Jaewoo teaches and writes about design thinking, behavioral economics, and field experiment for customer experience. He is professor of marketing and participating professor of experience design at Kookmin University. Jaewoo has been Visiting Scholar at Stanford University since September 2024.
At San Jose International Airport, app-based ride share services like Uber and Lyft dominate the curbside scene. Travelers lining up next to the Uber signs look for their cars while taxis become rare.
Similarly, at Stanford University Hospital, designated areas show that ride share is now mainstream in California.
While many view Uber and Lyft as modern conveniences replacing taxis, I see them as cafes such as Starbucks or Tim Hortons—another space where people talk. Over the past two months, I learned a lot about California from Uber drivers.
Some drivers were quiet, but others shared their stories. One driver at San Jose said he worked as a software marketer for 20 years and remembered meeting Steve Jobs. Another driver at Mountain View worked two jobs to support his family. A driver in San Diego was a history teacher driving to make ends meet. Another in LA said he was preparing a birthday party for his son.
In the US, many people do things by themselves. But inside an Uber or Lyft, there is a chance to meet someone and talk. It might help people feel less lonely, even for a short time.
This study explores self-reports of 241 older adults (aged 63–95) regarding loneliness and social disconnectedness, and the potential for information and communication technologies (ICT) and ride-hailing services to mitigate these phenomena. The samples are drawn from four older adult living communities in Maricopa County, Arizona. Lonelier older adults and older adults desiring greater social connections with friends, family, and outsiders appear to use ICT less and might benefit from ride-hailing services more than their less lonely and more socially connected counterparts. These findings are nuanced and depend on ICT device, type of ride-hailing service, and purpose of use. While desires for ride-hailing services were generally low, these services show promise in alleviating loneliness and increasing social connectedness, especially as older adults prepare to cease driving. Advice for implementing interventions and strategies to decrease the loneliness and increase social connectedness of community-dwelling older adults is elucidated and shared.
Cafe Strada has long been a beloved spot among UC Berkeley students. Its prime location inside the campus, cozy patio, and inviting workspaces make it the perfect place for studying alone or meeting friends.
But for me, Cafe Strada is more than just a popular café. It is a personal place tied to one of the most memorable periods of my life. In 1999, as an exchange student living at the International House, I often stopped by Cafe Strada in the morning. A five-minute walk there was a comforting ritual in a new environment.
When I revisited 25 years (!) later, I was amazed that nothing had changed. The International House and Cafe Strada remained just as I remembered it. While everything around me in Korea seems to change, its steady presence in US felt like a journey back in time.
Then, I ended up buying more baked goods and coffee than I needed at the cafe, but it didn’t matter. Psychologists describe this as nostalgic consumption, where nostalgic memory weakens our desire to make or save money. For me, Cafe Strada is more than just a cafe—it is where memory transforms money into something meaningless.
Nostalgia has a strong presence in the marketing of goods and services. The current research asked whether its effectiveness is driven by its weakening of the desire for money. Six experiments demonstrated that feeling nostalgic decreased people’s desire for money. Using multiple operationalizations of desire for money, nostalgia (vs. neutral) condition participants were willing to pay more for products (experiment 1), parted with more money but not more time (experiment 2), valued money less (experiments 3 and 4), were willing to put less effort into obtaining money (experiment 5), and drew smaller coins (experiment 6). Process evidence indicated that nostalgia’s weakening of the desire for money was due to its capacity to foster social connectedness (experiments 5 and 6). Implications for price sensitivity, willingness to pay, consumer spending, and donation behavior are discussed. Nostalgia may be so commonly used in marketing because it encourages consumers to part with their money.
The class was highly interactive. Students had to prepare in advance by digesting given case studies. In class, they actively participated by sharing new ideas and debating different perspectives. Professor Teixeira encouraged these discussions and helped everyone understand the key points.
This class was unique to me because it did not rely on textbooks. Since the professor knew the background and outcomes of the cases, he guided students to think differently. This approach encouraged students to think comprehensively and rigorously, and over time, this shift in thinking style can lead to more informed business decisions.
A classical approach to collecting and elaborating information to make entrepreneurial decisions combines search heuristics, such as trial and error, effectuation, and confirmatory search. This paper develops a framework for exploring the implications of a more scientific approach to entrepreneurial decision making. The panel sample of our randomized control trial includes 116 Italian startups and 16 data points over a period of about one year. Both the treatment and control groups receive 10 sessions of general training on how to obtain feedback from the market and gauge the feasibility of their idea. We teach the treated startups to develop frameworks for predicting the performance of their idea and conduct rigorous tests of their hypotheses, very much as scientists do in their research. We let the firms in the control group instead follow their intuitions about how to assess their idea, which has typically produced fairly standard search heuristics. We find that entrepreneurs who behave like scientists perform better, are more likely to pivot to a different idea, and are not more likely to drop out than the control group in the early stages of the startup. These results are consistent with the main prediction of our theory: a scientific approach improves precision—it reduces the odds of pursuing projects with false positive returns and increases the odds of pursuing projects with false negative returns.
I realized that California is not as bike-friendly as I had hoped, so I decided to look for a used car. A few weeks ago, I found a car I liked on CarGurus.com and scheduled a test drive it. But just a day before my visit, I received a text saying the car had already been sold. It was frustrating.
Therefore, I decided to visit CarMax in Fremont, the used car dealership many people recommend. I was not expecting much, but to my surprise, the experience turned out to be refreshing.
The first thing I noticed when I walked into the place was clean, bright, and organized it looked. It felt more like an IKEA store. In particular, the lighting gave the whole place a welcoming vibe. It made me feel freshly excited, which is not something I could associate with used car shopping.
What stood out next was how the salesperson worked with me. Unlike my experience at Bank of America, where the teller kept the screen to themselves while I sat behind it, here the salesperson shared his screen with me. We went through the car’s history, the price breakdown, and all the details together. It felt like we were on the same team, not just buyer and seller. Interestingly, he was not knowledgeable about cars, but that helped me feel less intimidating and more relaxed. Sharing the screen was a simple gesture, but it made all the difference.
Finally, the cars and the prices were the same as advertised. When I arrived at the parking lot, the cars I came to test drive were there, just as promised, with no need for negotiation—like a clear price tag. It reminded me of WYSIWYG—what you see is what you get.
CarMax might be slightly pricier than other dealerships, but I am willing to pay a premium for the peace of mind it brings. The bright store design, transparent sales process, and WYSIWYG-style inventory transformed a frustrating car-buying experience into something positive.
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Reference (bright store design for visitor experience)
Store atmospherics affect consumer behavior. This message has created a revolution in sensory marketing techniques, such that across virtually every product category, retailers and manufacturers seek to influence the consumer’s “sensory experience.” The key question is how should a company design its multisensory atmospherics in store to ensure that the return on its investment is worthwhile? This paper reviews the scientific evidence related to visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, and gustatory aspects of the store environment and their influence on the consumer’s shopping behavior. The findings emphasize the need for further research to address how the multisensory retail environment shapes customer experience and shopping behavior.
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Reference (transparent sales process for user experience)
Purpose: Even as retailers add digital features to their physical stores and equip their service teams with digital devices, no research has addressed the implications of frontline employees (FLEs) sharing a screen side-by-side with customers as a contemporary service practice. This paper aims to identify the potential customer benefits of this service practice.
Design/methodology/approach: Noting the lack of theoretical considerations of screen-sharing in marketing, this paper adopts an interdisciplinary approach and combines learning theories with computer-supported collaborative learning topics to explore how screen-sharing service practices can lead to benefits or drawbacks.
Findings: The findings specify three main domains of perceived benefits and drawbacks (instrumental, social link, individual control) associated with using a screen-sharing service. These three dimensions in turn are associated with perceptions of accepted or unaccepted expertise status and relative competence.
Research limitations/implications: The interdisciplinary perspective applied to a complex new service interaction pattern produces a comprehensive framework that can be applied by services marketing literature.
Practical implications: This paper details tactics for developing appropriate training programmes for FLEs and sales teams. In omnichannel service environments, identifying and leveraging the key perceived benefits of screen-sharing can establish enviable competitive advantages for service teams.
Originality/value: By integrating findings of a qualitative research study with knowledge stemming from education sciences, this paper identifies some novel service postures (e.g. teacher, peer, facilitator) that can help maximise customer benefits.
Roten, Y. S., & Vanheems, R. (2024). The dimensions of phygital autonomy: losing some, gaining some. Journal of Marketing Management, 40(11-12), 996-1029.
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Reference – (WYSIWYG-style inventory for customer experience)
This article examines 40 years of research conducted in the area of Out-of-Stocks (OOS). Two research streams originating from the Progressive Grocer (1968) study are reviewed. The first stream dealt with demand side issues and analysed consumer responses to OOS. The other dealt with supply side issues and analysed the extent and root causes of OOS situations as well as how to improve OOS. Four paradoxes are derived from the review and are discussed: 1) OOS rates largely seem to fall into an average level at about 7 to 8% despite 40 years of research; 2) only sparse attempts have been made to integrate the two research streams; 3) there is an emphasis on minimizing OOS rather than relying on basic trade-offs as addressed by Economic-Order-Quantity theory to optimize OOS levels; and 4) despite clear evidence of the store as the major contributor to OOS situations, the store has largely remained a ‘black-box’ in OOS research. Finally, the study suggests that OOS research can integrate the notions of the two streams by showing how the conditions for consumer responses can be translated into different degrees for costs of understocking taken from Economic-Order-Quantity theory. This will have important implications for the management of OOS.
At Stanford University, the number of seminars available on campus is stunning. I chose to attend a few, and I noticed that many of them focus on artificial intelligence. From engineering to economics, finance, and supply chain management, AI is a topic of discussion across different fields.
Repeated exposure to the AI-focused discussions has sparked my curiosity about technology. As a psychological experiment demonstrated long ago, repeated exposure to unknown stimuli such as Chinese characters leads to more positive attitudes toward them. As I continue to attend these seminars, my interest in AI and emerging technologies-hallmarks of Silicon Valley-continues to grow.
Likewise, Stanford students, surrounded by ongoing discussions, are likely to develop greater interest and a more positive attitude toward AI and technologies. The campus environment fosters enthusiasm for a transformative field.
The hypothesis is offered that mere repeated exposure of the individual to a stimulus object enhances his attitude toward it. By “mere” exposure is meant a condition making the stimulus accessible to the individual’s perception. Support for the hypothesis consists of 4 types of evidence, presented and reviewed: (a) the correlation between affective connotation of words and word frequency; (b) the effect of experimentally manipulated frequency of exposure upon the affective connotation of nonsense words and symbols; (c) the correlation between word frequency and the attitude to their referents; (d) the effects of experimentally manipulated frequency of exposure on attitude. The relevance for the exposure-attitude hypothesis of the exploration theory and of the semantic satiation findings were examined.
During a recent visit to the Huntington Art Museum in Pasadena, Los Angeles, I noticed an interesting design element: the description of each artwork was displayed on plaques with the exact same color as the background wall. This helped me focus on the text while enhancing the aesthetic harmony of the gallery.
This color choice aligns with the research emphasizing that background color harmony enhances perceived aesthetic appeal as well as comprehension and recall of the associated information. In the research, when the background color complements main objects, it minimizes distractions and creates a seamless viewing experience.
As research suggests, in the Huntington Art museum, I could effortlessly shift my focus between the art and its description. This thoughtful integration of wall and plaque color drew my attention to the content without overpowering the art itself. It shows how a simple design adjustment could enhance the experience of visitors, like me.
Visual appeal is an important consideration in the design of interior service environments because attractiveness influences consumer behavior. Employing both an experiment and a field study, we show that visual complexity reduces a service environment’s attractiveness. Furthermore, we find that the complexity-attractiveness relationship is mediated by processing fluency and its instantaneous affective companion, pleasure. Our findings provide novel insights into the underlying process mechanism involved in channeling the effect of visual complexity on attractiveness. Furthermore, both studies confirm that customers’ field dependence moderates the complexity-fluency relationship and that shopping motivation (i.e., hedonic vs. utilitarian shopping goals) moderates the fluency-pleasure relationship. Our findings suggest that it is generally better to reduce the complexity of interior service environments. To achieve this, service firms should reduce the number of objects in the environment, enhance the visual organization and symmetry of their arrangement, and use fewer colors, textures, and materials.
Stanford’s d.school workshop, Unleash Creativity, offers a unique hands-on approach to learning. During my visit, I could feel the creative energy, from the open second-floor view to the iconic d.school truck inside the building to the this year’s course schedule packed with hands-on activities.
Plate says: The Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford was established in 2005 to recognize an extraordinary gift from the Hasso Plattner Foundation to inspire teaching and research in design thinking and the creation of a home for the Institute. The Institute is dedicated to the spread of design thinking and the application of its principles to real-world problems. The design and renovations of this facility along with Hasso Plattner’s continued role in championing design thinking around the world were celebrated on May 7, 2010.
In Unleash Creativity, participants jumped straight into exercises without explanation. For instance, instead of talking about ideas, they started by drawing, connecting, and coloring dots. The interesting part is that they only learned why they did each activity afterward, as the instructor, Dustin Liu, explained the purpose and effect. This approach—learning by doing—really made them feel the power of creative expression.
One memorable activity had them listen to others share about someone they admire and then draw that person without talking. This helped them see deeper into one another’s perspectives. Through the carefully designed powerful exercises of listening, sharing, and drawing, they experienced the true power of empathy.
This article outlines the origin and evolution of one of the most influential design thinking perspectives in the Innovation Management discourse. This study addresses two significant criticisms of design thinking, namely, theoretical grounding and construct clarity. It also illustrates how this humanistic and creative design practice transcended into a comprehensive Innovation Management approach, facilitating entrepreneurship and innovation. Our research analyzes the evolution of the design philosophy and practices developed at Stanford University from 1957 to 2005 through document analysis. We identified design qualities that have been consistent over the decades, providing further construct clarity and insights on managing Design- driven Innovation. These design qualities elucidate design thinking as a cognitive process, creative practice, organizational routine, and design culture. They emphasize finding profound needs and problems and translate them into tangible designs, creating value for people. This design philosophy is deeply rooted in humanistic psychology theories, particularly on creativity and human values. Collaborations between psychologists, industrial researchers, and designers created this creative and human- centered design approach, known today as design thinking. This value- driven innovation offers a humanistic perspective on innovation theory and practice. It also offers an Innovation Management schema of design qualities essential for developing Design- driven Innovation capabilities in organizations and educational institutions. We emphasize that developing a creative design culture in which people have the human values, abilities, and confidence to collaboratively identify continuous emerging problems and needs and contribute through tangible designs generates an era of innovation and is essentially innovation management.
Practitioner Points
Design thinking as a step-by-step process with tools prevents fluency in thinking and flexibility in approach, which are essential in Design-driven Innovation.
An essential innovation management task is to develop a design culture and capabilities by freeing teams from emerging blocks imposed by the environment.
In organizations, Design-driven Innovation requires the development of micro-foundation, such as abilities and attitudes & values, and capabilities, such as creative routines and environments of support and psychological safety and freedom.
Innovation managers and educators need to consider essential design qualities when enabling people to design tangible solution for open and complex problems.
During a visit to a CVS store in Redwood City, California, I encountered an unexpected barrier to purchasing something as simple as lint rollers. These inexpensive items were locked behind a glass cabinet, requiring me to press a button to unlock it.
The inconvenience of this process immediately raised questions about the rationale behind such measures. Why would store managers restrict access to low-value products, slowing down the shopping experience? This practice seems counterintuitive in a retail environment where seamless customer interaction leads to higher sales.
“We have people that, in broad daylight, will walk right in with backpacks and take everything off a shelf and shove it into their bag and leave. They don’t care if you see them, and they don’t care if they are on camera. CVS would literally not be in business anymore if we didn’t lock things up.”
However, locking up inexpensive items can do more harm than good—it frustrates shoppers and may result in lost sales, as potential buyers could abandon their purchases entirely. This calls for store management to reconsider its approach. After all, a hassle-free shopping experience remains a crucial factor in retail success.
Walking into the empty classroom in Stanford’s Gates Building, I was struck by its resemblance to a boutique movie theater. The whole green chairs are arranged in the semi-circular way and all face a central screen. The muted colors and soft lighting added to this ambiance, making the space feel more like a private screening room.
This theater-like design can influence both teaching and learning positively. For instructors, the semi-circular seating fosters more and better interaction with students. For students, such layouts can help them follow presentations and participate in discussions actively.
Research shows that classroom designs resembling theaters, with tiered seating and central focal points, can increase student engagement and satisfaction. Indeed, classroom environments that mimic theater designs can enhance learning experiences by promoting interaction and focus.
Improving student achievement is vital for our nation’s competitiveness. Scientific research shows how the physical classroom environment influences student achievement. Two findings are key: First, the building’s structural facilities profoundly influence learning. Inadequate lighting, noise, low air quality, and deficient heating in the classroom are significantly related to worse student achievement. Over half of U.S. schools have inadequate structural facilities, and students of color and lower income students are more likely to attend schools with inadequate structural facilities. Second, scientific studies reveal the unexpected importance of a classroom’s symbolic features, such as objects and wall décor, in influencing student learning and achievement in that environment. Symbols inform students whether they are valued learners and belong within the classroom, with far-reaching consequences for students’ educational choices and achievement. We outline policy implications of the scientific findings—noting relevant policy audiences—and specify critical features of classroom design that can improve student achievement, especially for the most vulnerable students.
Recently, I visited the Google Visitor Experience at the Googlplex. I went in expecting something amazing—maybe the chance to try out new techonolgy like self driving cars (like Waymo), virtual reality glasses (like Ray-Ban Meta Glasses), or advanced AI assistants (like Open AI). High expectations felt natural—it is Silicon Valley and Google, the place for extraordinary experiences.
However, the reality was much simpler. The space named as “Google Visitor Experience” revolves around three main activities: browsing Google-branded merchandise in the store, enjoying a coffee at the café, and relaxing in a small public area called “Huddle.”
These activities felt quite ordinary, which was surprising. For me, and probably for many people in Asia, the word “experience” suggests something special—sophisticated and luxurious. But here at Google Visitor Experience, what I found was simplicity instead. This gap between what I expected and what I actually encountered made me think about the meaning of “experience.”
In consumer research, “experience” is hard to define and measure. Hoch (2002) points out that experiences is enticing but tricky to pin down, which often makes studying them less precise. My visit to the Google Visitor Experience reminded me that sometimes our expectations for an “experience” can be bigger than reality. This visit made me think more about how we define experiences.
Now may be the time to define “experience” through the lens of satisfaction research suggested by Oliver (2014). Customer satisfaction hinges on the gap between expectation and reality, and experience should be understood in the same way—by studying both the anticipated and actual experience. A key challenge here will be managing experience expectations, similar to how we approach expectation management for satisfaction.
Product experience seduces consumers into believing that they learn more than is actually so. There are several reasons for this. First, experience is more engaging than most attempts at education, both more vivid and intentional, and consequently more memorable. Second, experience is viewed as nonpartisan, devoid of the didacticism of formal education and the self-serving interests of advertisers. Third, much of experience is ambiguous, but not recognized as such. Experience supports a pseudodiagnosticity that draws the consumer in as a willing partner in the seduction. Finally, the endogeneity of tastes allows consumers to accommodate to chosen alternatives and results in infrequent regrets about being seduced.
An attempt to extend current thinking on postpurchase response to include attribute satisfaction and dissatisfaction as separate determinants not fully reflected in either cognitive (i.e., expectancy disconfirmation) or affective paradigms is presented. In separate studies of automobile satisfaction and satisfaction with course instruction, respondents provided the nature of emotional experience, disconfirmation perceptions, and separate attribute satisfaction and dissatisfaction judgments. Analysis confirmed the disconfirmation effect and the effects of separate dimensions of positive and negative affect and also suggested a multidimensional structure to the affect dimensions. Additionally, attribute satisfaction and dissatisfaction were significantly related to positive and negative affect, respectively, and to overall satisfaction. It is suggested that all dimensions tested are needed for a full accounting of postpurchase responses in usage.
