Unbalance Stability to Prompt Sustainability

As each participant entered the shop where a study was being conducted, they were shown a watch, either balanced sturdily on a standard watch rest or lying unbalanced sideways on a table. The participant was then asked which of two editions of the watch they’d prefer: They were told the standard version cost the average market price, while the sustainable version cost 20% more, but the watch band had been produced with lower carbon emissions.
     Compared to the participants who saw the watch in the balanced position, those who saw it in the unbalanced position were more likely to choose the sustainable edition.
     The University of Bari, LUISS Guido Carli, University of Salento, and Lehigh University researchers who conducted this study explain their findings in terms of psychological comfort: Consumers who focus on a product displayed in an unstable orientation become uncomfortable, and favoring environmental sustainability in product selection helps restore a sense of stability.
     The effect was also seen in a study using a water bottle positioned as either balanced flat on a table or leaning unsteadily at a diagonal. The participant was then asked to choose between a water bottle produced in a plant with only partial respect for workers’ rights or a water bottle produced in a plant with full respect for workers’ rights, but costing 20% more. The socially responsible option won out more clearly among participants who had seen the unsteady orientation. Those who had seen the unsteady orientation also produced lower average scores on a measure of comfort.
     The upshot: Inducing discomfort in a shopper prompts socially responsible purchasing.
     The researchers also demonstrated a limit on the effect: It worked with mass-produced products, but not with luxury products. In this study, a bottle of wine was seen in an image as either placed flat on a table or placed diagonally off the edge. The wine was described to some in each participant group as an ordinary, affordable wine good for everyday use and described to the others in each participant group as a luxurious, exclusive wine for unique occasions.
     When the wine had been described as ordinary, those shown the off-balance image were more likely to subsequently select a sustainable option. But with the description as exclusive, the bottle orientation in the image made little difference.
     The researchers’ explanation is that consumers view luxury products as more carefully crafted than everyday products, and as therefore already sustainable.

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Earn Trust by Supporting Sustainability 

Fence In Consumer Anxiety 

Design Stores with Visual Aesthetics 

Influence the Compromise Choice Process

Reverse Decisively, Politician

“[I]n defending continued U.S. involvement in Iraq, President George W. Bush stated: ‘I'm not going to allow the sacrifice of 2,527 troops who have died in Iraq to be in vain because we pulled out before the job was done.’”
     Marco Mattei and John Michael at University of Milan cite that Independence Day 2006 quote in leading off their 2026 report about politicians’ use of what social scientists refer to as the sunk cost fallacy—throwing good resources after bad by persevering with projects which show highly questionable potential for payoff.
     After analyzing their findings, the researchers conclude that “sunk cost fallacy” is a misnomer in the realm of decision making by elected officials. Perseverance often has positive results, at least for the politician’s reputation and consequent public support.
     In the studies, participants assessed more favorably a government leader who continues in a course of action to which the leader had previously committed rather than abandoning the project, even when project success seems unlikely. Constituents value consistency and steadfastness.
     It is true that voters may also defend continuation of an ill-fated campaign in terms of not wanting to waste what’s already been expended. However, the study results provided no evidence that either past expenditures or past promises made a significant difference in how a politician was evaluated once their current decision was known.
     Further, in the public policy arena, which carries uncertainties about costs and completion, the expected value of finishing may objectively exceed the expected value of stopping. This argues for staying the course and leveraging consequent political capital to actually shift the odds.
     Still, terribly bad decisions can result from this sunk cost blindness. When politicians in a leadership position do want to stop throwing good resources into a cause they’ve previously championed but now realize is cursed, what should they do? The researchers suggest two related tactics.
     First, the politician can describe course corrections as consistent, steadfast adherence to policies of competence and integrity. They aren’t abandoning the cause, but rather reinforcing a superior, longer-term cause. Second, while developing implementations for promises made during a campaign, the politician can include face-saving off ramps. This could be a fixed date to phase out further expenditures or a commitment to tie further expenditures to positive results from an independent audit. Abandoning a failing project is then attributable to a pre-existing commitment rather than to the politician reversing indecisively.

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Agitate Stable Blindness 

Float Former Poor Up Over a Sunk Cost Fallacy 

Puff Up Maleness for Wind Energy Acceptance 

Augment Political Projection with Introjection

Value Consonance by Secret-Keeping Shoppers

When your shopper is thinking about a secret they’re keeping from you, they become more likely to later regret purchases they make from you. The Lingnan University and Hong Kong Polytechnic University researchers who documented this tendency say that secret-keeping conflicts with the commonly held value of authenticity; the dissonance spreads into the purchase decision; and consumers regret inauthentic decisions.
     Other studies in the set found this is somewhat less likely when the customer considers a purchase decision as not due to their own personal values, such as when buying a gift for someone else. Another qualifier is that the studies show the effect occurs only when the secret is being held at the same time the purchase is being made. And there are circumstances in which the secret is about what’s being purchased, so the secret is being withheld from other people, not from the seller.
     However, when holding a secret does lead to the customer regretting a purchase, the results could readily include increased brand switching, along with decreases in repeat visits and word-of-mouth recommendations.
     The researchers propose that sellers encourage buyers to follow their true selves in making purchase decisions, such as by giving them messages like, “Unlock your true potential as you shop for your ring.” I’ll add that you could help a shopper recognize their values by asking them their reasons for selecting certain items over others.
     It’s best not to ask the questions in a “Why?” format. Many consumer decisions are made intuitively or are based on emotion. When asked, “Why did you make that choice?” some consumers get defensive, thinking you’re ridiculing their judgment.
     You’re likely to get better results and avoid jeopardizing the sale if you use a phrasing that assumes the shopper is making a sound decision: “What is important to you when choosing a product like this?” or “In what ways do you find this one to be better than the other possibilities?”
     A less conventional approach to the issue is suggested by Washington State University, Ryerson University, and Canada’s Western University researchers: They showed how post-purchase regret for all sorts of reasons is reduced if the store thermostat is lowered. When people experience regret, they perceive their bodies becoming somewhat warmer. It’s related to blushing we experience if ashamed or self-conscious. The physical and psychological discomfort are eased when we’re cooled down.

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Secrete Loyalty with Secret Consumption 

Value Cultural Values 

Sell Identity Affirmation to People 

Open Up Shoppers So You Can Personalize 

Shower Cold on Regretful Customers

Confine Discounting of Seniors’ Ages

To attract new customers with a price promotion, consumer research suggests you set a range of 15% to 35% for the discount. With an older adult assessing their felt age, the optimal range for discounting is more like 15% to 25%.
     Most seniors shave between 11 and 21 years off their chronological age when thinking about how old they feel. The gap is about 20% of the chronological age. This tendency is found worldwide. The lowered subjective age is both a result of the elderly person’s positive feelings as well as a facilitator of physical, intellectual, and emotional health in the elderly person.
     However, a pair of University of Toronto researchers document negative reactions by those around the senior if the senior seems to drop off too many years in their self-perception. The researchers provided study participants ages 18 to 55 years with a description in the format “Imagine a 65-year-old man who feels like he is 45.” For different groups of participants, the description read “woman” instead of “man” and “25” or “65” instead of “45.” Each participant was then asked to report their estimate of the 65-year-old’s emotional warmth, competence, and attractiveness for interaction.
     Analysis of study data showed that seniors described as feeling subjectively younger were overall rated as more competent, and the middle-aged raters (ages 35 to 55) expressed greater interest overall in interacting with the senior than did the younger raters (ages 18 to 34).
     But both the middle-aged and younger raters were critical of the 65-year-old who felt themselves to be 25 years old, rating that senior lower on warmth, competence, and attractiveness for interaction.
     The researchers’ explanation, based on their other studies, is that people become irritated toward seniors who fail by a large amount to act their age. The lower ratings were associated with raters’ agreement with statements like “This person does not know when to make way for the younger generation in the workplace,” and, “This person is a big burden on the health care system.”
     The implication for marketers is to encourage and assist older adults in feeling somewhat younger than their actual age, but to discourage extremes which would become visible to others. If you’re a plastic surgeon, limit what you offer to pull up in the face lift in order to pull off the benefit to the patient. If you’re a fashion retailer, discourage dressing too far down.

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Hew to How Old the Senior Feels 

Get Down with Seniors’ Medical Records 

Dress for Profitable Staff Performance

Delay Introductory Discounts

Subscription services, such as Scentbird, HelloFresh, and The New York Times, commonly offer a lower price for the first month or few months before bouncing the fee back up to what’s announced as the regular price. Researchers at Korea University note how prior studies support marketers using these introductory price breaks: The early gains provide the customer greater time-discounted value, exert stronger impulse-purchase appeal, and raise redemption certainty.
     The Korea University researchers then go on to identify circumstances in which a better tactic may be to charge the stated regular price at the start and then, after a few months, give a discount. Rather than charge $5 for the first month and then charge $10 for months 2 and 3, for example, charge $10 for the first two months and then $5 for month 3. The studies indicate this works well when long-term customer retention is more important than new customer acquisition.
     But how the delayed discount is worded makes a significant difference. If the month 3 discount is stated as “50% off” instead of the actual dollar amount, such as “$5” in my example, the effectiveness is weaker. The use of dollar amounts throughout the offer better leads the shopper to perceive a trajectory of improving prices which they’ll project into the future, adding attractiveness to the offer. Consumers are prone to sense trajectories.
     Another argument for delayed discounts is how it rewards loyalty. With a discount only at the start, a subscriber is tempted to stop giving you their business when the introductory offer expires so they can then take advantage of another provider’s introductory offer.
     If you do employ the initial-discount option in your marketing of a subscription service, findings from London Business School and Massachusetts Institute of Technology suggest a helpful tactic: Tell new customers the reason they’re getting a discount is to compensate for the hassle of changing habits and integrating the service or subscription into their lives.
     This justifies the new user discount in a way which makes experienced users not begrudge benefits given to succeeding generations of new users. It encourages new users to pay back the discount by working to integrate the subscription into their lives. The result is that these well-integrated new habits of using your services or subscription will persevere.
     Pointing out the barriers to change and then compensating the consumer for the hassle can be a winning combination.

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Beware Flawed Predictions from Animations 

Explain New User Discounts as Hassle Pay 

Up Down Price Drops

Fare Well with Fair Conditional Discounts

Threshold price promotions require spending at least a stated amount, such as “$5 off on orders of $10 or more.” Capped promotions set a maximum monetary eligibility amount, such as “50% off, up to $5 per order.”
     Researchers at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, University of British Columbia, and Singapore Management University conducted a set of studies about these promotion types in order to better understand consumer reasoning about them.
     For the consumer, capped promotions are economically superior to threshold promotions until their spending reaches the promotional trigger value, after which the two promotion types are economically equivalent. The researchers say we might be surprised their study participants preferred threshold promotions over capped promotions for relatively small-dollar discount offers.
     The explanation is twofold. First, the high percentage number in most capped promotions—such as 50%—leads consumers to perceive more promotional benefits than the actual small monetary benefit they receive—such as $5. Second, a low spending threshold—such as “on orders of $10 or more”—leads consumers to perceive a small discount—such as $5—as relatively large by comparison.
     When trigger values clearly exceed the shopper’s usual spending for the item type, consumer reasoning changes: Shoppers then tend to see capped promotions as better than threshold promotions, as they objectively are. Underpinning this consumer reasoning across item type, price promotion type, amount of discount, and whether the discount is stated as money or percentage is the degree to which the shopper considers a transaction to be equitable and profitable for all parties.
     The full set of study outcomes resulted in the researchers advising that if quickly gaining market share is your top objective, offer a threshold promotion with a low trigger value or a capped promotion with a high trigger value.
     Further, in my email exchange with Shangwen Yi, the lead researcher, he wrote, “For capped promotions, a smaller percentage can be better received by consumers than a larger one. We found that 20% appears to be the sweet spot, but this result is context-specific. It’s based on a food ordering setting with typical spending patterns and a $3 cap. If the cap were increased to $10, for example, I’d expect the optimal percentage to rise to a larger value, such as 30% or 40%. Set the percentage around the ratio of the cap amount to consumers’ usual spending in that shopping context.”

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Increase Purchase Quantities with Discounts 

Set Moderately High Purchase Thresholds 

Keep Discount Conditions Strict Enough