Category: Neuromarketing

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Entrepreneurial-Minded Americans Cluster in the Western States

entrepreneurial mind

American states with the highest percentages of people with entrepreneurial personalities are clustered in the West; the top nine are Colorado, Utah, South Dakota, Nevada, Alaska, Arizona, New Mexico, Nebraska, and Montana, according to data collected by Martin Obschonka of Friedrich Schiller University in Germany and a team of researchers from hundreds of thousands of people who filled out questionnaires online. And, indeed, much of the country’s entrepreneurial activity, as defined by the rate of nonbusiness owners who start new nonagricultural businesses, occurs in the West. The bold pioneers who settled the American West may have left their genetic imprint on today’s inhabitants, the researchers suggest.

SOURCE: Where entrepreneurship is at home

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Customers Care More About a Line’s Length than How Fast It Moves

customer behaviorCustomers Care A word of caution to companies that pool their customers into one queue with multiple servers: In deciding whether to join a line, customers care a lot more about line length than number of servers. Even if it’s moving quickly, a long line can put customers off, according to a team led by Yina Lu of Columbia University. The team’s study of supermarket customers showed that a line of 10 people can have a large impact on purchases, and increasing the queue length from 10 to 15 customers would lead to a 10% drop in sales.

SOURCE: Measuring the Effect of Queues on Customer Purchases

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Charismatic Character

Charismatic characters are great when used wisely in small business marketing. It creates an emotional connection and the character can even say things that wouldn’t be appropriate to team members.

In our company we have Apple the schnauzer. She writes in our printed magazine Engage and every now and then appears in one of our direct marketing campaigns.

Look how Virgin uses a charismatic character in its advertising.

 

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Women Lose Out to Men on Competitive Exam After Doing Better on Noncompetitive Test

Women perform more poorly than men on the highly competitive entrance exam for French business school HEC Paris, even though the same women had performed significantly better, on average, than the same men on France’s pass/fail, less-competitive national baccalauréat exam two years before, says a team led by Evren Ors, a professor at the school. As a consequence, the pool of admitted candidates contains more men than women. Once women are admitted to HEC, they tend to outperform their male classmates. Tournament-like competitive contests may lead to gender differences in performance, the authors say.

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Consumers Go Out of Their Way to Pay in Round Numbers

Consumer behavior: 56% of purchases at a self-service gasoline pump in upstate New York ended in .00, well above what would be expected by chance, and an additional 7% ended in .01, likely reflecting failed attempts to stop the pump at whole-dollar amounts, says a team led by Michael Lynn of Cornell. The findings, along with data on tipping and a pay-what-you-want online scheme, show a pronounced consumer preference for round-number payment amounts, the researchers say.

consumer behavior

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Your Brain Works Better When You Are Tired

If you’re trying to do creative work, you’ll actually have more luck when you’re more tired and your brain isn’t functioning as efficiently.
If you’re tired, your brain is not as good at filtering out distractions and focusing on a particular task. It’s also a lot less efficient at remembering connections between ideas or concepts. These are both good things when it comes to creative work, since this kind of work requires us to make new connections, be open to new ideas and think in new ways. So a tired, fuzzy brain is much more use to us when working on creative projects.

This Scientific American article explains how distractions can actually be a good thing for creative thinking:

Insight problems involve thinking outside the box. This is where susceptibility to “distraction” can be of benefit. At off-peak times we are less focused, and may consider a broader range of information. This wider scope gives us access to more alternatives and diverse interpretations, thus fostering innovation and insight.brain

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The complexity of forming a habit

In order to achieve another level in our business, we need to become a different person, acquire new habits.
The brain has a process to acquire new habits.

The brain cannot instantly adapt to sudden changes in previously experienced circumstances, new life conditions, new work, new study routine or a place of residence, social circle, unfamiliar food or new people. Any new activity must be entered into gradually and calmly by slowly getting accustomed to it. Every day, by doing everything you can, you can achieve something that seemed impossible. The habit to study, or to work is formed gradually and continuously. Sudden insight and inspiration always involves previous knowledge and may not always be something you were fully aware of before.

Often, parents, teachers, bosses, loved ones (and sometimes ourselves), without understanding the complexity of forming a habit, require from us (and we expect from others) achieving instant results. It does not happen that way. It is best not to become overwhelmed, calm down, and kindly tell them or ourselves that nothing can be achieved all at once, “Hey kids, be patient and you will get you Christmas gifts just in time for Christmas”. And start moving forward slowly, and picking up the pace as we get used to new things.

The brain by itself creates stereotypes (habits, skills, reflexes). Stereotyped thinking helps immensely to live our lives as we do no need to repeatedly solve common tasks. Every day, when we perform same actions, we turn them into a habit, a skill or an ability, or sometimes a conditional reflex. Without much reliance on our brain, we become able to salivate at the sight of a lemon, close front door, turn off leaking tap, wash dishes, jump up from a sudden car horn, click X when we need to close a window on the computer screen.

Instincts and insufficient life experience force us to create stereotypes related to our childhood friends, enemies or lovers. This can be useful when dealing with “the ocean of mankind” to choose someone and to create our own team and then stop, which frees up the time and energy for other life goals. Stereotypes help us to deal with strangers, get along with our parents and to educate our own children.

From learning-mind.com

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Consumer Behavior: An Upside of a Long Recession: A Deepening of Personal Trust

The longer a recession drags on, the greater the growth of interpersonal trust among the population, according to an analysis of survey data from 10 Latin American countries by Elizabeth A.M. Searing of Georgia State University. For each additional year of a recession (holding all else constant), the probability that people will agree that “most people can be trusted” increases by 9.03%. A long recession may bring communities together and encourage social investment, Searing suggests.

SOURCE: Love Thy Neighbor? Recessions and Interpersonal Trust in Latin America