Pressão dos Pares no avião

So you’re sitting on a plane, somewhere in the back. Sweat is rising off this human stew, and in horror you watch it condense, trickling down the window glass. You slam the blind shut. Eww.

Of course the feeling is irrational—you’re flying, through the sky!—but you hate everything right now. The airline, for its stinginess. The flight attendant, for pouring you half a can of Coke, then taking the can back. But most of all, you hate your fellow passengers. You hate humanity.
Someone next to you swipes his credit card to buy an in-flight movie, which again reminds you of the insult, the nickel and diming, of air travel.

And yet. After analyzing a confidential database of passenger and time-stamped purchase records, a Stanford professor discovered that if someone next to you buys something on the plane, you’re 30 percent more likely to buy something yourself.
That’s the power of peer pressure.

In a recent working paper, Pedro Gardete looked at 65,525 transactions across 1,966 flights and more than 257,000 passengers. He parsed the data into thousands of mini-experiments such as this:

If someone beside you ordered a snack or a film, Gardete was able to see whether later you did, too. In this natural experiment, the person sitting directly in front of you was the control subject. Purchases were made on a touchscreen; that person wouldn’t have been able to see anything. If you bought something, and the person in front of you didn’t, peer pressure may have been the reason.

Because he had reservation data, Gardete could exclude people flying together, and he controlled for all kinds of other factors such as seat choice. This is purely the effect of a stranger’s choice — not just that, but a stranger whom you might be resenting because he is sitting next to you, and this is a plane.

By adding up thousands of these little experiments, Gardete, an assistant professor of marketing at Stanford, came up with an estimate. On average, people bought stuff 15 to 16 percent of the time. But if you saw someone next to you order something, your chances of buying something, too, jumped by 30 percent, or about four percentage points.

“That magnitude I really didn’t expect,” Gardete says. “It’s crazy, crazy.”

The beauty of this paper is that it looks at social influences in a controlled situation. (What’s more of a trap than an airplane seat?) These natural experiments are hard to come by.
Economists and social scientists have long wondered about the power of peer pressure, but it’s one of the trickiest research problems.

“Social effects in consumption are very hard to measure,” Gardete says. “Just think of a supermarket. The number of things happening in a supermarket are so huge that it’s very hard to measure anything.”

[...]
Fonte: aqui

Compras on-line e congestionamento

Por um lado, comprar a maioria dos produtos na Amazon poderia reduzir o congestionamento e o uso do automóvel, uma vez que você não está fazendo tantas viagens para a loja como você costumava fazer. Por outro lado, as entregas da Amazon pode ter aumentado o congestionamento, colocando mais caminhões da UPS na estrada e, ao mesmo tempo, liberando você para viajar por outros motivos.

Leia mais aqui

Armadilhas comportamentais do Black Friday

Eis algumas armadilhas comportamentais do Black Friday (aliás, das compras):

But among the most potent reasons no sane person should participate in Black Friday is this: It is carefully designed to make you behave like an idiot.

The big problem with Black Friday, from a behavioral economist's perspective, is that every incentive a consumer could possibly have to participate — the promise of "doorbuster" deals on big-ticket items like TVs and computers, the opportunity to get all your holiday shopping done at once — is either largely illusory or outweighed by a disincentive on the other side. It's a nationwide experiment in consumer irrationality, dressed up as a cheerful holiday add-on.

As Dan Ariely explains in his book, Predictably Irrational, "We all make the same types of mistakes over and over, because of the basic wiring of our brains."

This applies to shopping on the other 364 days of the year, too. But on Black Friday, our rational decision-making faculties are at their weakest, just as stores are trying their hardest to maximize your mistakes. Here are just a few of the behavioral traps you might fall into this Friday:

This applies to shopping on the other 364 days of the year, too. But on Black Friday, our rational decision-making faculties are at their weakest, just as stores are trying their hardest to maximize your mistakes. Here are just a few of the behavioral traps you might fall into this Friday:

The doorbuster: The doorbuster is a big-ticket item (typically, a TV or other consumer electronics item) that retailers advertise at an extremely low cost. (At Best Buy this year, it's this $179.99 Toshiba TV.) We call these things "loss-leaders," but rarely are the items actually sold at a loss. More often, they're sold at or slightly above cost in order to get you in the store, where you'll buy more stuff that is priced at normal, high-margin levels. 

[...]Implied scarcity: This is when a store attempts to drum up interest in an item by claiming "limited quantity" or "maximum two per customer," which makes us think we're getting something valuable when we may not be. It's a staple of deceptive marketing, and at no time in the calendar year is it in wider use than on Black Friday. (There is also actual scarcity on Black Friday — when stores carry only a 50 or 100 of an advertised doorbuster item — which also introduces a risk that you'll be 51st or 101th in line and waste your time entirety. Both are bad.)

Confirmation bias: As Derek Thompson points out, many shoppers neglect to factor in the non-cash costs of their Black Friday trip — gas, parking, warranties, and rebates. (To say nothing of the vacation time lost to waiting in lines.) Shoppers want to believe they save money by going out on Black Friday, so they use only their per-item savings in calculating the benefits of their trip. But on a net basis, it's often not a very good deal.

Irrational escalation: This behavioral quirk is also known as the "sunk cost fallacy," and it means that people are bad at knowing when to give up on unprofitable endeavors. This happens a lot on Black Friday. If you've already made the initial, bad investment of getting up at 2 a.m., driving to the mall, finding parking, and waiting in line for a store to open, you'll be inclined to buy more than you initially came for. (Since, after all, you're already there, and what's another few hundred dollars?)

Pain anesthetization: One of my favorite pieces of shopping-related research is a 2007 paper called "Neural Predictors of Purchases" [PDF] which used fMRI scans of shoppers' brains to show how deeply irrational the purchasing process is. Researchers found that if a shopper saw a price that was lower than expected, his medial prefrontal cortex (the part of the brain responsible for decision-making) lit up, while higher-than-expected prices caused the insula (the pain-registering part) to go wild. That brain activity had a strong correlation to whether or not the shoppers ended up buying the products or not.

Economists typically think of consumer choice as dispassionate cost-benefit analysis by rational market actors — a bunch of people saying to themselves, "Will having this $179.99 TV now create more pleasure than having the $179.99 in my bank account to do other things in the future?" — but the 2007 study shows that shoppers don't actually behave that way at all. In fact, they're choosing between immediate pleasure and immediate pain.

[...]The problem, of course, is that those methods of short-term anesthetization often carry long-term consequences — like astronomically high interest rates and hidden fees.

Post-purchase rationalization: When we've bought something expensive, we tend to overlook its flaws or defects in order to justify our decision. On Black Friday, the investment is more than just financial — we've emotionally invested in the post-holiday ritual of standing in line with friends or family and enduring cold, dark misery for the shot at cheap electronics. 

[...]Of course, just by telling you to stay home on Black Friday, I may be triggering your reactance bias (the tendency to do the opposite of what someone tells you) and making you want to go bargain-hunting even more. In which case, good luck. You'll need it.

Rir é o melhor remédio

Fonte: aqui

Pense Nerd

Essa é uma postagem light e rápida. E daquelas que não tem a ver com contabilidade – mas o nível geek permite que entre na pauta do blog. E não, não estamos recebendo nada por essa propaganda. A loja só é muito legal mesmo!

Eu “tropecei” nessa loja há algum tempo e fiquei apaixonada. Até fiz um pedido animado (coisa de brasileiro)... e já começo avisando da parte ruim. A DHL Express, empresa que cuida da entrega, vem até a sua porta trazer a caixinha junto com a cobrancinha dos impostos. Triste né? Acho errado porque diminui a sua animação em abrir aquela caixa e curtir seu dia de loucura.

O limite para não ter impostos é US$ 50,00. Isso não deveria incluir o frete, mas a nossa Receita Federal, supimpa como é, considera TUDO no bolo. É triste. Realmente triste. E ainda bem que os meus impostos são bem honestos porque depois dessa denúncia, me falaram que vou pra malha fina. ;)

Enfim, a loja é a ThinkGeek - para os fãs de séries, jogos e filmes, aqui é o céu das compras: Dexter, The Big Bang Theory, Doctor Who, Star Wars, Angry Birds, Harry Potter. Agora chegou esquema de The Hunger Game (Jogos Vorazes) também! (Claro que eu comprei o pin do Mockinjay – e não, não vi o filme. Mas os livros em inglês são um deleite!).

Vejam algumas coisas super nerdmente descoladas:

Telefones estilo retro que funcionam via Bluetooth. Achei engraçadinho...
Carregador solar portátil:
Camiseta “Não há lugar como o lar” e “princesa que se autossocorre”. (Há uma seleção interessantíssima de camisetas!)


Um anel? Sim. Um relógio solar? Também!!! Quem precisa de relógio quando tem o sol?
Dado com constantes matemáticas:
Bichinho de pelúcia do Android! S2
Uma gosminha para limpar eletrônicos (pelas especificações limpa super bem – teclados, celulares, periféricos – e pode ser reutilizado uma dúzia de vezes)
Boné detector de Wi-Fi (camisetas também dispponíveis):
Legal demais né? Espero que tenham gostado e que não tenham gastado muito dinheiro. ;)

E se possível, alguém pode me explicar por que há tanto ânimo com bacon? (Tem até sabonete!) Sei que americanos adoram. Mas num site geek, qual a motivação a mais? =/

Rir é o melhor remédio

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Fica uma dica (ou lembrete) para você, nosso querido leitor: a postagem "como fazer compras de natal". ;)


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Como fazer compras de natal

Se o final do ano pode ser um excelente momento para agradar os parentes, filhos e amigos com bons presentes, pode ser também um momento de grande desgaste financeiro. Então, como agradar as pessoas, mas sem que isso reflita em um 2012 cheio de dívidas?

O educador financeiro e presidente do Instituto DSPO, Reinaldo Domingos, explica que nessa época os consumidores são estimulados a comprar mais do que têm para gastar e, para poder arcar com esses gastos, acabam utilizando linhas de crédito que nada mais são do que tradicionais formas de endividamento.

A "bola de neve"
Essas dívidas adicionais de final de ano, somadas com os demais compromissos já firmados ao longo de 2011, por exemplo, se tornam uma "bola de neve", que resulta em sérias complicações financeiras e, consequentemente, em inadimplência.

A principal arma para evitar essa situação é a educação financeira, que faz com que o consumidor aprenda a adquirir um bem de forma sustentável, ou seja, dentro de suas reais condições financeiras.

De todo modo, já estamos em dezembro e vale considerar algumas dicas elaboradas pelo educador para fugir de dívidas em 2012.

Planeje-se:
•Analise se o presente não trará custos extras para a família ou para a pessoa posteriormente;
•Se estiver em situação financeira problemática, uma boa alternativa é priorizar as crianças. Para os adultos, presentes alternativos, como cartões com uma bela mensagem, são interessantes;
•Faça uma lista de todas pessoas que pretende presentear e quanto pretende gastar com cada uma;
•Não deixe as compras para a última hora e vá com tempo. Errar nestes pontos faz com que as pessoas comprem pagando mais caro;
•Comece a poupar desde já para comprar os presentes que pretende dar em outras datas comemorativas;
•Procure, por meio de conversas, saber quais são os reais desejos das pessoas. Muitas vezes compram-se coisas caras, sendo que presentes baratos seriam muito mais bem vindos.

Dentro do orçamento
•Só saia para realizar as compras dos presentes com o valor total a ser gasto pré-definido e busque ajustar os gastos a estes. Não se deixe levar por promoções;
•Não compre presentes caros se, para isso, precisar se endividar. Parcelamento também é uma forma de dívida. Se for inevitável, tenha certeza de que cabe no orçamento;
•Se o orçamento familiar pede cautela, aproveite para iniciar a família na educação financeira. Peça para ela dar alternativas de presentes dentro de faixas de valores que você possa assumir. Envolva a criança na pesquisa de preço. Mostre a ela as opções que cabem no bolso;
•Negocie sempre. Na maioria dos casos existem folgas para abaixar o preço.

Fontes: aqui e aqui