Articles (page 28)

A loyalty scheme can leave customers feeling capable, free and connected, or it can leave them feeling managed, and decades of motivation research suggest they notice which.

In 2000, shoppers stopped at a table of 24 jams and bought from a table of 6. Anyone who runs a shop has since been told to cut their range because of it.

You will probably pay to talk about yourself, and so will the people you talk to. Whether it makes anyone like you more depends on when, where and to whom you say it.

The 2012 lab coat study made enclothed cognition famous, and a preregistered repeat found no reliable effect. Clothes change how strangers treat you more reliably than how you think.

A 2026 survey of 6,607 people with autoimmune diseases found women more often reported being told their illness was psychological. The idea that the mind makes the symptom runs back through Freud to…

A 2026 experiment found that captioning a model as AI-generated made shoppers far less willing to use a dress to express themselves, while a T-shirt showed no reliable difference. Research on…

People say their personal data matters, then give data away for a pizza or a small payment. Research since 2007 finds the gap is smaller than the slogan, and that it depends heavily on how the…

Shoppers who arrive without a clear goal are far more likely to buy something unplanned, and hunger explains surprisingly little of it. The famous 62 per cent impulse figure turns out to be…

Your name is one of the few sounds that can break through a noisy room, and the finding has been tested again across more than 60 years. What it buys a brand is real, brief and more modest than the…