Scotch Faux Explanations to Explanation Foes

Researchers at University of Colorado and Brown University say there are explanation foes and explanation fiends. Accurately placing your shopper along the foe-fiend dimension will ease your way. As you’ll see, it’s also helpful to know that explanation foes can be budding explanation fiends.
     Before buying a product, service, experience, or idea, an explanation fiend wants a step-by-step elucidation about how it works. Give a surface description, and the explanation fiend takes that as a signal you don’t know what you’re talking about. This, in turn, mobilizes increasingly intensive probes. Or the explanation fiend will stop asking and shop elsewhere.
     At the other end of the dimension, explanation foes avoid detailed explanations. If a salesperson insists on going through the details, explanation foes lower their ratings of the product, explaining to themselves that a product requiring so much talk to appreciate must have numerous flaws.
     When the salesperson starts going through the details, the explanation foe usually looks uncomfortable. Some salespeople will interpret this to mean the shopper wants to understand, but can’t, so the salespeople will then launch into more details or start repeating themselves, making a sale even less likely.
     Whether a shopper is an explanation fiend or foe depends on the situation and the culture. It also is predicted quite well by answers to the three-item Cognitive Reflection Test developed by decision scientist Shane Frederick:

• A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs a dollar more than the ball. How much does the ball cost? 
• If it takes 5 machines 5 minutes to make 5 widgets, how long would it take 100 machines to make 100 widgets? 
• In a lake, there is a patch of lily pads. Every day, the patch doubles in size. If it takes 48 days for the patch to cover the entire lake, how long would it take for the patch to cover half of the lake? 

     The fiends take the time to analyze each item before answering. For instance, they’ll realize the answer to the third item is 47 days. Explanation foes are more likely to answer 24 days.
     It’s often the case that the foes are this way because they’re frightened they’ll have to admit they’re not smart enough to understand. As they gain confidence with the sorts of items for which detailed explanations are available, the foes will move toward becoming explanation fiends. Be ready.

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Encourage Customers to Be Innovative 
Be Ready to Explain Price Increases 
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