Isto está tudo ligado (parte II)

Parte I.

Impressionante o potencial de manipulação em que caímos facilmente:

"Consider the results of an experiment performed by communication scientists San Bolkan and Peter Andersen, who approached people and made a request for assistance with a survey. We have all experienced something similar when a clipboard-carrying researcher stops us in a shopping mall or supermarket and asks for a few minutes of our time. As is the case for the typical shopping mall requester, these scientists’ success was dismal: only 29 percent of those asked to participate consented. But Bolkan and Andersen thought they could boost compliance without resorting to any of the costly payments that marketers often feel forced to employ. They stopped a second sample of individuals and began the interaction with a pre-suasive opener: “Do you consider yourself a helpful person?” Following brief reflection, nearly everyone answered yes. In that privileged moment—after subjects had confirmed privately and affirmed publicly their helpful natures—the researchers pounced, requesting help with their survey. Now 77.3 percent volunteered.
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frequently the factor most likely to determine a person’s choice in a situation is not the one that counsels most wisely there; it is one that has been elevated in attention (and, thereby, in privilege) at the time of the decision.
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In a companion study, the two scientists found that it was similarly possible to increase willingness to try an unfamiliar consumer product by beginning with a comparable but differently customized pre-suasive opener—this time asking people if they considered themselves adventurous. The consumer product was a new soft drink, and individuals had to agree to supply an email address so they could be sent instructions on how to get a free sample. Half were stopped and asked if they wanted to provide their addresses for this purpose. Most were reluctant—only 33 percent volunteered their contact information. The other subjects were asked initially, “Do you consider yourself to be somebody who is adventurous and likes to try new things?” Almost all said yes—following which, 75.7 percent gave their email addresses.
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Two features of these findings strike me as remarkable. First, of the subjects who were asked if they counted themselves adventurous, 97 percent (seventy out of seventy-two) responded affirmatively. The idea that nearly everybody qualifies as an adventurous type is ludicrous. Yet when asked the single-chute question of whether they fit this category, people nominate themselves almost invariably. Such is the power of positive test strategy and the blinkered perspective it creates. The evidence shows that this process can significantly increase the percentage of individuals who brand themselves as adventurous or helpful or even unhappy. Moreover, the narrowed perspective, though temporary, is anything but inconsequential. For a persuasively privileged moment, it renders these individuals highly vulnerable to aligned requests—as the data of research scientists and the practices of cult recruiters attest.
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The other noteworthy feature of the soft-drink experiment is not that a simple question could shunt so many people into a particular choice but that it could shunt so many of them into a potentially dangerous choice."

Dou por mim a recordar os discursos de Brutus primeiro e Marco António depois e a volubilidade da multidão, na peça de Shakespeare sobre Júlio César.

Trecho retirado de "Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade"

Isto está tudo ligado

os membros da "Comissão de Utentes da Via do Infante" emigraram? nunca mais se ouviu falar deles, nem quando as portagens aumentam... ;)

— Zé Nô (@zeno_1972) December 30, 2016

"If I inquired whether you were unhappy in, let’s say, the social arena, your natural tendency to hunt for confirmations rather than for disconfirmations of the possibility would lead you to find more proof of discontent than if I asked whether you were happy there. This was the outcome when members of a sample of Canadians were asked either if they were unhappy or happy with their social lives. Those asked if they were unhappy were far more likely to encounter dissatisfactions as they thought about it and, consequently, were 375 percent more likely to declare themselves unhappy.
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There are multiple lessons to draw from this finding. First, if a pollster wants to know only whether you are dissatisfied with something—it could be a consumer product or an elected representative or a government policy—watch out. Be suspicious as well of the one who asks only if you are satisfied. Single-chute  questions of this sort can get you both to mistake and misstate your position. I’d recommend declining to participate in surveys that employ this biased form of questioning."

Isto está tudo ligado.

Por que será que António José Teixeira e Ana Lourenço e um rol de comentadores transitaram para a RTP?

Trecho retirado de "Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade"

"what we present first changes the way people experience what we present to them next"

"The highest achievers spent more time crafting what they did and said before making a request. They set about their mission as skilled gardeners who know that even the finest seeds will not take root in stony soil or bear fullest fruit in poorly prepared ground.
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the best performers also considered and cared about what, specifically, they would be offering in those situations. But much more than their less effective colleagues, they didn’t rely on the legitimate merits of an offer to get it accepted; they recognized that the psychological frame in which an appeal is first placed can carry equal or even greater weight.
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Besides, they were frequently in no position to tinker with the merits of what they had to offer; someone else in the organization had created the product, program, or plan they were recommending, often in fixed form. Their responsibility was to present it most productively. To accomplish that, they did something that gave them a singular kind of persuasive traction: before introducing their message, they arranged to make their audience sympathetic to it.
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There’s a critical insight in all this for those of us who want to learn to be more influential. The best persuaders become the best through pre-suasion—the  process of arranging for recipients to be receptive to a message before they encounter it. To persuade optimally, then, it’s necessary to pre-suade optimally. But how?
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In part, the answer involves an essential but poorly appreciated tenet of all communication: what we present first changes the way people experience what we present to them next."

Trechos retirados de "Pre-suasion"

Muitas vezes o que falta é ...

Muitos empresários deveriam ler e reflectir sobre o conteúdo deste breve artigo "Wine Prices : How Marketing Changes Your Brain's Pleasure Experience of  Wine"

"people get more enjoyment from a wine they’re told is expensive and less pleasure from one they’re told is cheap—even if they are actually drinking the same wine.
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“Expectations truly influence neurobiological responses,” write the authors.
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Previous blind tasting studies have also found that when prices are hidden, most people don’t enjoy expensive wines more than cheaper bottles. Surprisingly, they even tend to rate inexpensive bottles slightly higher."

Num mundo cada vez mais sedento de experiências, cada vez mais atento à componente intangível que acompanha a oferta tangível, muitas vezes não é preciso produzir mais depressa, não é preciso produzir outras ofertas. Muitas vezes o que falta é a aposta nas histórias, no intangível, no marketing, muitas vezes o que falta é o conhecimento dos "bias" que a mente humana usa, como por exemplo, o associar "mais caro a mais qualidade". Recordar "Acerca das escolhas que fazemos" e as escolhas influenciadas pelo "priming"

Acerca das escolhas que fazemos

Um excelente resumo dos vários mecanismos que afectam as escolhas que os humanos fazem em "The Psychology Behind How We Make Choices":

• Bias;
• Priming and Behavior;
• Priming and Choice;
• Bias and Choice;
• 1) Anchoring bias
• 2) Framing effect bias
• 3) Ingroup bias
• 4) Loss aversion bias
• Choice Overload;
• Choice and Willpower;
• How to Make Choosing Easier
• 1) Cut
• 2) Make things concrete
• 3) Categorize
• 4) Condition for complexity

"The reasons we make decisions are not always rational and can’t be isolated from who we are, where we are, or maybe even how long it took us to decide what outfit to wear that morning. But by being aware of the psychological factors that affect our choices -- and recognizing how a decision we make at 8 a.m. affects one at 3 p.m. -- we’ll be able to not only make better decisions for ourselves, but help others do the same."

Exportações, campanhas e priming

Há duas campanhas em curso, a campanha eleitoral e a de diabolização da Alemanha.
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Primeiro surpreendi-me com este texto da Controlinvest de Proença de Carvalho "Alemanha fecha 2014 com recorde de exportações". Os dois últimos parágrafos incluem informação desactualizada, publicada meia-hora antes da saída dos resultados de Dezembro.
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No Público encontramos "Porta-avião de Portas começa a encalhar".
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No Jornal de Negócios o insuspeito Nuno Aguiar publica "Exportações de bens têm pior crescimento desde 2009"
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Os jornais sublinham o aumento das importações e aproveitam para relacionar com a "impiedosa senhora Merkel" "Alemanha é o país que mais rouba crescimento a Portugal". Era engraçado que levassem até às últimas consequências esta diatribe e acusassem as pessoas que compraram carro novo de serem agentes de Merkel.
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Eis a evolução das exportações:

O valor mais elevado de sempre.
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Sim, foi o menor crescimento desde 2009.

Contudo, qual o impacte da paragem planeada na exportação de combustíveis e seus derivados? Segundo o boletim do INE:

"Excluindo os Combustíveis e lubrificantes, no conjunto do ano de 2014 as exportações aumentaram 4,3%"

Qual foi o crescimento das exportações em 2013 face a 2012?
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4.2%
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Qual o impacte na criação de emprego deste desempenho?
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Quando se lê sobre o priming percebe-se muito da luta política. Uma mentira que chega primeiro à praça pública marca pontos e nunca mais deixa de ser "verdade" mesmo quando desmentida.

Uma opinião acerca dos descontos no B2B

Assim que vi este título "The Myth Of The One-Time Discount":

"One Time Discounts Become Permanent Price Reductions
Now you run head-on into the third unintended consequence which is that your base price to ABS is now 5% lower than it was last month. Salespeople suffer from situational amnesia. Customers don’t. A salesperson only sees a discount as a tactic to close orders. He or she only remembers the times that it worked and not the 95% of the times that it didn’t. But as far as your customers are concerned your discount was not a one-time event but a permanent reduction in your price."

Lembrei-me da última conversa que tive com a gestão de topo de uma empresa de serviços que, para cativar potenciais clientes para novos serviços, pensa em vir a utilizar um desconto inicial como chamariz, para baixar a resistência à experimentação da novidade.
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Pessoalmente, defendi que preferia oferecer uma experiência grátis, do que comprometer o preço do serviço em velocidade de cruzeiro, com o "priming" do preço com desconto inicial.

Excelente exemplo do efeito "priming"

"Priming is an implicit memory effect in which exposure to a stimulus influences a response to a later stimulus."

"It’s well known that you get an advantage by making the first move in a price negotiation: If you’re the seller, for example, and you offer a price before the buyer does, a higher quote from you will lead to a significantly higher agreement price. But you can increase that advantage by stating your offer as a precise, rather than a round, number," 

Trecho retirado de "Why You Should Make Your First Price Offer Very Specific"