Have you heard the term "neuromarketing" thrown around often enough in the past years to start wondering what in the world is it? Just another buzzword or have these psychologists (marketers? neuroscientists? charlatans??) come up with something different and worth looking at? Or maybe, all companies are already using the method and you're running behind, desperately late for the party? Let's find out.

This post explores the meaning of the focusing illusion and how so much of what makes you and your customers happy depends on it. 

This is going to be one of the most eye-opening blog posts ever. You’ll realise, at least I hope you will instead of disregarding all of this and moving on, that so many of your judgements regarding your business, your buying behavior, and indeed the world you live in are terribly wrong. 

The experience of anything is a result of two things: the characteristic of the experience (e.g., the quality of the product, the reality of the event, the actual abilities of a person) and what we expect from this experience (e.g., the expectations from the product, the interpretation of the event, the stereotype about the person’s abilities). 

There’s a solid amount of psychological research exploring what makes a person likeable enough to buy from. Let’s dig into it. After all, whether you’re a salesperson (or hiring salespeople) or an expert building a personal brand, it’s equally important to have this sort of influence on your customers, isn’t it? 

Advertising is based on eliciting emotions. Brands spend so much budget and effort trying to make you notice them, remember them, associate them with strong and powerful feelings. While the common mantra is “don’t sell the product, sell the solution”, for many companies this has manifested into selling a feeling. For example, look at this ad. 

From a very young age, most of us believe that the more choice - the better. While the benefits of some choice are absolutely clear, anecdotal evidence suggested long time ago that “too much” choice might be hurting people’s satisfaction, including product satisfaction, and hurting sales when it comes to businesses. Is that really the case?