When a Stanford professor brings snacks to class, it’s fun. But you can bet it’s also an experiment, and he’s probably testing how people make choices for today and for todays that will come in the future. It turns out, that timing matters a lot when it comes to the decisions we make.
The professor we are referring to is Professor Itamar Simonson, marketing professor at Stanford University and his research surrounding customer decision-making. He learned that students who chose their snack at each class tended to choose the same one. However, students that chose a snack on one day for three future classes tended to have more variety.
Why the difference? It turns out that people like to make the same decisions over and over, especially about things like what to eat for a snack or dinner. But we are much more optimistic about how much our future selves will want something different.
What about new choices? People do make them, particularly when they are for the future, but most times we are content to make the same choice over and over again.
In this episode, we discuss why we are like this, why we sometimes think we won’t be like this someday, when we are better person, and why you should understand how to accommodate this customer behavior in your experience.
Here are some other key moments in the discussion:
- 02:22 Ryan shares the example from Professor Simonson and how people chose differently when it is for that day of class or for future classes.
- 08:12 Colin brings up the famous marshmallow test that researchers did by convincing children not to eat a marshmallow right away so they could get two; few kids made it, though.
- 14:42 We discuss how when it comes to things like breakfast or food in general, we tend to make the same choices, but other times we don’t, but usually for the future, when a better version of ourselves exists.
- 22:08 Ryan shares what can happen if people continue to make choices to buy things they don’t use and how it can backfire on your experience.
- 25:40 We share practical advice about what you can do with this information to provide the proper experience for the future selves your customers want to be and the actual selves they are today.
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