Silly dog, don’t you know you’re going to get food anyway?

But… we do this too. Silly humans.

Have you ever noticed that just by changing the mark at the end of sentences, you can convince the reader about how they should read it? Crazy, I know. Mind control. Mind control! Haha. See? Right there.

No, but back to the issue at hand. We have this dog that we feed this food. Both are constant and maintained variables while the only thing changed is the delivery method. Yet, the outcome excitement seen in the test subject is remarkably different. Interesting.

I won’t be blatant about my metaphor because I’m sure you can figure out how to apply this to business. Remember when the Nintendo Wii’s first came out over six years ago? People who didn’t even know what the things were wanted to buy them just because seeing one in a store was so rare. The news talked about it; people were in line and bribing store employees to get them. Were they the most powerful console? Not at all. It was essentially a Gamecube in a glossy white box with a different sort of controller that wasn’t even really established with the public. But they got people excited by withholding things in all the right places. Games were everywhere, sure, but the console itself, well…

And so people are like the above dog. They know the food will come. They know they’ll get to eat. They could have easily walked over and bought an Xbox or a PS3 because there were mountains of them in the corner, but they want the things cascading over the bowl with such anticipation.

Silly humans. Shiny things.

Look! More awesome posts:

1. Design and It’s Effect
2. Console
3. Maestro Knows