Common sense would suggest the following: if you take two objects and differentiate one from the other, then, by definition, they will appear to be more different than they were before, not more similar. Common sense, of course, also once suggested that the sun orbited earth. A fascinating series of experiments out of the Yale Center for Customer Insights found that our perceptions of similarity are more complicated than common sense—and decades-old academic modeling—suggests.
Continue reading “The More Things Change…”
Mastering how the freemium business model can optimize a company’s revenue is the key to many companies’ profitability and longevity. And business scholars are trying to help.
Stores are increasingly offering products to rent at rates comparable to traditional purchase options. The big question is whether consumers make decisions differently in these two markets.
In every aspect of life, spanning supermarkets to health insurance to career options to superannuation funds, consumers have an astonishing luxury of choice. It’s generally cited as a sign of freedom, but is a dizzying array of choices a way to liberate or debilitate?
Opinion is colored by context: café food may taste better on a sunny day. A vacation weekend can sour if argument descends one evening. While this effect of mood on experience is well established, there is little understanding of how (or if) the effect persists through time. Will a sunny day influence our choice, two weeks later, to return to the same café? Will family argument one year deter a return to the same vacation spot the following year?
