Today’s episode features Anabel Maldonado, CEO of psykhe.ai. Anabel trained as a psychologist and studied how measurable personality traits lead to predictable consumer choices. Building on the classic “OCEAN” model of personality, she developed a framework to explain what about us is driving taste. 

Across openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism - the dimensions of the OCEAN model - there are patterns that influence what products we will perceive as “relevant”. 

This insight can be used to address a particularly thorny problem in ecommerce: showing customers that part of the assortment, that they are most likely to experience as personally relevant, thereby increasing conversion rate.  

In the episode, Anabel takes us down Rue St. Honoré in Paris, into the world of Rick Owens, Ann Demeulemeester, Loewe bubble glasses, and why it is that some of us respond to their allure. 

She also describes a few lessons learnt in building a business on “personalization-as-a-service” for brands and retailers. If you love founder stories, are fascinated by the challenge of making a virtual “endless shelf space” relevant to users, and love fashion, this episode’s for you… 

This episode concludes Season 1 of DWFF. I’ll take a few weeks off until the beginning of October to shape the topic list and guest line-up for Season 2.

If you have feedback on which episodes you found particularly interesting, or not, I would love to hear from you! Send a brief message to [email protected] and help to shape the next season!