that's the aim of these types of models, is to help people create influential products that would keep people involved. So what do you think? Um,

I think, I mean, I think it's true. I think we see it, although I think it's only part of the picture. Yeah, I think some of the most habit forming products, or addictive products, understand that you're going to hate me. Understand their context, they're operating in. So I was thinking about, can I name products? Yeah, why not? So when you think about something like Tetris, okay, Candy Crush,

I think there is a massive understanding of where people are playing it and how they're playing it. No one caveat. There's always a no, there's always a someone. Most people are not choosing to put aside time to play Candy Crush. Yeah, they're using Candy Crush or Tetris to fill a piece of time that maybe they didn't, hadn't assigned a purpose to, and that it's an enjoyable way of passing time. So I think you see it in commuting enormously, certainly in the UK, you see them playing computer games all the time. I think you see it waiting for people, waiting in surgeries. And I think that that's the bit that maybe he doesn't

really recognize within the hook Canvas at all, which is that the really clever things about all of these things is they are absolutely breakable up in the amount of time you spend. Yes, okay, so they're incremental, yeah, massively incremental. And they're massively opportunistic about the way that they engage you. So they recognize that they you're never you're never going to admit to yourself that you're gonna play Candy Crush rather than go out for dinner, but you might accidentally not make dinner plans because you've spent an hour and a half playing Candy Crush. And so I think they understand just how easy it is to put them down, and therefore they work really conducive to keep them in your hands and keep you coming back and, and I don't know that that, and I think that is such a huge part of addictive products, yeah, and if you don't acknowledge that, it's like, I mean, that wouldn't work if it wasn't for an opportunistic play on our time. Yeah, there is no way that have that habit cycle works when our resistance is low, right? And when we look, we actually active, actively seeking, distracting. Yeah, we want in a time. So I always think it's really funny, when you go to dentist surgery, everyone's playing, even people you don't expect to be playing games and playing games. They're just like, I don't think about what's going to happen now. And I also, I don't know how much it's not just the habit loop. I don't, I don't really introduce

No, no new stuff, but there really is no new stuff for me with this. On the other hand, you know, I do think gamification is really interesting. I do think the way that people have used what we've learned about games and gaming, and the behavior in gaming has allowed people to understand addictive products really well, yeah, and I worry about that because it is highly addictive. Yeah,

we are pushing on for time a bit. I'm going to say one mini thing about Candy Crush, because I love it as a little thing I saw on there at one point it says, When you log in, sometimes swipe the stress away, and suddenly Candy Crush is good for you. It's a healthy thing. And talk about nudging. Someone tried to talk to me about mindfulness and Candy Crush the other day, I was like, No, it's the only thing that me and my partner have nearly had a Rab about when deleted it after many episodes. And one of us had because, you know, obviously you lose it, right? If you delete it, which is really clever. I can't bring myself to throw away the 300 hours I've wasted. Yeah, so funny. That's your investment. And we deleted it different times, and then one of us got it back. And then there was a big old round. What do you mean? You're playing it. That's funny, even though neither of us want to. Anyway, all right, so I've run on quite a bit there. In terms of time, would you like to take us through a list of a week? Yeah, really straightforward one. We talked a bit about cognitive biases. We had a definition earlier. So I'm going to just give you five cognitive biases that affect consumer, sorry, choice, and I think they're useful to remember. One is the bandwagon effect. And some of these you'll recognize from other ways we've described them, but I like this. The bandwagon effect is the tendency to do or believe things because many other people do. Or, believe them,

everyone has bought a far Raven rucksack in the last in Scotland. Therefore I must, because it must be good, because everyone's bought it. I think you see that particularly when students turn up at university, and they've all turned up with a certain type of rucksack, and it all turns up to be a different one the next week. The default effect when given a choice between several options, the tendency to favor the default one, which we've talked about already. So if you pre tick a box, or if you say we're going to assume this, unless you tell us otherwise, you're much likely, much more likely, to get conversion, loss aversion, the disutility, dreadful word, but the disutility of giving up an object is greater than the utility associated with acquiring it. I spent, and that is, that is a candy crush all over the shop. I don't want to give up the 300 hours I've spent, even though they were utterly wasted. Yeah, I waste

the mere exposure effect, which is a big, big interest of mine, the tendency to express undue liking for things merely because you're familiar with them. So this idea, and you gave me an example earlier, that if you put up a billboard of a brand everywhere, even if nobody's got any idea what it is, they will still feel more favorable towards it because they recognize it, because they're your brains looking for patterns, right? It's going, Oh, I've seen that. And they and the logic will be something like, they can afford to put billboards up. They must be doing all right? There must be a decent brand. Someone wouldn't put the billboards up if they didn't trust new stuff. Either, we don't like change, we don't like new stuff, we like stuff that we've seen that's safe, yeah? And then finally, number five, post purchase rationalization. And I reckon there's not a person in the world that doesn't know this one, the tendency to persuade oneself through rational argument that a purchase was a good value. Yeah, my life, that is I. But also, the thing is, I also believe in that, you see, because I believe that once you've done something or done something, you just should make the best of it. Well, that's true. So for me, if I'm going to buy it, I'm going to, damn, I'm going to, then I'll make sure it was good value by using it loads, because I bought it now, yeah, that's funny, right? Um, although there are cracking exceptions, yeah, everyone's got one, one thing they never should have bought. So those are my five cognitive biases. Bandwagon, default effect, loss aversion, mere exposure effect and post purchase rationalization. That's quite a nice list. They're all, I mean, cognitive biases are great. That's a good little list. But fit in the consumer space, yeah? It's also I'm quite comfortable with them, like, I know, I know I have those. Yeah, exactly. I know. I've challenged myself on most of them. That's fun. Have you got any stories from real world, stories from a keyboard? I guess we've talked about a few of those. Have you got anything you'd want to call I guess for me, probably the one I would

the most obvious one that I would talk about is it's not so much a story of a cognitive bias or a consumer behavior, but more how I've dealt with it. So I have spoken before I think about my challenges around changing my relationship with food and how I ate, and I made myself some really clear rules before I

went into trying to change my behavior, and I had them really clear in my mind. And one of them was I had a number in my head, and it was enormous of how much I would pay, yeah, okay, to change it. So therefore, automatically, none of the pricing stuff around food to encourage me to buy sub. Fine, you made a rule about it, right? Because I had a rule in my head of I was prepared. I think it was something like 10 pounds. I said, like I am prepared. To pay up to 10 pounds for every single lunch I ate, which an extraordinary amount of money on a daily basis. Yeah, to avoid eating what doesn't work for me and isn't going to support my plans. And therefore the two for ones, the group purchases, all of that just disappeared. It wasn't relevant because I went into a shop knowing what I got, a shop knowing what I got a different mindset. I know what I want to eat. I know how much I'm prepared to pay for it, and as long as that is, I'm not going to fight it, I'm not going to get affected by it. And and what was interesting to me was, although I spent a fortune and I did on food,

my consumption in every other way went down. So my consumption of coffees went down, my consumption of purchasing sweets went down because the food, but also things like,

I just, I just didn't buy as much stuff because I didn't put myself in that position. Because I was like, I'm trying to avoid other things here. So well, I'm going to change my paper, and I see it, if I'm honest, I see it like a game. I'm a consumer, and I am fighting and I don't want it to be like that, but I am. I'm fighting the seller, yeah? And I want to be smarter than them, and I want to get a good deal, and and so, for example, the one I was telling you earlier is my default is always small. Just say small. What size you want? Small, what? I don't even know what small is, but go for small. What's the smallest? Yeah, I always say, what's the smallest, yeah. And then they show me, and then I decide if it's too if it's big enough, yeah, interesting. That's mine. Yeah, cool. Sorry. From a keyboard, I guess story from life moving from a keyboard, and I don't know if this is helpful, but you know, it's kind of back to that notification piece, and the world is full of notifications,

and it's full of opting in as well. So I guess I've got two bits on it. One is I, personally, I try and opt out of all notifications.

Everything, basically. So any email group, anything like that, I just try and get rid of everything and another side, one in a funny way. Another sounds really stupid, probably, but I don't do things like coffee cards and, you know, that type of stuff where, you know, you collect line stamps and whatever. And because those are all about, you know, implementing my behavior. And to some extent, I feel some sort of emotional effort associated with those products anyway, so I try and opt out of it. So they're not really stories from a keyboard, but they're just things that I'm conscious of, that I try and minimize. I opt out of nearly all of them I'm a member of one, which is my supermarket card. Yeah, I do, and the only reason I do it is because I have made a decision that I will never again spend a penny in that supermarket full price. So unless I have vouchers of 30% or more, I'm not going there. I'm going somewhere else. Sure, that sounds good. And, and you know what happens every month we get and if the vouchers are too low, they get ripped up and thrown in the bin, and I go somewhere else? Yeah, you just wait it out. And, and I know it sounds really childish, but it works. It becomes a game, something. It's a total game, and then you feel like you're winning Cool. Any final thoughts and top tips? I think it's a work really, because obviously this is all about how we as individuals behave. But I think the single thing I would say, and this is absolutely true of a work context, because quite often I got pushed into buying things that were over inflated prices when I was working, when I first started working, people would be like, Oh, no, you need this sure as an organization. And the strongest thing I can advise you to do is let your budget run your business or your department or your team. If you set your budget at the beginning and you understand what percentage of your budget, you're prepared to spend on an individual item, and can put a number against that, then you can give people the freedom to go off and make good choices. But you can also stop people wasting time trying to hunt down stupid, discounted products that might not be the right thing, which I've spent a huge amount of time charity. And I think actually what's more important is, did you did you spend the appropriate amount in comparison to rest of the project, rather than did you get the cheapest thing? And have you spent four hours and wasted four hours of your time? Yeah, because there's so many opportunities around. So for me, tyranny of choice. If you set your budget and you're really clear, the win is if you get what you want for your budget with room to spare the win is not getting spending the least amount of money. And I think for me, that's really important, because it's about goal setting, and it's about managing, managing the effort that you do in getting in such this game. Because it's also you get sucked in, right? You get sucked into negotiating on paper and saving the business like 100 pounds a year, but you realize you've spent like, a day and a half having a conversation, which is way more than 100

pounds a year funny. So I've got like a one mini final thought, and it's the same as when we spoke about nudge. And again, it's probably more to myself than anyone else, and it's just don't overthink it. Right? All this stuff's out there. The world's trying to manipulate the way that you work, but if you spend too much time on it, then you run a risk of becoming unhappy as a result of some of this stuff. So really, it's about being mindful, being aware, but thinking in a positive way about stuff and enjoying it when you get a good deal that feels good, and not beating yourself up when you don't, and generally, just trying to have a relaxed approach to it all. I guess that's my top tip advice to self, right? I like it cool, all right. Well, let's check out. Let us get out of here. So we have a new website, www, the world of work. Do i? I O and as always, you can find us on social media, Insta, Facebook, LinkedIn, but our favorite place is Twitter, yeah, at the WoW podcast, you can come and say hello, yeah. Do it? All right. Well, we will catch you next time. Any reviews. Always helpful, get on iTunes or anywhere else and just stick a little review on if you enjoy what you're hearing, and we'll talk to you soon. Bye, everyone.