April 2008

Why do people do things that will gain them social approval? It turns out that the same parts of the brain are activated for a positive social outcome as for a monetary reward. In other words, the same reward circuitry is turned on both by…

In my time as a catalog marketer, I almost always priced products just below the next dollar increment - a cheap item might be $9.97 rather than $10, while a more expensive item may have been $499, or even $499.99, instead of $500. My…

I love research findings that run counter to intuition, or are at least unexpected, and the idea that you can get more for your house if you market it with an odd price is certainly unexpected. That's what University of Florida…

Consumers must like lots of choices - why else would there be hundreds of shampoo brands and variants on a typical supermarket shelf? Actually, its been known for years that too many choices can reduce consumer purchases. A 2000 study at…

Book Review: The Art of Digital Branding The Art of Digital Branding by Ian Cocoran is intended to provide a set of best practices for marketers who want to ensure their branding message is conveyed at least as effectively on the Web as…

  Erotic images sell better than pictures of office supplies, and a lot better than photos of hairy spiders. Who knew? Actually, that's a bit of an oversimplification. Stanford researchers led by neuroeconomics prof Brian Knutson have…

The Guardian's Nick Carr, author of The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google, penned a brief survey piece on neuromarketing. It begins with one of the more amusing intros I've seen: