Archive for the 'psychology' Category

starbucks price increase? nooo

Published January 11, 2012 marketing , psychology Leave a Comment
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Aloha,

I try to convince my friends that the reason to use twitter is learn about all this amazing insightful stuff on business, psychology, latest health studies by scientists, etc. Yes I follow Conan as well for comedy relief. I mean it’s what you want it to be – entertainment or learning, if you choose to follow the right people.

I came across a tweet by Ramit on Starbucks raising prices.  You can check out the article by clicking here.

There are some fancy words in the article, but this part right here caught my eye:

A key attribute of those practicing value based pricing is never explicitly saying that they are practicing value based pricing. There are always other reasons and you never say pricing at customer willingness to pay. A key part of practicing effective pricing is effective pricing communication and managing customer perception. Failing that you will face backlash as some brands recently did.

Its true, its all about elasticity of pricing and the lack of concern by Starbucks coffee drinkers.  They’ll pay whatever asked for their favorite cup of coffee.

These caffeine addicts almost want a reason by the company so that they themselves can justify paying more to themselves and there friends!

This won’t work with, say Bank of Montreal, because they don’t offer a premium service that consumers know them for.  Instead, they offer standard banking services, which gives consumers very low switching costs.  Starbucks is about the feel you get when you walk out of the store holding their brand in your hand.  Bank of Montreal is about getting the best ROI (a pretty poor one).

habits

Published November 11, 2011 life , psychology , Travel Leave a Comment
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Everything you’ve done up until this point is because of certain habits.

Back in 2009, I had a goal of reading 40 books. I read 28.

Then in 2010, I had a goal of reading 50 books, I read 40.

This year my goal was one book a week. I’ve read only 30 far. I’m built weak I know.  By the way, I’ve come across recently an article on reading a book in one hour  from the Personal MBA website by Josh Kaufman. Click here to check it out.

Anyways I know you’ve heard how good reading is for you. You don’t accept things on face value.  If you read a variety you relate different ideas together, string them together. Gives more confidence about what your talking about it…. I mean if you can’t talk about it casually you don’t know it. And EVEN if you can talk about it casually, doesn’t mean you know it.

But this all came about taking some small steps that eventually became a habit. I actually enjoy reading for leisure now.

Back in university days, I barely read anything outside the text books compared to now. This changed rapidly, as I read books like the awesome Four Hour Work Week. I decided I wanted to go backpacking! Traveling with family is fine, but backpacking with friends sounded unreal.

One of the places I visited was sunny Australia.

Now ever since I watched the movie Point Break I wanted to sky dive. Remember the parachute scene?( click here cos it’s awesome). So I finally did it in Mission Beach on the East Coast.  I remember this day fondly. It’s that feeling you were suppose to be dead, but you were still alive!! I loved it.


Soon after landing, the Aussie Sky Dive man, John, had the nerve to ask me “Why is this so amazing to you?” I was a bit dumbfounded by his question. Then he mentioned he jumps out of a plane 4-6 times a day, 5 days a week. It became not such a big deal to him, but a routine. He was curious how his regular job resulted in one of the most adrenaline packed day of my life.

Well John, because its not usual to jump out of a plane. There are so many ways to interpret this, but I think the main thing for me was keep doing things that stretch you, ignore your lizard brain – could be as simple as waking up on time every morning.

trial-and-error

Published October 18, 2011 entrepreneurship , life , psychology Leave a Comment

You may have seen the films Slumdog Millionaire and City of God. If you haven’t, you need to get a life.  These movies resonate with me. Why?  because these kids are the real deal.

The reality is these kids are hustling, testing what works, what doesn’t and getting so good that they know exactly what works. You have to see them in action.  Ten year olds here in Canada ain’t got nothing on them.

I recently came across this video while browsing Ramit’s site ( all about personal finance  – seriously you must spend a solid day going through it).

First of all - I wish I could learn to speak more than 2 languages. Secondly,  how the hell  did he learn this?

Now I’ve mentioned before there is beauty in good enough. Yes that works in the short term, creates momentum when you’re getting started. But in the long term, you have to keep getting better, practicing what isn’t so normal.  If this little kid continues at this pace, he might be fluent in 7-8 languages by the time he’s an adult. I don’t know…

Author Malcolm Gladwell says it takes 10,000 hours in that famous book of his that everyone enjoys mentioning to me at dinner parties – Outliers.  I personally feel shorter, just always taking it one step further.

The other things is, what I’ve always thought, but really starting to realize is most of what we know comes from tinkering, doing things. The process of trial and error. For example the internet wasn’t made for its use is now, it was a military application. The list goes on for many other technologies.

And why aren’t these imaginative kids, making less than 5-10 dollars a day, not profiled in business magazines!?!

signage with emotional appeal

Published August 15, 2011 design , marketing , psychology Leave a Comment

I was browsing Dan Pink’s website the other day ( I like his books A Whole New Mind and Drive, check em out!) and came across some posts on emotionally intelligent signage.

It got me thinking of what makes me slow down while driving.  The only deterrent to speeding is a consequence such as paying a fine. Think about it. If you knew that there would be no consequence, would you slow down? I doubt it.

I snapped a photo of this sign from my car, while it was raining!  No one was harmed, relax.

This sign creates an emotional appeal on why you should slow down. Quite different than the usual threatening of fines. Dan Pink finds these emotionally intelligent signs everywhere, click here to see some other ones.

create your own t-shirt shop

Published July 26, 2011 entrepreneurship , psychology Leave a Comment
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I’ve been talking about t-shirts quite a bit, so I’ve decided to make some of my own!

I did some research and came across a few sites that allow you to do this for free – spreadshirt.com and cafepress.ca.  You can design your own shirts and they will take care of the shipping, invoicing etc.  All you have to do is come with a design and a description.  They give you a bit of commission when something gets sold. What a beautiful concept.

Now I just did this just to scratch my own itch. I’ve always wanted to try online, and so this allowed me to get the psychological barrier out of the mind.  Objective wasn’t to make profit in this case, but just do it. Learn the process behind it. I can improve it and make better designs later.

You can check out my shirt site by clicking here.  It’s called Lost In Time Shirts. It’s based on some of my favourite books & bands.

t-shirt site

t shirt site

dealing with loss aversion

Published July 9, 2011 psychology Leave a Comment

In the previous post I mentioned why you should be choosier.

Choose design that can be used over and over again. Well not everything can last a long time like t-shirts (okay yes I buy vintage t-shirts too).

But what I’m discussing is people  suffer from loss aversion, which refers to people’s tendency to strongly prefer avoiding losses to acquiring gains. Some studies suggest that losses are twice as powerful, psychologically, as gains.

Whats simple way to get over this hoarding mentality? Give away some t-shirts every six months.  Helps you get over the feeling your losing something, which we all hate.  That it’s not the end of the world!  You can always buy new t-shirts to  look the mutts nuts.

imagine a free gym

Published October 20, 2010 Book review , economics , marketing , psychology 2 Comments

It’s funny after reading a book on a topic, you then seem to focus on that aspect on  everything else you see in the world. Recently, for me, its been the free concept.

Free by Chris Anderson gives an awesome explanation of economics and marketing in 19th and 20th century and then about how companies can make money from things that are free.

One of the cool ideas he mentions in passing is a free gym chain in Denmark. Imagine if a gym charged you for not showing up? Otherwise was free as long as you went every day. Punishes you for not being healthy, and basically rewards by not paying at all! Sounds like something from realm of behavioural economics (well guess what? it is!). Chris Anderson explains the psychology behind it:

When you go every week, you feel great about yourself and the gym. But eventually you’ll get busy and miss a week, you’ll pay, but you’ll blame yourself alone. Unlike the usual situation where you pay for a gym you’re not going to, your instinct is not to cancel your membership; instead it’s to redouble your commitment.

What else can you do?  You charge  for the strength training classes,  since the kind of people who go everyday love being healthy, so probably be willing to pay to make stronger muscles! Put a juice bar in there to also monetize on the freemium you used to market to these gym loving fanatics.

If they fail to make the 2 times a week schedule (got busy) you ding them 60 dollars for that month. So in reality if say you missed just 2-3 times a year, you would still be paying less than a full year membership! Why? Because  most gyms today actually make money on you NOT using it. The pricing depends on the particular costs of setting up the gym, etc, but this is the gist of this radical idea.

how good of a listener are you?

Published October 1, 2010 marketing , psychology 2 Comments
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Do your friends compliment you on how awesome you are at knowing what they want?  Cos you know exactly your friends taste, her preferences, what would make her so happy that she starts saying thank you! thank you! over and over again? When your hip hop club loving friends enter your car, do you start playing Kasabian?? (cos they’re really awesome) Hell no! You play them Jay Z, Kanye, Notorious, cos these artists fits their mood. You have to know your audience. It pays to know your audience.  You adjust to their tunings.

Obviously this isn’t so easy. Most people are self-interested, including me. People think everything is glorious in their world and don’t understand how life is for someone else. And it can’t be what you think they want either, but what they actually desire.

Instead what happens is companies shove all this crap down our throats that no one cares about.  What they don’t get is it just makes them look great to themselves only!  And that annoying theme song actually makes me want to destroy your business with a bazooka. Cos if it doesn’t address our concerns, why should we care about it?  We only care until it caters to us. Start listening.

divergent thinking

Published June 30, 2010 film , life , psychology 3 Comments
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What’s this?

A trolley loaded with luggage? Nope.

This is a giant cake! With chocolate,  strawberry, and blueberry icing.

One of my favourite scenes from the Hindi movie Jaanu Tu ya Jaane Na is when Meghna asks these kind of questions to Imran Khan. They play this game called… “What’s this?”  It’s where you look at something ordinary and you try explain it in a exciting way. It’s a pretty decent game if you ask me.

Ken Robinson gave a talk recently at the Art of Marketing here in Calgary where he mentioned this concept  – divergent thinking. Divergent thinking is the ability to come up with lots of possible answers or interpretations to a question.  He showed statistics indicating we lose this ability at a rapid rate as we get older and get more educated. An education system that emphasizes linear thinking, multiple choice testing – where you have to converge on one answer to get the correct answer. That’s fine, but what happens if a student doesn’t learn that way?  What about having some wit? Scoring 190 on an IQ test isn’t the only barometer for intelligence. What if your talents lay elsewhere? How do you nurture that?

It’s those who improvise, live in randomness, are ready for whats thrown at them. They can make connections that others can’t see. Paul McCartney had it right:

I use to think anyone doing anything weird was weird. Now I know that it is the people that call others weird that are weird.

my amazing dancing guy video!

Published May 31, 2010 film , life , marketing , Music , psychology Leave a Comment
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This time last year I witnessed the most insane 2 min phenomenon of my life -  the dancing guy at the Sasquatch Music Festival. Below is the video I managed to capture:

Now this to me is the definition of a free spirit. I was watching this guy dance like a maniac for about hour BEFORE this even happened! But then one person decided to join him, and then seconds later came number 3 running down and it became cool. That 3rd guy in my opinion made it legit. Everyone went  mental after that!! It switched from being about him to being this awesome dance party.

I love the fact the song being performed was Unstoppable by Santigold.

Which brings me to another point: Santigold should give him a yearly dividend. Cos he created a movement that single handily made this song massive!! The dancing guy videos went viral and when that happens,  its word of mouth on steroids.

Don’t believe me?

Check out all the comments for the Unstoppable track on youtube.. they all mention the dance party!  It should be taken as a blessing from the skies for any tune to go viral nowadays of 1000 niche musical tastes.

Sasquatch should give this guy life time tickets to the event as a token of goodwill!  You simply can’t create this again! If it were to happen, it would always be compared to this.

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