Neuroeconomics

Neuroeconomics research suggests that roughly 15% of your consumers are "spendthrifts" - they have unusually low sensitivity to the pain of paying, i.e., the neural discomfort associated with parting with money. Selling to people who feel…

We've been writing about "tightwads" and "spendthrifts" lately (see Tightwads, Spendthrifts, and Everyone Else and Five Keys to Selling to Tightwads), and thought Neuromarketing readers might be interested in finding out where they fall on…

One out of four potential customers for your product may not buy it, even if the purchase makes economic sense or is otherwise a good decision. A couple of days ago, in Tightwads, Spendthrifts, and Everyone Else, I wrote about research…

Marketers love to segment their potential customers, and now there's a new way to do it: spendthrifts, tightwads, and everyone else. Research at Carnegie Mellon University shows that 40% of consumers can be classified as either…

Logic tells us that a bigger problem should get more attention. One person suffering from a disease is certainly bad, but a thousand afflicted individuals should motivate us far more. As is often the case in our odd world of…

Advertising Age's Mya Frazier has taken neuromarketing to task in Hidden Persuasion or Junk Science? Despite the alarming title, the article itself is reasonably balanced in content if not in tone. Frazier highlights some of the same…

In This is Your Brain on Money, I mentioned that I'd visit some of the other neuromarketing-related topics raised in Jason Zweig's interesting article in Money, Your money and your brain. One of these is that our brains are programmed for…

Everyone is familiar with the want vs. should conflict. Do you order the loaded cheese fries as your side dish, or the steamed broccoli? You want the greasy fries, but you know you should order the broccoli. Do you cut the grass (should)…

One of the enduring fictions of neuromarketing is that there is a "buy button" in the brain. Marketers salivate at the thought, and consumer groups fear it. (Some might say that marketers have been pushing that button with seductive…

The human mind may be well suited to surviving in dangerous forests and plains, but it doesn't do as well with modern financial decisions. A lengthy and interesting article in Money by Jason Zweig (read it online at CNNMoney.com - Your…