The art of outdoing oneself

There are four boys in my family (my father inclusive) and they all engage in sports, except me. In fact, my father said when I was handed to him in the delivery room he instantly knew that I did not possess any athletic bone in my body. But, what I lacked in athletic skill, I have made up for with my observation skills; and I am about to share one of them with you. I noticed that each time I raced with no one, I tended to run faster than when I raced with others during the P.E. classes. Matter of fact, the first time I observed this phenomenon was one evening while racing my shadow with the setting sun behind me. It was as though the absence of other runners helped me to focus, with minimal distraction, on the race itself. But as a scientist, I knew I had to repeat my hypothesis before it could become a theory, so I set to test it when the right moment came along.

Daddy, please stop frowning

I quickly recognized the power of looks from a tender age. If my dad came out of the bedroom in the morning wearing a smile, a kind of vibrancy pervaded our house. You’d hear people humming while they brushed their teeth and laughter from the bedrooms. Morning chores were quickly discharged and everyone, down to my baby brother, would be dressed and ready in time to go to school. But, if he emerged from the room with a long face, the day turned out to be a nightmare for everyone. My sisters will be at each other’s throats like polygamous wives, my baby brother screaming at the top of his lungs while being bathed and I will be sulking from being saddled with a time-wasting task like looking for my other brother’s socks which had the annoying habit of going MIA.

When I first noticed this phenomenon, I had to be sure that it was not a figment of my thoughts. So, I sought confirmation from my very intelligent immediate younger brother. He replied that he thought he was the only one who felt that way and so we swore never to look into daddy’s face when he came out of his room in the morning. Needless to say, the others who kept looking caught the bug and tried as we did, our day was every bit as unpleasant as theirs because we are family. I am sure that dad never knew the magical powers of his morning visage but inexplicably it set the tone for the day for his family.

Today's pain; tomorrow's gain

Ikeoluwa sat up on the examination table, legs swinging back and forth as she thought about all the scary things the doctor had just told her. “How did it come to this?” she wondered to herself, “This is not the life I envisaged”.

She had squeezed some time from her busy schedule to come see the doctor about the pains she was feeling. She hoped to just get a prescription and be on her way within minutes. But after listening to her complaints, the doctor closed the case file, placed his clasped hands on them and asked for her marital status. She wondered what the correlation was; but when she replied that she was single, she could not help noticing the shock on his face. This made her anxious especially as he went on to get a comprehensive medical history and order a barrage of lab tests.

Conditioning the customer (Part 2)

Hello readers, I regret not being able to post any articles last week. I took a long deserved vacation and was at the beach with my wife and a bosom friend’s family at the time I always blog. I enjoin you to find some time to relax from your busy schedules once every while and spend it with your most loved ones too.

I concluded the last post with a promise to discuss ways of conditioning the customer, who already has a desire to do business with us, to actually follow through. In business, people employ different strategies to urge their customers into action. Sales, coupons, premiums, installment plans and after sales services are some of the strategies regularly used. But, I favour approaches that don’t put any dent whatsoever into the business bottom line. In consumer psychology, they refer to such subtle inducement approaches that have no financial consequence to the business as NUDGES. A true nudge disguises itself so well that the customer feels the decision to buy or close a deal is entirely his; while in actual fact the decision was anything but that. For instance, if you walk into a consumer-psychology compliant store, the same shelf may hold all the shampoo products but only the premium brands will be at your eye level, the cheaper (and less lucrative) varieties will be at your knee level; the store owner is seeking to subconsciously nudge you to buy the expensive one. Why do you think, toys are mostly on the ground or at your knee level? It is because that is the eye level of your babies, who will keep pestering you till you get one for them.

Below are three more nudges.