I flew out to Arizona last week to watch some spring training baseball. Since I was thinking about baseball and tickets, I wanted to explore the naming of sections within a stadium. In my experience, the naming of sections is not as calculated at it might appear (or should be). In other words, come up with a name for a section that sounds neat or luxurious and run with it. Although this isn’t a spring training example, let’s take a look at Angel Stadium. The Angels have the following section names in their upper deck:
[Read more…] about What’s In A Name? Stadium Section Names and Perceptionsmarketing
On Time Versus Late: The Effect of Framing on Subway Delays
After reading this post on Gawker about New York City subway delays, I was intrigued by how the information was (or could be) framed. The article mentions that 78.8% of New York City subway trains were on time in 2014. Mathematically, that suggests (as the article mentions as well) subway trains are late 21.2% of the time.
This got me thinking…what do people perceive as an acceptable rate for trains to be on time? What do people perceive as an acceptable rate for trains to be late? Look at those two questions again. Virtually the same question but framing the information in a slightly different way may influence perceptions. Thus, half of the people who answered the survey saw the following:
One report estimates that New York City subway trains are on time 78.8% of the time. Given a variety of potential issues (weather, construction, etc.), what do you think is a reasonable percentage for trains to be on time? [Read more…] about On Time Versus Late: The Effect of Framing on Subway Delays
Framing and Issues With Nutrition Labels
All of my #1QFriday questions thus far have focused on a numerical response. How few miles is it from Eugene, OR to Philadelphia, PA? What percentage of 40-yard field goals does the average college kicker make? All of them required some sort of numerical estimate. This week’s question switched to choice. Specifically, the task was to choose between two cans of soup:
Assuming you plan to eat the entire can of soup by yourself for dinner, which soup do you think is the healthiest choice?
The Psychology of Not
Words are extremely powerful. One word can be extremely powerful. We tend to throw out words without always thinking about how they are perceived. It can be interesting though to take a step back and think about what we are really trying to say and how people interpret the words we use. That leads us to last Friday’s survey:
Why do prices end in .99?
Many of the questions people ask me are about pricing. One of the most popular questions is why do prices end in .99? It seems like everything from coffee to televisions and shoes to computers end with .99. So why do marketers do this? [Read more…] about Why do prices end in .99?