The Business of Choice: Marketing to Consumers’ Instincts

7. Now, and the Future—Different Places with Different Rules

How the future, sequence, and the most recent thing that people have experienced drive how they choose and how they feel.

Put yourself in the shoes of one of your forebears some 20,000 years ago (and there really is a pretty good chance they would have been wearing shoes, as anthropologists estimate footwear use started about 40,000 years ago¹). Your ancestor is around 20 years old, but he and his mate have not yet managed to rear a child beyond infancy. He and other males from his clan are out hunting for life-sustaining protein; they are committed followers of the Paleo diet, of course. Hunting is a routine but risky activity, and he must have his wits about him. If he makes the right ...