Jake Kinzel
September 17th, 2012
Bus 105

The article I decided to read about had to do with the psychology of selling products. Behavioral Economists are trying to find out why we buy what we buy and try selling products in different ways in order to receive different responses. As a consumer we have this falsification that we consciously make a decision on buying a certain product but, in reality our subconscious has more of an influence on these decisions then we anticipate. As a consumer we tend to follow the crowd and prefer inferior brands such as, Coca-Cola, Microsoft and Apple, instead of superior newcomers. Also, as a consumer we sometimes solely base our decision based on how the situation is framed, rather than making a decision based on the details of a certain product. To be specific, imagine you were presented with 2 different laptops, A and B, and let’s say laptop A is cheaper than B, 70/30 would choose Laptop A over B. However, imagine having the choice of a 3rd laptop C which happens to be the most expensive, now with this new scenario 70/30 of people would buy product B. This is just one of many examples of framing effects that can ultimately have an influence on our buying decisions. As a consumer we rely on heuristics, or rules of thumb that are created by our society in order to navigate the intricacy of buying certain products. Neuroeconomists are part of a new field that helps classify these heuristics and ultimately focuses on brain activity when certain financial decisions are being made. This new field will help us better understand and learn to have more control over our financial decisions and also allow companies to manipulate us to buy their product over others. I chose this article strictly due to the fact that my major is Psychology with a minor in marketing and my career goal is to figure out why people buy the products they do.