Real Case Stories

Black Friday  is an informal name for the day following  Thanksgiving Day in the United States , the fourth Thursday of November. It is regarded as the beginning of the Christmas shopping season.  In the 1980s , the term “Black Friday” began to be used by retailers to refer to the single day of the year when retail companies finally go “into the black” (make a profit) after being "in the red" for much of the year. Research shows that consumers would choose to shop on Black Friday again, only if their last year's experience brought them pride rather than regret.  For a consumer who bags a bargain in the sale only to find the item was further discounted at a later date, the initial feeling of pride may be tempered by the regret at having bought it too soon and not receiving an even bigger discount.   Source: The Psychology of Black Friday - how Pride and Regret influence Spending by Shalini Vohra The opposite is true, however, i f a consumer was app...

What do you see in the image above? Is it a diamond? Is it a rhombus? Or is it a square, rotated  45°? In 2008, Kraft Foods Canada capitalized on this confusion to revitalize a 78-year-old brand, Shreddies. Sales of this popular breakfast cereal had stagnated. According to a consumer research done in its Canadian market, customers wanted the brand to refresh itself without it changing anything.  How to increase sales of a product that is loved by its customers just the way it is? Kraft Foods accepted the challenge and launched the new & improved Shreddie, the 'Diamond Shreddies'. Hunter Somerville's idea, an intern with Kraft Food's creative agency Ogilvy & Mather Canada, became the basis of this campaign - an 'angular upgrade' to the original Shreddie, devised by a team of 'cereal scientists'.  Diamond Shreddies: Original Square Shreddie rotated 45° Packs of 'Diamond Shreddies' was launched with much fanfare. The ...

Source: The Legend of the Potato King , New York Times Blog Why the King had to Rebrand potatoes in 1774? by Sydney Burrows Consumer Behaviour and the Potato by Maud Evelyn Potato , Wikipedia

As of 2015, Costco was the  second largest retailer in the world  after  Walmart  and its stock had soared more than 5,000 percent since going public in the mid-1980s. However, this store doesn't install signs in its aisles. It rather lets it's customers wander in the store, looking for the things they intend to buy while browsing through stuff that they "notice" on the way.  Poor customer experience, right? Wrong! Costco, in fact, has mastered the psychology behind shopping.  Costco constantly changes the location of its top-selling products - such as light bulbs, detergent, and paper towels - forcing the customers to search storewide. And as logic dictates, t he more time consumers spend ambling around the store,  the more likely  they are to spend. Costco rotates upward of 25% of its hard-goods and its products. The result is that, of the 3,600 items for sale, a full 1,000 may be offered only for that particular moment ...