What’s the “car door thunk” in your category?
Ethan Decker Ethan Decker

What’s the “car door thunk” in your category?

It’s an open secret that the sound the car door makes when you close it has an oddly huuuge impact on how you assess the car’s quality.
This is because our brains are leaky: impressions we get in one area bleed into other areas. It’s called the halo effect.

Read More
Ethan Decker Ethan Decker

Is There Brand Loyalty to Colleges?

We usually think of college (or uni) as a loyalty purchase (if we think of it as a purchase at all).

People pick a school, attend it, graduate from it, love it, bleed red & yellow (go Yeomen!), and even send their kids to their alma mater.

And graduation rate is one of our key quality metrics for how good a school is. Start there: end there.

But the data tell a different story.

Read More
Ethan Decker Ethan Decker

What if we're all a little ageist?

Benny Barak gathered studies from 18 countries around the world on how people feel subjectively (their “felt” age) and what they think is the “ideal” age.

Universally, people FEEL about six years younger than they ARE, and they WISH they were another five years younger than they FEEL.

Read More
Cognitive illusions
Ethan Decker Ethan Decker

Cognitive illusions

Here’s one reason brand science is hard: shoppers at times are totally logical and utterly irrational. Take “cham” prices.

Read More