At one point in life, you realize that people are not doing what you want them to do. Let’s take, for example, a cook, who slaves over a hot stove for hours, creating dishes that would astound most. But every day, customers order the cheapest meal, perhaps the pasta. This is problem might be solved with a few changes to the menu. Don’t believe it? A recent article featuring William Poundstone discussed what goes into effective menus.
5. Columns Are Killers
According to Brandon O’Dell, one of the consultants Poundstone quotes in Priceless,it’s a big mistake to list prices in a straight column. “Customers will go down and choose from the cheapest items,” he says. At least the Balthazar menu doesn’t use leader dots to connect the dish to the price; that draws the diner’s gaze right to the numbers. Consultant Gregg Rapp tells clients to “omit dollar signs, decimal points, and cents … It’s not that customers can’t check prices, but most will follow whatever subtle cues are provided.”
Have you ever wanted to know how to sell more of something? Perhaps push a particular product? Well, look no further. Dan Ariely’s book, Predictably Irrational gives you an idea of why people do things. While I am sure the intention of the book was not to exploit people, you can use this knowledge to your advantage. Below is my review of Predictably Irrational for the upcoming blog, Cultureist.
You probably don’t realize it, but your mind is flawed. Very flawed. Here’s a simple example:
In our minds, it seems to show three different sized lines. Now instead of doing a fancy animation on how the lines are all actually the same size, I am going to let you take a good old fashioned piece of paper, and measure each line only to discover- they are all the same length!
This is just one of the hundreds of flaws contained in your mind. But why on earth would you want to learn how your mind is flawed?
It is depressing and seems unhelpful. Wrong. While it can be sad to realize this fact, we can learn. We can learn about the flaws in our minds so we can realize how we make decisions and in the future, be aware of bad decision making. This rationality of thinking is talked about a great deal in Dan Ariely’s book, Predictably Irrational.
One of my favorite things about the book is that it does not ramble on about brain waves and years of careful study, as what you would expect from a psychological book. Instead, it talks about down to earth experiments with interesting conclusions and how it relates to you.
Still not sure if you want to get the book? Take a look at Dan Ariely’s TED talk:
At one point in life, you realize that people are not doing what you want them to do. Let’s take, for example, a cook, who slaves over a hot stove for hours, creating dishes that would astound most. But every day, customers order the cheapest meal, perhaps the pasta. This is problem might be solved with a few changes to the menu. Don’t believe it? A recent article featuring William Poundstone discussed what goes into effective menus.