Tag: marketing



Everyday life comes with its own set of inconveniences: traffic jams, endless lines at the grocery store and extended customer service hold times with annoying background music playing. Wouldn’t it be nice to avoid those situations?

New research from Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis offers insight into how people and businesses can anticipate and avoid common inconveniences even when coordination of resources, such as time and space, is not possible. It’s simpler than one might think.

In some instances, people can improve their coordination with others in simple ways. An inconvenience such as being stuck in rush-hour traffic can cause someone to start leaving work earlier. 

On the other hand, other inconveniences may be avoided based on direction from an expert. A travel agent, for instance, can predict the best times to travel to a specific location, based on access to information from past travel seasons. 

In both scenarios, people are more likely to avoid frustrating situations by anticipating the behavior of others.

A new study co-authored by Elanor Williams, associate professor of marketing at Olin Business School, highlights the concept of “perspective taking,” or taking into account the motivations or thought processes of other people. The study, “Perspective Neglect: Inadequate Perspective Taking Limits Coordination,” was published recently in Judgment and Decision Making.

“In our studies, we ask people to think about why somebody else might do something because we think that would help them see where they share those motivations,” Williams said. “Where there might be issues of crowding or long wait times from there being too many people doing the same thing at the same time, you might be able to zig when everybody else zags.”

“Where there might be issues of crowding or long wait times from there being too many people doing the same thing at the same time, you might be able to zig when everybody else zags.”

Elanor Williams

In the same way that people inadvertently make similar decisions, they may also be able to make different decisions that benefit themselves. This approach is especially necessary in the current time of COVID-19 when social distancing is safer than being stuck in a crowd.

To explore this concept, Williams and her collaborators conducted six experiments.

The experiments asked the participants to consider perspective taking in various scenarios, including playing a video game, visiting a campus bookstore, streaming a Netflix show and enjoying a holiday. The research findings revealed that when participants were reminded to perspective take, coordination of resources (such as time and space) improved.

The research findings suggests that often, people need to be prompted to look outside of themselves and think about why others are motivated to make certain decisions.

Helping businesses predict future behavior 

From a marketing standpoint, businesses can use this approach to think through the best strategies for coordinating efforts with employees and consumers. Tapping into the motivations and perspectives of consumers can help businesses predict future behavior. 

For example, a well-coordinated social media campaign based on peak engagement times will have a greater reach than one that is implemented at random. While this may seem like common sense, Williams said that failing to anticipate consumers’ needs is a common mistake made by businesses big and small.

The same concept can be applied when dealing with consumers. Businesses often have to account for unexpected crowds and long wait times. An employer would benefit from knowing when to have a full staff available to accommodate crowds and prevent employee stress and burnout.

“The idea that people do not think quite as much as they could or maybe should about the reasons why other people do the things they do is a rich vein of research that obviously impacts everybody,” Williams said. “You might benefit from just giving a little more thought to why others do what they do.”

The researchers advise that perspective taking may not be effective or necessary in every situation. In a scenario where people’s motivations are obvious and clear, the extra step might not do much to improve coordination.

“We realized that a lot of what seemed like coincidences are actually explainable because people end up sharing the same reasons for doing whatever it is that you coincidentally did,” Williams said. “So when you show up at the same restaurant, or call each other out of the blue, it’s often similar reasons that led you to that shared behavior in the first place.”




Part of a series about summer internships from Olin MBA ’20 students. Today we hear from Atiyana Evelyn, who worked at Capital Group as a summer marketing associate.

This summer I worked in Los Angeles at Capital Group doing marketing in their North America distribution department. When looking for internships, I never thought I would end up in the financial services industry.

As someone whose background is heavily marketing, with a brand focus, it was definitely a shift in gears. When preparing for my interview, I researched a lot about the company and what they did within that industry.

In addition to that, I looked at their products and tried to understand them as much as I could prior to going to LA to interview in person. During my interview, I actually said verbatim “I’m not going to lie, I don’t know anything about finance, but I know a lot about marketing and I am willing to learn.”

Honestly, Olin prepared me immensely for my internship this summer. It allowed me to have the skill set to jump into the learning curve quickly and become acclimated to my new environment.

For my specific role, I didn’t have to know too much about the financial services industry, but I have learned so much and am excited to apply what I’ve learned to my real life experiences.

I think one of the most valuable things about summer internships is being able to find your place. You have the opportunities to figure out what you want to do with your life and the direction you want to take it into.

I have loved marketing since I was 15 and I am glad to know that this is something I still want to pursue, regardless of the industry that I am in placed in. I am glad that Olin has provided me with the opportunities that I have participated in and I am excited to see what the future holds.


Hannah Perfecto discovered her passion for psychology and consumer behavior when she was an undergrad at Yale University. “It was the time when a lot of these pop psychology books, like Freakonomics or Nudge, that were using data to answer questions about how people are behaving on a large scale, were coming out,” says Perfecto.

Fortunately, faculty at Yale’s School of Management were conducting research on the intersection of consumer psychology and marketing—a topic she found fascinating.

“I worked in that lab for basically my whole time there,” says Perfecto. “When I realized that I could keep doing that as a graduate student and then subsequently as a professor, I jumped at the opportunity.”

Her graduate studies would take her to West Coast, where she earned her MS and PhD at the University of California, Berkeley, and to Olin, where she continues to research judgment and decision making. Specifically, Perfecto says she looks at how marketers can make small changes to how a decision is phrased or how outcomes are described.

“Even with these small changes, we can see sometimes dramatic changes in how people make those decisions or feel about those outcomes,” she says.

Get to know Hannah Perfecto, assistant professor of marketing, in the video above.

 

Research Interests:

Consumer behavior, behavioral decision theory, meta-cognition, field experiments, research replicability and reliability

Selected Publications:

  • “Rejecting a Bad Option Feels like Choosing a Good One”, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Issue 5, 659-670, with J. Galak, J.P. Simmons, and L.D. Nelson, 2017

View More Publications

Awards/Honors:

  • Hillel Einhorn New Investigator Award, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, 2016
  • AMA-Sheth Foundation Doctoral Consortium Fellow, American Marketing Association, 2016
  • Diversity Travel Scholarship, Society of Consumer Psychology, 2016

Sydney Scott, assistant professor of marketing, has spent the last decade in Philadelphia at the University of Pennsylvania. She earned her undergraduate degree in psychology there, followed by what she calls “a natural evolution” to a master’s and PhD in marketing at Wharton.

Scott’s dual interests in psychology and marketing have been a perfect match for studying consumer behavior. She has conducted research into consumer preferences for natural, organic products versus genetically modified products.

Scott grew up in California, but is getting acquainted with her new hometown, exploring St. Louis’ ice cream shops and trying out local delicacies like gooey butter cake.

Area of Expertise:

Consumer behavior and decision-making

Research Interests:

Morality and consumption; judgment and decision-making; preference for naturalness

Selected Publications:

  • “Evidence for Absolute Moral Opposition to Gentically Modified Food in the United States”, Perspectives on Psychological Science, Issue 3, 315-324, with Y. Inbar, P. Rozin, 2016
  • “The Price of Not Putting a Price on Love”, Judgment and Decision Making, Issue 1, 40-47, with A. McGraw, D. Davis, P. Tetlock, 2016
  • “Why Does the Cognitive Reflection Test (Sometimes) Predict Utilitarian Moral Judgment (and Other Things)?”, Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, Issue 3, 265-284, with J. Baron, K. Fincher, S. Metz, 2015
  • “Asymmetrical Social Mach Bands: Exaggeration of Social Identities on the More Esteemed Side of Group Borders”, Psychological Science, Issue 10, 1955-1959, with P. Rozin, H. Zickgraf, F. Ahn, H. Jiang, 2014
  • “Integrative Complexity Coding Raises Integratively Complex Issues”, Political Psychology, Issue 5, 625-634, with P. Tetlock, S. Metz, P. Suedfeld, 2014
  • “Psychological Strategies for Winning Geopolitical Forecasting Tournaments”, Psychological Science, Issue 5, 1106-1115, with B. Mellers, L. Ungar, J. Baron, J. Ramos, B. Gurcay, K. Fincher, D. Moore, P. Atanasov, S. Swift, T. Murray, E. Stone, P. Tetlock, 2014
  • “Nudge to Nobesity I: Minor Changes in Accessibility Decrease Food Intake”, Judgment and Decision Making, Issue 4, 323-332, with P. Rozin, M. Dingley, J. Urbanek, H. Jiang, M. Kaltenbach, 2011



Where were you when Steve Jobs pulled the first iPhone out of his pocket on June 29, 2007? For many, including future historians of the digital age, that day marks a turning point in mobile communication and handheld technology. For anyone under the age of 25 it’s impossible to remember life without smart phones. Believe it or not, people used to walk, ride bikes, drive cars with their heads up, looking at the world around them instead of staring into the universe displayed on a palm-sized screen.

Rumors have been circulating for months about the iPhone 8 iterations expected to debut later this year along with a souped-up 10th anniversary special edition. Customers will probably once again camp outside stores for the bragging rights to be among the first to buy the newest model.

Seethu Seetharaman

Seethu Seetharaman, W. Patrick McGinnis Professor of Marketing at Olin uses iPhone sales data in his Data Analysis for Brand Management class. “I have used sales data for the years since the iPhone was launched to teach students how to forecast future sales. I use a new product diffusion model called the Bass Model to do this.”

Seetharaman, who is also Director of the Center for Customer Analytics & Big Data (CCABD) and Academic Director for the Master of Science in Customer Analytics (MSCA) program, points to the data that show iPhone sales increased from $19.3b in 2006 to $215.6 in 2010. That’s an 11X increase.

“The iPhone has been a disrupter like no other,” explains Seetharaman. “It has not just hurt traditional phones (i.e., competitors within the same category), but has destroyed at least four other product categories in a decade’s time!”

Seetharaman shares more data from 2006-2016 as proof of the products left behind in the wake of the iPhone’s success:

  • Digital camera sales fell by 66%
  • MP3 player sales fell by 87%
  • Portal Navigation Systems sales fell by 80%
  • Camcorder sales fell by 93%

Carol Johanek

Carol Johanek, Olin Adjunct Professor of Marketing, says building customer loyalty has been a key to Apple’s success:
“Apple has excelled in building loyalty for its overall brand by continuously understanding the changing preferences of its core customers and adapting its platform to laptops, tablets, smart phones and online music over the years. Their excellence in customer service and allowing for an easy transition into upgrades has enabled the brand to achieve a strong retention among its customer base.”

Craving iPhone trivia? Here are a few sources:

  • In July 2016, CEO Tim Cook announced Apple had sold the billionth iPhone.
  • Currently, there are more than 700 million iPhones in use worldwide. That’s according to an estimate from BMO Capital Markets which includes more than 200 million second-hand iPhones.  Source: Fortune
  • Why is 9:41 always the time displayed on Apple devices in marketing materials? Link to answer.
  • 60 amazing iPhone facts & stats