Tag: business
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Apple’s Implementation of the Duration-of-Exposure Effect: Screens at 70Ë
Hours after writing about the duration-of-exposure effect (whereby merely touching an unowned object increases our attachment to it and how much we value it), a post came into my feed reader pointing out how Apple Inc. take advantage of this effect in their “painstakingly calibrated” stores. Carmine Gallo, providing a glimpse into his upcoming book, The Apple…
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Personal Pronouns as Relationship and Company Indicators
The personal pronouns used by couples during “conflictive marital interactions” are reliable indicators of relationship quality and marital satisfaction, according to a study tracking 154 couples over 23 years. The study showed that ‘We-words‘ (our, we, etc.) were indicative of a more positive relationship than ‘Me- and You-words‘ (I, you, etc.) (doi). Using We-ness language…
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Entrepreneurship and the Possibility of Real Failure
In 2007 Vinicius Vacanti quit his highly-paid job in finance to take on life as an entrepreneur. In a short post describing his reasons for doing so, Vacanti says that most of us haven’t faced the possibility of real failure, and entrepreneurship is a way to test your limits by attempting to create something of…
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A “Felt Need” Is What Makes Us Buy
A “felt need” is what differentiates a vitamin from an aspirin: when we crave something (relief from pain), a product that satisfies that desire becomes a must-have rather than a nice-to-have. Realising this and re-framing a product in terms of this craving is an important step in ensuring a product’s success, say Dan and Chip…
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The Inefficiencies of Local Bookstores
We should not hold Amazon in contempt for pressuring local independent bookstores to the brink of closure and instead should embrace the company for taking advantage of inefficiencies, furthering a reading culture, and–believe it or not–helping us ‘buy local’ more effectively. In response to Richard Russo‘s recent New York Times article berating a recent not-so-well-considered Amazon promotion, Farhad…
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Record Label Demands on Music Streaming Services
New and potentially disruptive music streaming services are having a hard time breaking into the market, with many analysts blaming their business models and others blaming the contractual demands from labels for the troubles encountered. There are also complaints about the royalties paid to artists and poor revenues of existing services. Michael Robertson–founder of MP3Tunes and…
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The Demand for Product Obsolescence
Years ago (and still, for certain products) consumers decried the idea of planned product obsolescence in industrial design: the intentional engineering of products to have a limited useful life, such as with products produced with sealed-in batteries or fridges that will only function for seven years. In recent years, however, the need for planned obsolescence…
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First Offers and Aggressive Offers: Optimal Negotiating Tactics
When negotiating ensure that you make the first offer and make sure it’s an aggressive one: this is almost always the optimal negotiation strategy. That’s the conclusion from a study looking at negotiation tactics and the anchoring effect (from the same researchers that discovered the optimal starting prices for negotiations and auctions). One of the…
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How not to screw up your career
Starting a career is daunting. Office politics, poor management and unchallenging work are issues that many of us will have to navigate in our jobs. Ryan Holiday‘s advice to young careerists is cynical and pragmatic. The point isnât just to prove that youâre capable, but also that youâre sane. In fact, if you had to…
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The Drinkers’ Bonus: Alcohol Intake and Increased Earnings
Drinking alcohol — and the increased social capital that it leads to — may not just be responsible for a possible increase in life span; it may increase your earnings, too. In an analysis of both the General Social Survey and the published literature, researchers for the Reason Foundation show that alcohol drinkers earn, on…