Be Your Customer's Hero

CHAPTER 10

All Customers Are Irrational

Now that you know what customers want, I’m going to let you in on a little secret:

Customers don’t usually know what they want.

At this point, I’m sure I’ve got you scratching your head, so let me explain. The degree to which the subconscious mind influences how customers experience the world is astounding—even the smallest inputs can influence customer expectations and behavior. The simplest changes to the details of customer experience—to price, to store layout, to overhead music—can profoundly change how customers view their experiences with your organization.

In his book Predictably Irrational, Dan Ariely, professor of psychology and behavioral economics at Duke University, describes an experiment in ...