Elevate Hope When Income Inequality

Bright copper kettles? Warm woolen mittens? Are those among your prized possessions? If not, “My Favorite Things” from “The Sound of Music” offers you a bunch of alternatives. And study results from City, University of London and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology could be summarized with the lyric from that song, “When I'm feeling sad, I simply remember my favorite things, and then I don't feel so bad.”
     In cultures with high income inequality, having consumers think about their favorite possessions improves their sense of well-being. Income inequality is defined as the extent to which income is unevenly distributed within a population. An example is that U.S. chief executive officers receive about 350 times the annual average salary of production workers in the same company.
     In their studies, the researchers showed the effectiveness of consumers thinking about favorite possessions on improving subjective well-being with both actual income inequality in the culture and with consumers’ perceptions of income inequality. The explanation is that prized belongings have such incommensurable value to a consumer that they forgo comparing their acquisitions to others', and it is such comparisons which reduce the sense of well-being.
     An implication from these findings is for influencers in cultures with power disparities to encourage people to appreciate their prized belongings. This tactic might seem to be an unethical sop because by increasing the sense of well-being, we’re diluting the sense of outrage necessary to combat income inequality. However, for change to occur, citizens need not just outrage, but also hope. Darren Walker, interviewed by Time magazine as he was leaving his post as Ford Foundation president, said, “Hope is the oxygen of democracy, but inequality is the enemy of hope. How do we imagine a flourishing democracy when we have increasing numbers of people who feel left out and left behind, disaffected and disillusioned and therefore hopeless?”
     The favorite-things tactic could buttress hope sufficiently to effect positive change. In the language of ditties from musicals, the spirit of “My Favorite Things” from “The Sound of Music” produces the spirit of “You Can Fly” from “Peter Pan.”
     Encouraging consumers to spend on experiences rather than surplus material possessions also helps maintain subjective well-being in the face of societal inequities. People usually get greater happiness from experiences they purchase. Happiness derives from distinctiveness, and experiences differ among themselves more than do material items. Again, the result is less comparison by the consumer with others’ acquisitions.

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Power Up People Before Selling Experiences 

Hover Within the Shopper’s Power Level

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Transform Betrayal from Brand Transgressions

A company’s best response following a brand transgression depends on whether the transgressing company is headquartered in the same country as the target market of consumers or in a different country. Brand transgressions include product recalls, news of unethical behavior, and similar evidence of betraying public trust.
     According to the University of Leeds researchers who issued this advice, if the transgressing company is in the same country as the target market, the most effective remedy to reestablish trust is to financially compensate this domestic target market in a way showing respect for national values. The example used in the studies, where the transgression was said to be sexual harassment, was, “The company announced that they will be giving a sum of £100,000 for the purpose of founding a non-profit organization called 'Harassment-free UK'. The mission of this organization will be to support the mental health and physical wellbeing of victims of sexual harassment across the UK.”
     On the other hand, if the transgressing company is a foreigner, the better response is to explain the transgression as necessary to fully protect against a threat to the company’s continued existence. The example used in the studies, where the transgression was said to be pay discrimination against women, was, “The company has issued a press release apologizing for the event and attributing it to the increased competition it faces from its key competitor…. The CEO added that they found themselves with no other option than to do so, in order to lower their production costs, given the large percentage of female workforce in the company.”
     The set of studies collected data from consumers in the United Kingdom, the U.S., and Germany. People are generally more favorably disposed to brands associated with their own country than with another country. Consumers consider merchandise to be better when it comes from domestic sources.
     At first glance, this favoring of the domestic seems contradicted by another finding of the University of Leeds study: Consumers were less forgiving of a transgression by a domestic company than of an equivalent transgression by a foreign company.
     But it’s not a contradiction. It’s consistent. The reason for greater upset is precisely because consumers had greater trust in the domestic company and therefore feel a greater sense of betrayal. There’s also the matter of the nation’s reputation. Study participants considered domestic brand transgressors as traitors to their home country, deserving punishment.

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Sell Domestic for the Health of It 

Compensate Group Service Failure Collectively 

Greet Ways to Disappear Greed

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Speed Procrastinators with Completion Times

Some Erasmus University researchers asked online study participants why they delay doing tasks they’re asked to complete. The responses were sorted into 13 general categories. Concerns about how long the task would take ranked as tenth in frequency among the 13. But then when another group of participants was asked to rate the degree of importance of each of the 13 in their decision to delay a task, consideration of task duration was ranked as the fourth most important reason.
     This apparent contradiction led the researchers to suspect that people will take task duration into account, but only if it’s specifically brought to their attention. A corollary is that including an estimate of task duration in a request to complete a task might reduce requestees’ procrastination.
     Subsequent studies by the researchers supported this conclusion, with completion times ranging from three minutes to one hour for a variety of tasks—submitting a form, making a health care appointment, writing an email. Based on their data analyses, the researchers’ explanation for the effect is that a statement of task duration moves thoughts from deliberating about whether to undertake the task toward contemplating how to complete the task.
     In reporting their results, the researchers take note of other tactics which have been identified for overcoming procrastination, such as setting deadlines, fostering prioritization, issuing reminders, and monitoring progress. They point out that specifying the completion time is simpler to implement than those others.
     A likely difficulty in using this tactic, though, is in calculating a completion time which will hold for a spectrum of potential respondents. You might handle this with a lesson from a whole other area of consumer behavior research called tensile pricing of discounts.
     Tensile pricing presents a range such as, “Save 20% to 45%.” Consumers are, by and large, an optimistic lot. If they see a 45%, they’ll tend to think that the item they’re wanting will be one of those tagged for the maximum discount. Applying this idea to the estimate of task completion time, if you say, “This will take about 15 to 20 minutes,” in order to increase your odds of being accurate, prospective respondents will tend to figure they’ll be among those who will take only 15 minutes. An even lower estimate could come in the minds of those sorts of drivers who consider the navigation app arrival time estimate as a benchmark to beat.

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Estimate Participative Consumption Durations 

Promote Procrastination Protocols 

Advertise Tensile Pricing Selectively

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Anchor Policy Anchors in the Policy

For how many months should a person be eligible to receive unemployment benefits? What do you think the minimum wage should be? The way citizens answer such questions of time and money can be influenced by numbers they are exposed to before being asked the questions.
     It’s called anchoring. In a classic example of anchoring, study participants were shown either a low or a high number on a roulette wheel and were subsequently asked to estimate the percentage of countries on the African continent currently belonging to the United Nations. The average of answers from those participants having received the low roulette wheel number was lower than that from those having received the high number.
     In their own studies of anchoring, as applied to public policy surveying, researchers at CEVIPOF and University of Georgia noted that a number coming from a roulette wheel was wholly irrelevant to the probability of a country’s UN membership. With questions such as the time of unemployment eligibility and the amount of the minimum wage, to what extent will respondents attend to irrelevant numbers given them as reference points for their subsequent individual answers?
     Little or no attention at all, was their answer indicated by the studies. To influence the response, the number presented as part of the inquiry had to be framed as relevant to the policy issue. When the number was perceived as relevant, though, the influence was clear. In fact, the study participants’ numerical responses were influenced to a much greater extent by the reference number they were given than by the political party quoted as the source of the reference number. Democrats answered quite similarly whether the reference number was said to have come from a Democrat or a Republican. The researchers point out how the influence might be greater if the reference number is attributed to specific politicians.
     Publicly elected legislators will want to stay sensitive to prevailing opinions of their constituencies when setting policies. Activists who want to strengthen or change political opinions will want to know where their audiences stand now on the issues. Both groups will succeed by recognizing what is called the Overton window, the window of discourse range within which political viability of a proposal can be expected.
     In surveying your stakeholders, recognize how any time or money number you give as a part of each question will pull the answer toward that number.

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Swing Low, Sweet Anchor Points 

Augment Political Projection with Introjection

Image at top of post based on video by Paul Daley.