Category Archives: Cases

Cases

Pillow preference

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DML_PillowPillows are important for a good night’s sleep. Regardless of whether innate or learned, people have their own preferences for the firmness of pillow. When they go to hotels or visit their friends’ places, however, they cannot help but accept the given pillows. Some of my friends who have a strong preference carry their air pillows.

Interestingly, at some resorts, they are able to “choose” one between a soft pillow and a firm pillow. At some hotels, they could even “reserve” one in advance among a wide variety of pillows (e.g., Sukhothai hotel in Bangkok).

Cases

Old is good intuition

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Although we are always attracted by something new, we sometimes try something old to enjoy its authenticity.

For instance, when a restaurant places an nostalgic vintage signboard outside or when it serves dishes in an ugly pot, we infer that the restaurant must have been loved by many people previously. This “old is good” intuition is so strong that it can even distort the quality of the dish.

I recently visited an approximately 15-year old restaurant and ordered a fish soup for two. It was served in a pot that was all wrinkled up. Although this fish soup was not delicious, I enjoyed it simply because the pot of the soup looked old.   

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Reference

Fuchs, Christoph, Martin Schreier, and Stijn M.J. van Osselaer (2015), “The Handmade Effect: What’s Love Got to Do with It?,” Journal of Marketing, 79 (2), 98–110.

Despite the popularity and high quality of machine-made products, handmade products have not disappeared, even in product categories in which machinal production is common. The authors present the first systematic set of studies exploring whether and how stated production mode (handmade vs. machine-made) affects product attractiveness. Four studies provide evidence for the existence of a positive handmade effect on product attractiveness. This effect is, to an important extent, driven by perceptions that handmade products symbolically “contain love.” The authors validate this love account by controlling for alternative value drivers of handmade production (effort, product quality, uniqueness, authenticity, and pride). The handmade effect is moderated by two factors that affect the value of love. Specifically, consumers indicate stronger purchase intentions for handmade than machine-made products when buying gifts for their loved ones but not for more distant gift recipients, and they pay more for handmade gifts when purchased to convey love than simply to acquire the best-performing product.

Cases

Sterilizer in beauty stores

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Must buy items in Korea are skin care products. As the Korean entertainment programs including TV programs, movies, and music videos became highly popular in Asia, the beauty products made in Korean enjoy its strong brand power. Many cosmetic stores in Seoul are crowded by foreign visitors.

I have noticed in the stores that many foreign visitors avoid trying on samples because of their hygiene concerns. Interestingly, many cosmetic stores have their own sterilizers, like labs or hospitals. Visitors can use them by simply putting the skin care or body care products or beauty tools inside for 5 minutes.

DML_Cosmetic sterilizer

Cases

Mobile messaging apps in Asia

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Short / Instant / Mobile messaging apps compete fiercely. It has about 5 year history and has a numerous players (e.g., WhatsApp, Line, Wechat, QQ, and Kakao Talk, Snpachat, Telegram, and Viber, to name a few). Some focus on simple communication and others provide interesting features including stickers and animated figures.

I visited YongPyong ski resort recently and learned how popular mobile messaging apps (MMA) are among young Asians. Tourists who are staying over Seoul and want to have a one-day trip to this ski resort can book their round-way bus tickets via four MMA including QQ and Wechat (for Chinese), and WhatsApp and Kakao Talk (for English).

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Cases

Verbal instructions do not work

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People often use verbal signs to give instructions to others. The store owner posts a sign on the window saying, “This is a window, please use the door.” Government officers paint “Look Right” at the pedestrian crossing. However, I have observed numerous store visitors and pedestrians mistakenly push or slide the window and look left before crossing the road. In these cases, a visual signage might work better to attract their attention and guide their behavior.

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Cases

Break: take a rest vs. get inspired

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We need breaks from our everyday work. Although they have a single objective, breaks have at least two different forms. For instance, some of my friends want to take a rest without having interactions with others. They turn off mobile phones, go to an all-inclusive hotel, and then spend time on doing nothing but reading casual books. Differently from these tranquil seekers, others want to get inspired by having more interactions with new things or strangers. They go to a city and then eat a wide variety of local food, visit museums and shops, and do not sleep at night but enjoy nightlife. They do many things.

Interestingly, my Asian friends tend to prefer the former option, taking a rest, probably because they are overwhelmed by meetings and schedules. In contrast, my European friends want to get inspired by exposing themselves with diverse stimulation probably because their everyday work is stable. There is a chance that the way I separate my friends or the way I understand their works is biased. However, what is important is that we need quality breaks to see the big picture of our everyday work. I recommend you to go to Vietnam and take a rest at an all inclusive resort at Da Nang and then have one-day local tour at Hoi An!

 

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Cases

Train experience: Mechanical vs. Electronic

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I recently traveled on trains in UK (London – Edinburgh) and in Korea (Seoul – Busan) and found two interesting differences.

First, I used a physical train ticket in UK and used an electronic ticket in Korea. In UK, I collected a paper ticket at the station and then physically showed it to the conductor on board at the time of ticket control. Interestingly, a slot was designated for train ticket on the headrest of each seat; thus, I did not have to interact with the conductor. Differently from this mechanical system, I paid for a train ticket online and my seat was booked in advance in Korea. Overall, I preferred the traditional mechanical way of working over the electronic one. Although the electronic system sounds convenient, I had spent more than 2 hours at home on going through hundreds of websites to buy a single train ticket online. I wish people do not replace the mechanical approach with the electronic one simply because the electronic approach looks cool.

Another interesting difference was that train seats in UK are higher than the train seats in Korea. In the UK train, people find it difficult to confirm whether a seat was taken or empty. However, it was relatively easy in the Korean train. Certainly, train seats were designed differently based on the average height of the people in each country. However, this difference further suggest that privacy matters more in the UK culture whereas publicness seems to be weighted more in the Korean culture.

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UK train (London – Edinburgh)

vs.

Korean train (Seoul – Busan)

DML_Train Korea

Cases

What is an advantage of having a popular first name?

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First name (or given name) is the name that identifies a specific person. It differentiates a person from other members of a group, such as a family or clan, with whom that person shares a common last name (or family name). While last name is normally inherited, first name is “free to choose” and thus can be unique.

In some countries, however, only a few options seem to be highly popular. Many of my friends who were born and live in US, UK, or Canada have common first names. In English-based countries, Coke’s massively-distributed-but-highly-customized “first name” marketing campaign will work: each bottle of coke has its own first name label such as John, Sarah, Emma, and Alex. However, popular first names seem to be avoided in other countries. Most of my Korean friends have their own unique first names. In this country, Coke marketers may find it difficult to find popular first names and launch a marketing campaign using them.

DML_London_Firstnames on Coke

Then, why do some people pick up popular first names and others avoid them?

Cases

Make public communication points useful

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Nowadays, people rarely use pay phones or mailboxes run by government. Instead, they prefer to use private services when communicating with others; they use mobile phones or gmails. As people find the contemporary public services slow and inconvenient, they avoid public communication points. Ironically, most of the public communication points such as pay phone booths and mail boxes are located at the high traffic areas. Put simply, relatively useless, public communication points stand at the highly useful, high traffic areas.

Therefore, many people propose to use public communication points for other purposes. For example, they suggest to use pay phone booths to charge batteries from mobile phones to electronic cars, to use the booths to collect traffic data, or to leave defibrillator, a device to give electric shock to someone’s hearts, for emergency.

DML_London Public (1)

Cases

Pay toilet, spoiled customer, and mental accounting

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I have seen pay toilets at train stations or tourist spots in London. Since paying money to use public toilet was new to me, I simply thought making profits by victimising tourists is unethical. However, one of my friends who has been living in London for a few years said money should be collected to maintain toilet clean.

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I found that I paid too much attention to consumers’ service and did not carefully think about the maintenance issue. In order words, I did not separate the toilet service from the train service, and simply requested free toilet service because I paid for the train service.

When I lived in Toronto a few years ago, I did not expect free bundles or free services. I walked to a restaurant to eat, I carried a newly purchased microwave oven by myself, I visited a bank to pay hydro, and I paid for the lotions at stores. After moving to Seoul from from Toronto, however, I have become accustomed to free things; I ordered food or bought devices and asked for free delivery service, wired money at home without visiting the bank, and received a lot of free sample lotions at stores. Indeed, the guardian chose Seoul as the 10 best cities in the world to be a student because McDonald’s in Seoul runs a 24-hour delivery service. Although free goods and convenient services offered by this city may welcome budget-tight foreign students, people who are constantly surrounded by free stuffs become easily spoiled. I am not exception, either.

Then, how could I fix this situation? I believe mental accounting might be an answer. Researchers suggest that people keep track of their past transactions and plan their future budgets mentally. While doing so, people often make mistakes. They do not accurately remember how much they spend when using credit card or fail to separate different expenses but put them into one category. For instance, if I mentally account better when someone delivers McDonald’s set to my place, I can separate delivery cost from McDonald’s set price and then, at least, appreciate and thank for free delivery service. If I mentally accounted better about pay toilet at the train station, I paid for toilet without complaining.

Mental accounting was originally proposed to study people’s biased financial decisions. However, it may help people to be nicer by decreasing the degree to which they are spoiled. 🙂