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

By Melina Palmer

Business Careers Social Sciences

What's The Brainy Business | Understanding the Psychology of Why People Buy | Behavioral Economics about?

Consumers are weird. They don't do what they say they will do and don't act how we think they "should." Enter Melina Palmer, a sales conversion expert with a personal mission to make your business more effective and brain friendly. In this podcast, Melina will take the complex concepts of behavioral economics (the study and science of why people buy - or not) and provide simple, actionable tips you can apply right away in your business. Whether you're a small business or thriving corporation, Melina's tips can help your business increase sales and get more customers.

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83. How to Organize Your Br...

01.17.2020

Clutter has a negative impact on your brain. It can lead to disorganization, overwhelm, increased stress, and even health issues. That’s why organizing your brain and your surroundings is so important. This episode is about the benefits of organization in ...

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

01.17.2020 83. How to Organize Your Brain with Behavioral Economics Clutter has a negative impact on your brain. It can lead to disorganization, overwhelm, increased stress, and even health issues. That’s why organizing your brain and your surroundings is so important. This episode is about the benefits of organization in ...
01.10.2020 82. The Best Content from the Brainy Business in 2019 I don’t know about you…but I am having a hard time believing that it’s 2020 already. 2019 was such an amazing year with so many milestones for The Brainy Business. This episode will be digging into the top content from ...
01.03.2020 81. How to Finally Change Your Behavior (So it Sticks) In honor of the new year, today’s episode is about how to make behavioral change that sticks. Welcome to 2020 everyone! 2019 was an amazing year here at The Brainy Business, with 52 episodes released, more than 100,000 downloads in ...
12.27.2019 80. Celebrate! It’s more important than you think Merry and happy holidays to you all – whatever you celebrate or don’t, wherever you are in the world…I hope you are surrounded by joy, friends, family and everything else good as we close out 2019. Can you believe it’s ...
12.20.2019 79. Why Our Brains Love Nostalgia & Traditions (And How To Incorporate Them Into Your Business Strategy) Holidays are a time filled with traditions and reflecting upon the past, remembering the good ol’ days or reliving your childhood…while creating new memories with (and for) those around you. This episode is all about nostalgia and traditions, and it ...
12.13.2019 78. How to Become Indistractible, Interview With Author Nir Eyal I am so beyond excited to introduce you to Nir Eyal, author of the fantastic new book Indistractable, which I have mentioned a couple times on the podcast already because..well...I haven’t been able to contain myself! I also wrote about ...
12.06.2019 77. How to Raise Your Prices “How do I raise my prices?” is a question I hear all the time. You all know that pricing is my jam. In fact, I’ve even created a Brainy Pricing Course that has a module on raising prices. In a ...
11.29.2019 76. The Brainy Benefits of Gratitude Happy Thanksgiving! This episode is coming out the day after Thanksgiving, also known as Black Friday – a day of crazy deals and holiday shopping (which I have written a few articles about recently on my Inc column) including, Why ...
11.22.2019 75. The Littery - Interview with CEO Michael Manniche Litter is found just about everywhere you find people. Discarded wrappers and dropped pieces of paper aren’t meant to be cluttering up our parks, running trails, and sidewalks. Yet, litter is everywhere. It’s a problem that hasn’t been solved. Today’s ...
11.15.2019 74. Time Pressure: A Behavioral Economics Foundations Episode It’s that time of year when everything starts to speed up. We all have so much to do for our businesses and personal lives...how can we get it all done? This is the perfect time to talk about your brain ...
11.08.2019 73. Starbucks: A Behavioral Economics Analysis Six months ago, I did my behavioral economics analysis of Costco, which has zoomed into the 11th most downloaded episode of this podcast. My analysis of Apple Card is right above it, so we can say they share the 10th ...
11.01.2019 72. Friction - What It Is And How To Reduce It, with Roger Dooley Roger Dooley is here to talk about his new book Friction. Roger is the founder of the Neuromarketing Science website, host of the Brainfluence podcast, a Forbes contributor, and the author of Friction, Brainfluence, and The Persuasion Slide. FRICTION―The Untapped ...
10.25.2019 71. Prefactual Thinking: How to Turn “What If” Into “Why Not” - Behavioral Economics Foundations You may remember episode 68 on counterfactual thinking (why we ‘what if’ and ‘if only’). That episode and the Inc.com article I wrote on how to break the negative cycle of 'what if' thinking were incredibly well received. That episode ...
10.18.2019 70. How to Set, Achieve & Exceed Brainy Goals How do successful people get things done? A lot of it has to do with setting and achieving goals. A topic that isn’t always as easy as it sounds. Today’s episode is about setting, reaching and exceeding brainy goals. We ...
10.11.2019 69. Management Mess To Leadership Success, an Interview with Scott Miller, EVP of Thought Leadership at FranklinCovey After a year of doing this podcast, I’ve noticed trends in the topics I’ve been requested to do. My Human Behavior Lab interview with Dr. Palma was very popular. People also know that I read and do a lot of ...
10.04.2019 68. Counterfactual Thinking: Why We ‘What If’ And ‘If Only’ (A Behavioral Economics Foundations Episode) I love the concept of counterfactual thinking. In fact, it was one of my favorite things to read about in school – I find it to be fascinating in many ways, but perhaps it’s because it relates to something we ...
09.27.2019 67. How to Get (and Stay) Motivated Motivation is definitely a key piece of the mindset puzzle, so it’s no wonder its been taking up brain space for me recently. My Instagram followers already know I’ve been working on getting back into running. In this episode, I ...
09.19.2019 66. Ultimate Pricing Confidence with Special Guest Interviewer Nikki Rausch The Brainy Business Pricing Course is now live. For a fun twist on today's episode, I am interviewed by my good friend and client: the amazing Nikki Rausch of Your Sales Maven. Nikki helps entrepreneurs learn to sell easily and ...
09.13.2019 65. Can Behavioral Economics Increase Savings? I’m so excited to finally talk to you about my study on behavioral economics and increasing savings rates. In my master’s program, I was required to do my own study and submit it to at least one location for publication. ...
09.06.2019 64. How To Make Concepts Tangible The physical representation of concepts is an important tool to use in your business. Things like colors and shapes can be recalled by our brains and associated with other non related things. This topic is really an amalgamation of other ...
08.30.2019 63. How To Set Up Your Own Experiments Testing and experimenting is one of the best ways to find what works best for your business. This week we are talking about the benefit of experiments and some of my tips for how to do this on your own ...
08.23.2019 62. Game Theory: Life And Business Are A Game…Do You Know The Rules?: A Behavioral Economics Foundations Episode If you’ve been listening to the podcast for a while, you already know that humans aren’t rational (and, honestly, you probably know that just from being a human person too). And the base of economic theory would often incorrectly predict ...
08.16.2019 61. Color Theory: When It Comes To Color, This 1 Thing Matters More Than Anything Else Last week we talked about how to surprise and delight customers, as well as the difference between satisfaction and delight and its impact on loyalty and profits. I also wrote an article that went live on Inc.com this week titled ...
08.09.2019 60. Surprise and Delight First off – welcome to episode 60! How exciting – I love hitting milestones and I am excited to celebrate this one with a fun episode on surprising and delighting customers and how that differs from satisfaction. Last week we ...
08.02.2019 59. Pain of Paying: Why The First Item In A Purchase Is The Hardest: A Behavioral Economics Foundations Episode Buying things isn’t all fun and games – and the process of paying for things can actually cause pain for many people. In fact, neuroeconomics has found that when scanning subjects’ brains in an fMRI machine while they are going ...
07.26.2019 58. Partitioning: Why We Eat More Cheetos From A Party-Sized Bag Than A Fun Size: A Behavioral Economics Foundations Episode Last week was the tribute to NASA in honor of the 50 year anniversary of Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the moon. In that episode I told you about the space race, the Cold War, and how that all boiled ...
07.19.2019 57. 5 Things Your Business Must Learn from NASA In honor of the 50 year anniversary of Neil Armstrong landing on the moon, we are going to talk about behavioral economics lessons you can learn from NASA! On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong descended onto the lunar surface and ...
07.12.2019 56. Mental Accounting: How To Make Your Money Math Work For You: A Behavioral Economics Foundations Episode Hopefully, you tuned in last week for the special anniversary episode, where I went over the top episodes by downloads, your votes and some of my favorites. I also gave some of my book recommendations and a sneak peek behind ...
07.05.2019 55. Special Anniversary Episode: Celebrating the First Year of the Podcast Welcome to season two of The Brainy Business. This episode is a special anniversary episode celebrating the first year of the podcast. I can’t believe it has been a full year already. Year one brought us 54 episodes with over ...
06.28.2019 54. Biases Toward Novelty and Stories Today is our last episode in the series on biases – and the last episode of the first year of the podcast! Can you believe it? A whole year of behavioral economics and business. A lot has happened over this ...
06.21.2019 53. An Overview of Lazy Brain Biases We are getting near the end of our eight week series on all the biases. There is just one more to go after this one, which is about how our brains are biased toward novelty and stories. The first six ...
06.14.2019 52. Biases - Math is Hard Last week we got to finally have the episode on time discounting, which was very exciting for me because as many of you know, it is my all time favorite concept. As you learned in episode 51, I call it ...
06.07.2019 51. Time Discounting: The I'll Start Monday Effect - My Favorite Concept!: A Behavioral Economics Foundations Episode Today, we are getting back to our behavioral economics foundations episodes to discuss time discounting. I hope you enjoyed the last three episodes in our series on all the biases, where I told you about memory biases, our biases toward ...
05.31.2019 50. Selective Attention Biases What do I mean when I talk about “selective attention” biases? If you have been listening to the series so far, you know we have talked about how our brains are biased toward ourselves, the way we think about others, ...
05.24.2019 49. Present Versus Future Biases This episode is about present versus future biases. This is part 4 of our 8 part series about biases. We've already talked about personal biases, how we think about ourselves versus other people, and memories. When it comes to present ...
05.17.2019 48. An Overview of Memory Biases This behavioral economics podcast episode is about memories. Specifically, it will be an overview of memory biases Last week, we took a little break from our series on “all the biases” for a behavioral economics analysis of Costco. Today, we ...
05.10.2019 47. A Behavioral Economics Analysis of Costco If you’ve been listening to the podcast for a while, you have likely heard me mention Costco before. They do so many things differently than traditional business might suggest is best or profitable, but they have found a way to ...
05.03.2019 46. Biases Toward Others – Including Groups This is the second episode in the series on “all the biases” broken up into eight categories. Last week, I told you about all the personal biases (and the rules your brain uses to convince itself it is the most ...
04.26.2019 45. Overview of Personal Biases This is the start of a new series on cognitive biases. To present the series in an organized fashion I found around 200 biases and then categorized them in a way that would be relevant to what we do here ...
04.19.2019 44. Rebrand, Refresh or Reinforce? It’s time to talk about rebranding, refreshing or reinforcing your brand and when and why. During this episode I am going to talk about the difference between rebranding, a brand refresh and what it means to reinforce your brand…as well ...
04.12.2019 43. A Guide for You to Create a Brainy Brand Branding is one of my all time favorite topics. If you are new to the show (in which case, welcome) you may not know that I have an extensive background in this area. Recently, I have received a lot of ...
04.05.2019 42. Apple Card: A Behavioral Economics Analysis We are digging into Apple’s recent announcements today, with a heavy focus on Apple Card. When Apple made its announcements and Apple Card was included…I knew I needed to create an episode on this topic. Apple made a series of ...
03.29.2019 41. Structuring Complex Choices: The "S" in NUDGES In this behavioral economics podcast, I talk about structuring complex choices. I also revisit mapping and the five steps to understanding mapping, because it is the foundation of complex choices. This episode is also our final application of the air ...
03.22.2019 40. Give Feedback: The "G" in NUDGES In this behavioral economics podcast, I talk about the importance of feedback, and why it lets us know if we are doing a good or a bad job. I give several real life examples involving cars, banking, our continued HVAC ...
03.15.2019 39. Expect Error: The "E" in NUDGES This behavioral economics podcast is another foundations episode where we discuss the E in NUDGES: expect error. I think this might be my favorite of all the types of nudges. This is really the reason we need nudges at all ...
03.08.2019 38. Defaults: The "D" in NUDGES This week marks the halfway point in our episodes on the types of NUDGES. We have already covered incentives and understanding mapping. Today, is all about defaults within choice architecture. When you think about choice and defaults, you may think ...
03.01.2019 37. Understanding Mapping: The "U" in NUDGES Last week, I kicked off the different types of nudges and how they apply to choice architecture with incentives. The word NUDGES is an acronym for the categories of nudging, and we are breaking those down episode by episode over ...
02.22.2019 36. Incentives - The "N" In NUDGES The word NUDGES is an acronym for the categories of nudging, and we are breaking those down episode by episode over the next six weeks to showcase different aspects of choice architecture and nudging. Today, we are starting with the ...
02.15.2019 35. NUDGES & Choice Architecture: Introducing Nobel-Winning Concepts Nudges and choice architecture are complex and advanced topics. During my master's program, I had an entire course on choice architecture, so I'm going to break down this foundational topic into a series. Today's behavioral economics podcast is an introduction ...
02.08.2019 34. Optimism Bias: The Good And The Bad Of Those Rose-Colored Glasses Today’s behavioral economics foundations episode is all about the optimism bias. I hope you’ve got your rose colored glasses, because here we go! This is one of those topics that has a name that makes it seem like you MIGHT ...

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