A selection of articles and essays on consumer behaviour, research, and decision-making.
While no longer updated regularly, this archive reflects some of the themes and thinking behind Philip’s work.
Appealing to the Unconscious Mind
Unless you’ve been living in a hole for the past few years you’ll be aware that the unconscious mind is crucially important in human (and consumer) behaviour. The big question that arises from this appreciation is, “So what do I do about th…
Understanding Habit
When I was studying statistics at university I was told about a project that a previous year’s student had conducted on weather forecasting. The story went that, after studying lots of data about the weather, the best way of predicting it w…
The Truth, or Nothing Like the Truth
You don’t know what you think about all sorts of things. At least, you don’t know what you will think in the future about them. The reason you don’t know what you’ll think is that you (like everyone else) struggle to take into a…
Tips in Restaurants: Setting a Good Example
Approaches to paying tips vary a lot from one culture to another. Here in the UK a number of factors influence whether a tip is paid that have nothing to do with the service you receive. For example, if payment is collected when the food is…
Advertising: Attention and Distraction
Have you seen that new advert? The one with the armadillo throwing water balloons at the small family car as it drives through a field of flowers; the graphic over the top says ‘Awesome’ and is whooshed away in the breeze as the car whizzes…
Psychology and the Cliché
I don’t know about you but I hate clichés. I hate songs that have lyrics that reach for them as predictable solutions for rhyming couplets… ‘Tomorrow is another day’, ‘Down on my knees begging please’, pretty much any mention of a road (‘ro…
The Psychology of Gift Giving Quiz
We’re rapidly approaching that time of year when people have sought to cheer themselves up by the giving and receiving of gifts. Realising that many of you will be worrying about what to buy me, I thought now was probably the time to shine…
Consumer Research and Innovation
Recently Unilever announced that they intended to be less enslaved to quantitative market research when innovating and would instead aim to take more risks to be innovative and to learn from experience about what works and what doesn’…
Can You Overcome (or Bypass) Loss Aversion
Loss aversion, the tendency we have to attach more weight to potential future loss than future gain, has been well-documented since Kahneman, Knetsch and Thaler proposed it in 1990. Whilst it is hugely important in helping to explain a numb…