444. Bridging the Intention-Action Gap: Behavioral Insights with Dr. Sudy Majd

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Brainy Business | Understanding the Psychology of Why People Buy | Behavioral Economics

Title: Episode 444. Bridging the Intention-Action Gap: Behavioral Insights with Dr. Sudhi Majd
Host: Melina Palmer
Guest: Dr. Sudhi Majd
Release Date: November 12, 2024

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Introduction

In Episode 444 of The Brainy Business Podcast, host Melina Palmer delves into the intricate relationship between consumer intentions and actions, a phenomenon often referred to as the intention-action gap. She is joined by Dr. Sudhi Majd, a behavioral scientist specializing in e-commerce purchasing behaviors. The episode explores practical applications of behavioral economics within businesses, with a focus on real-world challenges and solutions.

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Guest Background

Melina Palmer introduces her extensive background in behavioral science and consumer behavior, highlighting her journey from a consulting role observing global consumer behaviors to earning a Ph.D. in psychology from Columbia University. Her expertise lies in consumer decision-making and applying these insights to enhance business effectiveness. Currently serving as an advisor at Candid, a clear aligner company, Melina brings a wealth of experience in translating academic theories into actionable business strategies.

Dr. Sudhi Majd shares her professional journey, emphasizing her expertise in behavioral science and e-commerce. With a focus on improving customer experiences, reducing costs, and increasing revenue, Dr. Majd has recently transitioned to Squarespace, further expanding her influence in the field.

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Understanding the Intention-Action Gap at Candid

The episode centers on Candid, a direct-to-consumer clear aligner company. A significant challenge identified was the intention-action gap—customers purchasing a kit worth $1,900 but failing to return it with the necessary diagnostic photos and impressions, thereby not completing the purchase.

Dr. Sudhi Majd remarks on the intention-action gap:

“This one card was just not enough to push them over the edge.”
[09:07]

Melina explains that despite customers expressing interest and believing in Candid's effectiveness, their behaviors didn't align, highlighting a critical disconnect between intention and action.

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Initial Behavioral Interventions and Failures

Melina recounts her initial approach to bridging this gap using behavioral science principles from the UK's nudge unit, specifically descriptive and social norms. She implemented motivational cards within the kits designed to encourage customers to return them promptly.

“These are going to work great. When people open up these kits, they're going to read this card and they're going to be so motivated to take these impressions and photos.”
[05:00]

However, the results were disappointing. Contrary to expectations, the return rates marginally decreased, leading to a humbling realization about the complexities of real-world applications of behavioral science.

“The behavioral science in business.”
[06:26]

Dr. Sudhi Majd emphasizes the importance of testing and not being discouraged by initial failures:

“If you just try once, it doesn't mean that that concept isn't valid.”
[06:26]

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Adjusted Strategies and Success

Recognizing that a single intervention was insufficient, Melina and her team at Candid pivoted to a more holistic approach, integrating behavioral insights throughout the customer journey. This included:

1. Surveying Customers:
   They discovered that non-returners were more likely to be procrastinators.

   “Customers who didn't return their kits were more likely to be procrastinators...”
   [09:25]

2. Implementing Feedback Loops:
   To combat procrastination, they introduced incentives and penalties to create a feedback loop:

   • Incentive Approach:
     "This kit is free if you return it within seven days."

   • Penalty Approach:
     "If you don’t return it within seven days, we'll charge you the full amount."

   Dr. Majd explains the underlying behavioral concepts:

   “Loss aversion is factored in there where you don’t want to lose this $49...”
   [11:29]

3. Refining Messaging:
   Continuous testing revealed that framing the message as a penalty (charging if not returned) was more effective than offering the kit for free as a reward.

   “The one that worked better was the penalty where if customers didn't return their kits, we would charge them.”
   [12:34]

While the penalty framing increased return rates, it also lowered conversion rates. However, because the cost of acquiring customers was reduced, overall business metrics improved.

“...customers returned it at a greater rate. They actually converted worse down funnel for us, but they were much cheaper to acquire.”
[13:01]

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Insights on Behavioral Economics in Business

Throughout the discussion, Melina and Dr. Majd emphasize key behavioral economics principles:

1. Procrastination and Time Discounting:
   Recognizing the tendency of procrastinators to delay actions, they implemented urgent actions with immediate incentives or penalties.

2. Social Proof and Priming:
   Initial attempts to use descriptive norms backfired by inadvertently normalizing the intention-action gap. This taught the importance of carefully crafting messages to avoid unintended effects.

   “Social proof is so important in websites and just the way that the message.”
   [19:22]

3. Customer Feedback Integration:
   Leveraging qualitative insights from customer interviews to inform hypothesis development and testing, ensuring that interventions address the real underlying issues.

4. Holistic Application:
   Success requires integrating behavioral strategies across multiple touchpoints rather than relying on isolated interventions.

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Future Directions and Closing Thoughts

Looking ahead, Melina expresses a passion for applying behavioral science in both physical retail spaces and the digital realm:

“I would love to start incorporating behavioral science theories into big data applications...”
[23:09]

Dr. Majd echoes this sentiment, highlighting the potential of combining big data and artificial intelligence with behavioral insights to better understand and predict consumer behavior.

“Having as many data points as you can and something that can actually efficiently scan the information is necessary...”
[23:58]

Both agree on the importance of continuous testing and adapting strategies based on real-world feedback. Melina underscores the value of resilience in the face of setbacks, viewing each experiment—successful or not—as an opportunity to learn and refine approaches.

“It's not always quite as easy as we would like it to be.”
[18:41]

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Melina Palmer:
  “These are going to work great. When people open up these kits, they're going to read this card and they're going to be so motivated to take these impressions and photos.”
  [05:00]

• Dr. Sudhi Majd:
  “If you just try once, it doesn't mean that that concept isn't valid.”
  [06:26]

• Melina Palmer:
  “Customers who didn't return their kits were more likely to be procrastinators...”
  [09:25]

• Dr. Sudhi Majd:
  “Loss aversion is factored in there where you don’t want to lose this $49...”
  [11:29]

• Melina Palmer:
  “The one that worked better was the penalty where if customers didn't return their kits, we would charge them.”
  [12:34]

• Dr. Sudhi Majd:
  “Social proof is so important in websites and just the way that the message.”
  [19:22]

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Conclusion

Episode 444 offers a compelling exploration of the challenges and triumphs in applying behavioral economics to bridge the intention-action gap in business. Through candid discussions and real-world examples, Melina Palmer and Dr. Sudhi Majd provide valuable insights into creating more brain-friendly business strategies that resonate with consumers' underlying motivations and behaviors.

For listeners seeking to enhance their understanding of consumer psychology and apply actionable behavioral strategies, this episode serves as an essential resource.

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Connect with Melina Palmer:
LinkedIn: Melina Palmer

Resources Mentioned:

• Human BehaviorLab (HBL) at Texas A&M University: HBL.TAMU.EDU
• Show Notes and Additional Content: Available within the podcast app and at thebrainybusiness.com

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Stay tuned for the next episode featuring Evelyn Gosnell and Isabel McDonald of Irrational Labs discussing a behavioral project with Lyft, set to air soon.

Transcript

[Melina Palmer]

Hey there Melina. Here I'm excited to share. I'm teaching two virtual courses in Applied Behavioral Economics which are enrolling now. Advanced concepts of Behavioral Economics and internal communication and Change management. So if you're interested, don't delay, learn more and enroll at HBL like Human BehaviorLab, TAMU like Texas A&M University EDU. Again, that's HBL TAMU EDU EDU and click on Certificate program when you're ready. Let's start the show. Welcome to episode 444 of the Brainy Business Understanding the Psychology of why People Buy. In today's episode, I'm excited to introduce you to Dr. Sudhi Majd. Ready?

[Dr. Sudhi Majd]

Let's get started.

[Melina Palmer]

You are listening to the Brainy Business Podcast where we dig into the psychology of why people buy and help you incorporate behavioral economics into your business, making it more brain friendly. Now here's your host, Melina Palmer.

Hello. Hello everyone. My name is Melina Palmer and I want to welcome you to the Brainy Business Podcast. Today's episode is all about applying behavioral science at Candid, a company that helps people straighten their teeth with clear aligners without ever having to go into an office. There is definitely some intention action gap at play here as people don't always do what they say they're going to do or even what they want to do. So how might you nudge them to return those kits and get started with the program? Dr. Sudhi Majd shares all about that in today's conversation which originally aired back in early April 2020. Sudhi is a leader and behavioral scientist with expertise in e commerce purchasing behaviors. She largely focuses on end to end experiences users from crafting email campaigns to checkout flows with a goal of reducing costs, increasing revenue and improving the overall customers experience. Since the initial recording of this conversation, she has started working at Squarespace. Super cool. Don't forget that there are links to my top related past episodes and books waiting for you in the show. Notes for this episode which are found within the app you're listening to [e-mail] 444 all right, let's jump right in. Dr. Sudhi Majd, welcome to the Brainy Business Podcast.

Thank you. It's great to be here.

[Dr. Sudhi Majd]

Yeah, I'm so excited to have you here. As with quite a few of the people I've been interviewing recently, we got connected through LinkedIn, possibly because we're both in the behavioral economics group or something along those lines, but I would love if you can just tell the audience a Little bit about your background and a tiny bit on the work you do. We'll get into that for sure.

[Melina Palmer]

Sure. I've been interested in how people behave for most of my career. I've had the opportunity to focus on that in a number of ways. My first career job out of college was working for a consulting firm where we were hired to travel all over the world and observe how people behaved and then make recommendations to the retailers about how to increase sales based on how people were behaving. And that was kind of my first introduction into the fact that people and their behavior can be quite malleable. And that led me to pursue a PhD in psychology at Columbia, where I focused on consumer decision making. And that really gave me exposure into not only what kind of decisions people are making, but why they're making those decisions and how to influence those decisions. As I was wrapping up my PhD, I began working at a healthcare tech startup called Candid, leading all of the research on that front, anything from marketing, operations, sales, retail research touched it. Most recently, I transitioned to an advisor period to help continue to grow their business as well as work with many other different clients incorporating behavioral science into their businesses.

[Dr. Sudhi Majd]

Awesome. And so let's go ahead and jump right in and talk a little bit about the stuff you've been doing or have done while you've been either an advisor or working with Candid, because I love some of the studies that you were sharing with me. One, I know that you said the behavioral science, everything that should have worked didn't work. So what can you tell us about that? Yeah.

[Melina Palmer]

So one of my earliest research projects at Candid focused on getting customers to return a kit back to Candid. So Candid is a direct to consumer clear aligner company. And in order to get started, customers buy a kit and they have to take diagnostic photos and impressions of their teeth, which you can imagine not very easy to do if this is the first time you're doing something like this. And then they have to return it. And then with that information, Candid can print aligners for customers. And that's really where we would make a sale. That's where we could get customers to purchase the aligners for $1900. Lo and behold, we found that the majority of customers who are buying these kits were actually not returning them, like the psychologists in me kind of imagine. Like we're not. Was not surprised by that because people think about changing their teeth for a really long time. And so there's a lot of status biases there. So the young Psychologist I was, I thought this is a great opportunity to test some of the stuff coming out of the nudge unit out of the UK using descriptive and social norms. And I created these beautiful cards that really did a lovely job of incorporating these behavioral science heuristicism tactics into the copy. And we sent them out. We put them in the kits, we sent them out. And I said, oh, these are going to work great. When people open up these kits, they're going to read this card and they're going to be so motivated to take these impressions and photos. And after a while, we ran the numbers and we found that those kits actually did marginally worse than our baseline. And so that was a real shock to the system of the real application of behavioral science in business.

[Dr. Sudhi Majd]

Yeah. That I talk all the time about needing to test, you know, and it's important where if you. And if you just try once, it doesn't mean that that concept isn't valid. It's just something else was going on. Right. That impacted. So do you remember some of the concepts that you were testing on that initial mailer that you sent out?

[Melina Palmer]

Yeah, we were saying for, like the descriptive norms one, you were saying that, you know, 90% of people return this kit within a week. Be one of those people. The descriptive norm one was all about recognizing that goals are hard. And this was actually right around tax time. So this is right around March, April, and saying that, you know, getting your taxes in on time, losing weight, exercising consistently, like, these are all potentially very difficult goals to reach. But don't let this goal that you have be one that falls through. Do your kit today.

[Dr. Sudhi Majd]

So I'm not surprised that that didn't work. When you look back on it, it's that I've talked about in episodes on herding and whatnot. There's the. I call this, like, unintentional normalizing is just the term I've come up with. That which is like, you know, the first day of college, if Your professor says 80% of kids cheat and we're watching you, and then you kind of go like, maybe like, if everyone's cheating, I. You know, there's still plenty of students here. It's not like they're kicking out 80% and it makes it to where. Yeah. So making it so you're potentially sort of priming that. It's hard and difficult and you don't want to do that. And you know, that herding mentality. The first one, though, of like 90% return within a week. That herding piece seems like that should have worked.

[Melina Palmer]

I think looking back on it, and this is definitely something that I've made a conscious effort to do moving forward, as not only Candid grew and the testing ramped up, but also with my personal clients, is really understanding that humans have, like, a lot of conflicting things going on in their life, and this one card was just not enough to push them over the edge. What a better test would have looked like, although a messier test would have been this concept really presented throughout their journey. You know, whether or not they first sign up for emails with Candid, they first get their kit. Maybe that's kind of when we start hitting them home with this idea that, like, this is something you should do. Everyone else is doing it, although they definitely weren't. And then even someplace, like, on the website and stuff like that, like, incorporated these concepts to almost like, sledgehammer at home into their psyche. So that when they got the kit, they were already primed and ready to go.

[Dr. Sudhi Majd]

Yeah, yeah. And so you did, though, see some impact. So the next phase, I guess, was then you said, so this isn't enough. Where else do we look and start digging? You got into some consumer feedback, which helped you redo the website, and that saw a boost, right?

[Melina Palmer]

Yeah. For this issue in particular. It continued to persist for a while at Candid, and we tried discounting heavily. Also didn't work. That had some, like, down funnel effects on some of the quality of customers that we were getting through our funnel. One thing that we did test that worked really well was kind of going back and looking to see whether or not we could begin to identify, like, certain psychological traits of customers who were and weren't returning their kits. I had done a lot of interviews with customers in the past trying to understand, why aren't you doing this? And every single time we talked to customers who did or didn't return it, we'd kind of get the same answers. It's like, I'm still very interested in doing it. I have all of the tools I need to succeed. I believe Candid can do a great job at fixing my teeth, but obviously their behavior was in direct contrast with what they were telling us. And so I thought we got to find out kind of like, who these people really are. And so we did a big survey of our customers and found that customers who didn't return their kits were more likely to be procrastinators than customers who were returning their kits. And going back to the literature, the model suggests that one way to get people to become less procrastinator like is to create a. Like a feedback loop that is either incentivized with a reward or a penalty. So it's like a customer does something, Candid does something, or a customer doesn't do something, Candid doesn't do something. What we implemented was a variety of different tests that got customers to act within a short period of time. We would say, you know what, this kit is free if you return it within seven days, and if you don't return it within seven days, we're going to charge you the full amount. Or the other way around, you can buy this kit at full price. And then if you return it within seven days, we'll give it to you for free.

[Dr. Sudhi Majd]

Right.

[Melina Palmer]

So we kind of created this feedback loop of behavior and reward and punishments throughout Candid cycle. And it really worked well to get customers to return their kits.

[Dr. Sudhi Majd]

And so some of the concepts for listeners that we'll be tagging, I'll link for in the show notes. So that's showing the different ways you can frame the same message. So there's the do this, then this, or if you don't, then that. You know, it's the same numbers at play of the $49 and getting it for free. You also have loss aversion factored in there where you don't want to lose this $49 that you don't have to. You also talked about incentives and some of that nudging, so we'll link to that episode. And also those procrastinators are obviously victim to time discounting, which we've talked about. And so I'll link to that episode, as well as priming and herding, which we've talked about already, and setting up your own experiments. All sorts of great episodes to link back to, for sure. So did one of those work better than the other in the. Or did they both have a positive impact or how did that look?

[Melina Palmer]

Yeah, they both had a positive impact on the return rates. The one that worked better was one that we kind of framed to be the penalty where if customers didn't return their kits, we would. We would charge them.

[Dr. Sudhi Majd]

Right. Because then I guess you kind of have the sunk cost in the first one. Right. You've already spent the $49, and you're no worse off if you don't send it back, then.

[Melina Palmer]

Yeah, yeah. Well, what's interesting also, you know, when you get into this kind of testing, you have to take other things into consideration, like parts of the business, such as customer acquisition costs. Even though the customers that we got from the penalty incentive that we gave, customers returned it at a greater rate. They actually converted worse down funnel for us, but they were much cheaper to acquire. And that, in the end, is the reason why you go. Why Candid went with the test that they did.

[Dr. Sudhi Majd]

So I want to touch on that a little bit in that. So I was talking with a client recently and saying that when they have people come on site to do a tour in their type of business, they have an 80% conversion rate. But we were saying they don't have very many people that actually book a tour. And so we're looking to up the number of people that do a tour knowing that if you go from 10 people doing a tour and 80% converting to 100 people doing a tour and 30% converting, as long as your conversion rate goes way down because you're bringing in more, but as long as it's not too much of a burden to do that many tours, you're actually improving. Is that sort of what you were seeing on that as well?

[Melina Palmer]

Yeah, exactly like that. Yeah. And that was always kind of in consideration throughout the business when we were trying to weigh the pros and cons of different things that we were testing, is that sometimes it's not really about what incentive worked best. It's about what incentive worked best at getting people interested.

[Dr. Sudhi Majd]

Right. And I have said for my entire career, so my background being in marketing and branding and then getting my master's in behavioral economics in the like, marketing's job is to get people interested enough to take the next step. And like, each piece is the one thing, whether it's call, come into, you know, a branch or whatever, go to the website, click a button, like, that's all we can do as the marketing piece. And then the converting is, you know, next step down the line. And so having more people interested and kind of knowing even who you are and thinking about you, where they might buy down the line is really big deal. I know you did some interesting work with overcoming concerns that your consumers had. And so if you think about, there was that list of points from your focus groups that people came up with as far like why they were procrastinating, so they're likely to procrastinate. But one thing being those are individuals who have lived with their teeth in a way that they don't feel good about for their entire life and always wished they could have different ones, but never actually pulling the trigger because it's incredibly expensive. And then you feel like, yes, this is less expensive, but maybe it's A scam. If I don't have to go to an orthodontist, it feels like it's not real. What if I do the scans incorrectly? What if it doesn't work and I'm out this $1900? And who are these people? And so you did some work after finding that out to help kind of pre answer those questions for people so that they felt comfortable moving forward. And that helped with conversions early on as well, right?

[Melina Palmer]

Yeah. You touched on something like status quo bias, which is a huge thing that not only a company like candid deals with, but it's really what I found to be true in most direct to consumer clients that I've been working with is that it's just really hard to get people to kind of shift off of something that they're so used to doing. And in the case of teeth, you know, you do it, you have, you know, you're unhappy with your teeth for years and years and years.

[Dr. Sudhi Majd]

Right. You've gotten accustomed to smiling with your lips closed.

[Melina Palmer]

Yeah. And so what's another three months, six months of dealing with this? But going back to your original point, we always incorporated customer feedback whenever we were trying to figure out why something was happening or what a solution would look like. I think one of the ways that I go about setting up, answering kind of an ambiguous question is always to first go and see what people are saying and then come up with hypotheses based on that and then go about figuring out and then really, you know, testing those hypotheses to see whether or not we're right, whether or not we're wrong.

[Dr. Sudhi Majd]

That's. Yeah, I love that. I think I have a very similar approach in that balance of qualitative and quantitative research in saying that, that I'm a big fan of. Whether it's observational research or just all the open ended questions you could possibly ask people and to hear in their own words or watch them have conversations with other people about what's going on. Where when you can get someone to actually say what they're experiencing, then it's much easier to find what you're trying to test. I talk a lot about, you know, it's so easy to find the right answer to the wrong question or you can go all day solving the wrong problem and it doesn't make any difference because it wasn't the right thing. And so where it seemed like that, you know, the card with the kit was, you know, that was the easy solution. Oh, perfect. We'll put in the behavioral buy it like we're good to go, like easy peasy. And that's, you know, you can test start there and if it worked, awesome. But it's not always quite as easy as we would like it to be.

[Melina Palmer]

Yeah, that was a good early lesson. I would also say using, going back to some of, I think kind of like social proof type of stuff. I think one of the social proofs or one of the principles of persuasion is to have the user see themselves in your brand or your website or whatever it is. One thing we did, and one thing I encourage my clients to do is take the language that the consumers are using to describe the product or the experience and incorporate that and incorporate that into like how you talk about it on your website. Because that's actually how they're thinking about it. It matters a lot less about how a company is thinking about it.

[Dr. Sudhi Majd]

Right. And even if it's not super grammatically correct or it's a little bit. But if that's the way everybody is saying something that it's also the perception is reality. And if everybody calls your company something that is not what you feel is your brand. So at some point you are what everyone calls you, whether that's what you want your brand to be or not. Right. And so if everyone was calling candid something else, I don't know, then you have to be aware of that. But yeah, that social proof is so important in websites and just the way that the message And I really liked in some of the slides you sent where it's the kind of I just did an episode on social proof and there's that piece about you don't have to use the entire testimonial, you don't have to use everything that someone said. But pulling out just that really important tidbit that encompasses the point that you're trying to help someone to understand, you know, so using the feedback about orthodontist to show that you, you're the only ones that were using all orthodontists for the work and explaining the process better. So people have that familiarity with it that there are all these different tactics that you work in to up level and those tiny decision points all the way along the way.

[Melina Palmer]

A lot of questions that clients have for me is when should they start showing social proof on their website? Like what's the number of reviews that they need to get before they start showing them? And my take on it is it always depends. It depends on what your product is and if it's a product that you find people view as potentially Low risk, then there's no, not. Like, start whenever you can.

[Dr. Sudhi Majd]

Right.

[Melina Palmer]

But then the higher the risk is, I feel like the more you need to kind of supplement that with numbers.

[Dr. Sudhi Majd]

Right.

[Melina Palmer]

Higher numbers.

[Dr. Sudhi Majd]

Yeah. I would say, though, in addition, it's always. But one is better than zero and two is better than one. Right. So, I mean, you gotta start somewhere. But if you can shoot for the. Know that you need. You want 10. But yeah, if you show that someone's reviewing, then it makes it easier to ask for your next testimonial. Maybe where you don't have to wait until you have all 50 before you start posting them.

[Melina Palmer]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Dr. Sudhi Majd]

Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about as you're looking at your career moving forward. I know that you're an advisor and so there are other projects you're working on. What sort of concepts and things are you really interested in testing? And if you're looking at the future of behavioral science, what gets you passionate?

[Melina Palmer]

That's a good question. I think overall, the big picture on the future of behavioral science is really testing it in actual business as opposed to just the lab. That's kind of why I went and I got my PhD, because I wanted to get like these tools and bring them to the private sector and see, like, what can we actually do with this stuff. Very quickly learn that, you know, what's coming out of academia isn't always applicable to what's. What's happening in the real world. Which I think is an important lesson to have my interests. I really love understanding how retail spaces and like, the physical design of things influence how people behave. I mean, going back to, you know, one of my first jobs out of career, out of college, and so I was, you know, traveling all over the world and seeing just how much people behaved the same regardless of where you were and how easily they were convinced to do something just based on how things were designed or whatever scents were in the air. You know, was the furniture movable? Was it comfortable? All of these things, like, really play into impacting people's behavior on a subconscious level.

[Dr. Sudhi Majd]

Mm.

[Melina Palmer]

And I think on the other side, you know, shifting towards like a more digital world, I would love to start incorporating behavioral science theories into big data applications. So if we are talking about understanding how we should segment certain groups of people and we have their Google search data, there are theories that we can take and see what are the words that they've used to describe whatever it is that they're looking for. And that tells us a lot about the consumer, a lot about who that person is and what kind of decisions can we anticipate them making. And so I really think that is really big picture. And I think that's actually a very powerful application of behavioral science that I don't think anyone is really doing yet.

[Dr. Sudhi Majd]

Yeah, I know there well had been scheduled some conferences and things really looking at this big data, AI, behavioral science, how they go together. I was on a panel last fall and I know that was a question and you know, people saying like, yep, we've got. We're starting to have that conversation as well. I think that is very much just a really interesting next phase where when you can, things like behavior like you've been saying, it's so complex, there are so many pieces going on at any given time that you really, to understand it properly and to be able to predict even better, having as many data points as you can and something that can actually efficiently scan the information is necessary to be able to be more accurate in that. Because there's this, you know, one little thing over here that you didn't think about that could be a really big trigger. And just because you didn't ask the question or think about it doesn't mean that that's not what's causing the issue. So, yeah, having really smart computers that can run those analyses and figure it out is a very interesting space to be sure.

[Melina Palmer]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, decisions don't exist in a vacuum. And I think, you know, coming out of academia, a lot of the work has. It has to start there. Right. It has to start in the lab. But, you know, moving it out into the real world, it's just not that simple.

[Dr. Sudhi Majd]

Right. And then even if you're trying to recreate a test, simulate a real experience, like somebody going into the grocery store to buy something. But if you. I talked about this on a previous episode, I think when I was interviewing Will Leach and the stuff he does with marketing to mind states, which is very fascinating and aligned with what you're talking about. But if you send people into the grocery store to see how they're going to be acting and you give them a list of, you're buying these four things and here's the list and it's in front of you and follow it and don't get, you know, that's what you need to go find, that is not life. Even if you put them in a real grocery store. And so if you're not having them actually be overwhelmed or having kids tugging at their pants while they're trying to walk through the store, and begging for things and getting stressed out, it won't reflect reality no matter how much you want it to.

[Melina Palmer]

Yeah, right, right.

[Dr. Sudhi Majd]

Awesome. Well, I love all of what you've got going on and really cool ways that you're applying and I just love that like you said, anyone else who's trying to bring this into business out, I say all the time I want to bring behavioral economics out of academia and into application and I love that that's what you're doing as well. It's so important. And having people that understand that testing process and that knowing that a non results to have something that doesn't work teaches you just as much as having something that does work and that you don't get discouraged and say, well, it's all wrong, it doesn't, none of this will ever work.

[Melina Palmer]

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's definitely a humbling moment when you start testing in the real world and all of these other, you know, variables of the business start to come into play. Was it like, did we increase spending through certain channels? You know, for some, you know, a particular company like Canada that has one product that is like a funnel, that's like everyone starts off at the same place and then it gets narrower and narrow and narrow as it goes down. It's just things get much more complicated. But it makes the behavioral science even more applicable in some ways when you understand all of the aspects that kind of factor into the decisions of the customers and the decisions of the business.

[Dr. Sudhi Majd]

Right. And yeah, just knowing it's a phased approach where it would be great if everything was the sort of one hit wonder. And you know, I say all the time, it's not like you can just say it's the loss aversion and we incorporated loss aversion and we fixed everything. That's not the way it works.

[Melina Palmer]

That would be great.

[Dr. Sudhi Majd]

That would be amazing if we could just boop. I did a quick flip of the frame and we're set to go. We're set for life now. Awesome. So for anyone who wants to connect with you, what's the best way to get in touch or follow you or anything?

[Melina Palmer]

Yeah, LinkedIn is a great way to connect with me and stay in touch.

[Dr. Sudhi Majd]

Awesome. Well, we will make sure to link to your LinkedIn in the show notes and just want to thank you so much again, Dr. Sudhi Majd for joining me on the show today. And you know, stay brainy.

[Melina Palmer]

Yeah, thank you.

So what got your brain buzzing? As you learned from Sudi today, For me, this is one of the first episodes I did, which profiled and applied example within a company, so it holds a very special place in my heart. We have done so many more since then, including conversations with people at weight watchers, Shepa, McDonald's, impulse makers, Mark Mars, Walmart, and more. I'm very appreciative for Sudie for reaching out to me way back in early 2020 just to connect and share about how she enjoyed the podcast, which turned into a conversation about her work, which turned into this episode. I always say business is a long game, so you never know how those conversations and check ins will work out. I love connecting with people and know it always comes back around in a great way. So if you've been on the fence about connecting with me on social media, do it now. LinkedIn is the best. You'll find me as Melina Palmer there. So in case you're wondering why I decided to refresh this one today, other than it just being a great conversation and episode, it is because of the new episode this week, a conversation with Evelyn Gosnell and Isabel McDonald of Irrational Labs discussing a project they did recently with Lyft incorporating nudges into the app to increase opt ins for drivers in their Women Connect feature. While it's a totally different application, the behavioral elements made me think about this conversation with Sudie about encouraging people to take action on something they're already interested in but might have missed out on or forgotten about. And so it felt like the perfect primer for that conversation, which will air in a few days. You don't want to miss that one. So if you aren't already subscribed to the Brady Business Podcast, now is a great time to do so. As we close out the show, don't forget about those show notes with links to my top related past episodes, books and more. It's all waiting for you in the app you're listening to and@the brainybusiness.com 444. And just like that, episode 444 with Dr. Sudhi Majd is done. Join me Friday for a brand new episode with Evelyn Gosnell and Isabel McDonald of Irrational Labs discussing a behavioral project they did with Lyft. It's going to be a lot of fun. You don't want to miss it. Until then, thanks again for listening and learning with me and remember to be thoughtful.

Thank you for listening to the Brainy Business Podcast. Molina offers virtual strategy sessions, workshops and other services to help businesses be more brain friendly. For more free resources, visit thebrainybusiness.com.