F2-09·F2 — Consumer Behaviour
The Logic of the Irrational
The productive tension
Rational efficiencyandirrational effectiveness
sometimes the 'wrong' answer works better
The synthesis
Consumer behaviour that appears irrational from an economic perspective often follows its own coherent psycho-logic. The best marketers do not dismiss irrationality as error, nor do they abandon rational analysis. They hold both lenses simultaneously: using economic logic to understand the system and psycho-logic to understand the human. The result is solutions that would never survive a spreadsheet but consistently outperform in the marketplace.
Learning objectives
- →Explain Rory Sutherland's distinction between logic and psycho-logic
- →Analyse how costly signalling theory explains apparently wasteful marketing behaviour
- →Evaluate the placebo effect in branding and its implications for product design
- →Identify situations where solving the "wrong" problem produces better outcomes than solving the right one
- →Apply psycho-logical thinking to generate marketing solutions that rational optimisation would never produce
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