Customer Experience Failures: Hidden Opportunities for Growth
Every dropped call, delayed flight, or frustrating checkout process tells a story. But the most successful brands know these stories don’t need to end in failure – they begin there as an opportunity. By looking deeper at customer frustrations, brands can uncover transformative insights. Consider FedEx’s revelation about shipping barriers. The problem wasn’t that customers […]
Prospect Theory: How Perceptions of Risk and Gain Shape Customer Behavior
The question is a matter of life and death: A new disease is sweeping across the country, and epidemiologists project it will claim the lives of 600 people. Scientists have proposed two alternative programs to address the outbreak, and you must decide which to implement. If program A is adopted, 200 people will be saved. […]
Forging Bonds: How CMOs Drive Brand Loyalty Through Human Truth
“We are no longer creating brands. We are forging bonds.” – Daryl Travis, Founder and Chairman, Brandtrust This profound shift captures the fundamental truth of modern brand building: meaningful connections transcend mere transactions. Today’s consumers don’t just purchase products or services – they invest in relationships that unfold across countless touchpoints. Every interaction shapes the […]
Eudaimonia: How Health Care Brands Can Fulfill the Lives of Their Customers
What is best for human beings? This question anchors Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, the ancient Greek philosopher’s most extensive treatise on what a life well-lived entails. Certainly, Aristotle suggested, most people agree that specific aims are desirable: Few would dispute that it is good to have friends or maintain one’s physical health, for instance. Yet, these […]
Nudge Theory: How Brands Can Empower Customers Through Behavioral Science
As the fathers of nudge theory, Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein have seen their ideas applied elegantly in business, health care, and government. However, one of their favorite illustrations of nudging comes not from the lofty domains of corporate or public policy. Rather, it begins in a men’s restroom in Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport – inside […]
Jobs-to-be-done: Satisfying Your Customers’ Highest Needs
When asked to describe the “jobs-to-be-done” approach to understanding customers, Clayton Christensen remembers the milkshake. A major fast food chain had turned to Christensen and his Harvard Business School colleagues for help. Despite much market research and meticulous product testing, milkshake sales wouldn’t budge. This stagnation was inexplicable: According to the chain’s survey data, their […]
4 Ways Consumer Psychology Can Improve Your Marketing
One of the seminal psychological insights of the 21st century began with a jar of jam—or rather, 24 of them—a total that would soon prove problematic. Psychologists Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper set up a display table in a gourmet grocery store featuring two dozen jam varieties. If shoppers sampled their wares, they received a […]
