November 2, 2009
We all are aware of the reality that the internet makes the world smaller, increases competition & drives prices down. At the surface level, a logical conclusion could be that it will be harder and harder to compete. The reality is that the amount of choices we all have does not make it harder to compete, it makes it harder to make a decision to buy!
What does that mean to me?
The need for true content experts & consultants (meaning sales people that use a consultative sales process) is on the rise. Consumers that are faced with too many choices tend to not make any decision at all.
Do your research, offer three options, and recommend your top choice. You’ll be surprised at the results.
ScienceDaily (Mar. 12, 2009) — It is a common belief that having more options is better, and that people tend to go to stores that provide them with more choices. However, a new study in the journal Psychology & Marketing reveals that when people cannot easily determine which option is preferable, they are more likely to leave the store empty-handed. When options are very similar or the options are difficult to compare, people are likely to leave the store without making a choice. If there isn’t enough time to acquire the necessary information for making a choice, then the individual may leave without choosing anything.
Researcher Beth Veinott, Ph.D., and colleagues performed the first simulation of the choice overload effect in which people sometimes prefer a choice among fewer options than more options. The study provides explanations for why the behavioral experiments of this effect have received mixed results.
“With the rise of the internet, the number of choices that people have is only increasing,” the authors conclude. “Our research suggests that there may be a downside to this increase of options affecting people’s ability to decide in a particular situation.”
Various facets of what has been characterized as the “tyranny of choice” are explored in other articles featured in the March issue of Psychology & Marketing, a special issue devoted to research on consumer behavior as it relates to purchase intent and purchase choice.
Journal reference:
1. Jessup et al. Leaving the store empty-handed: Testing explanations for the too-much-choice effect using decision field theory. Psychology and Marketing, 2009; 26 (3): 299 DOI: 10.1002/mar.20274
Wiley-Blackwell (2009, March 12). Consumers Stop Buying As Number Of Options Increase. ScienceDaily. Retrieved November 2, 2009, from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090311111008.htm#
Read the full article →
November 1, 2009
ScienceDaily (Jan. 31, 2009) — Followers are just as important to good leadership as are the leaders themselves, reveals a new study of stickleback fish published online on January 29th in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication.By randomly pairing fish of varying degrees of “boldness,” the researchers showed that each member of a pair adopts the role of leader or follower. More importantly, they found, the behavior of each member of the pair is strongly influenced by its partner.
” Our study shows that the process by which leaders and followers emerge is a dynamic one,” said Andrea Manica of the University of Cambridge. “Individuals aren’t simply born leaders or followers, but their role in a pair—and, we could speculate, in a larger group—is the result of social feedback where everyone plays a role.”
In many animal groups, certain individuals consistently appear at the forefront of coordinated movements, the researchers explained. But exactly how those leaders are chosen has been poorly understood.
In the new study, the researchers studied the behaviors of individual stickleback fish to establish their willingness to leave the cover of some weeds to enter “riskier” waters in search of food, an indication of how bold or shy they tend to be. Those fish were then randomly paired with one another to see which of the two would emerge as the natural leader.
When paired, both the bolder and the shyer of the two fish made more food-gathering trips together and stayed out for longer periods of time. Most of the time, those forays were initiated by whichever of the two fish had independently been shown to behave more boldly.
The findings show that leadership arises from individual differences in the way that fish respond to their partner’s movements, they report, a phenomenon they refer to as social feedback.
” If a shy individual is paired with a very bold individual, the latter ‘inspires’ the former into becoming a very faithful follower,” Manica said. “Conversely, a very shy individual seems to bring out the leadership of the bolder companion, which becomes a much stronger leader than if it was paired with a less shy companion.”
The results show that leadership is a matter of what one might consider personality, he added. Surprisingly—or perhaps not so surprisingly—though, the personality of the leader is not all important.
The researchers include Jennifer L. Harcourt, Tzo Zen Ang, Gemma Sweetman, Rufus A. Johnstone, and Andrea Manica, of the Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.
Read the full article →
Rene F. Rodriguez
