254. Partitioning: Why Size Matters (Refreshed Episode)

Welcome to episode 254 of the Brainy Business Understanding the Psychology of why People Buy Today's episode is all about partitioning.

Ready? Let's get started.

You are listening to the Brainy Business Podcast where we dig into the psychology of why people buy and help you incorporate behavioral economics into your business, making it more brain friendly. Now here's your host, Melina Palmer.

Hello. Hello everyone.

Hi everyone. My name is Melina Palmer and I want to welcome you to the Brainy Business Podcast. Today's episode is all about partitioning.

I love partitioning.

It's such an under discussed concept, which is why I decided to refresh this episode from 2019 for you here today. Partitioning is closely related to friction or sludge, but it isn't exactly the same. While an experience that has partitions may be creating friction or sludge, it isn't just about that and it isn't always about reducing it. Sometimes adding a partition is really useful when you want someone to stop and think. I'll get to that more as we dig in on the meat of the episode. As you get ready to listen today, I encourage you to have some experiences in mind. Try and think of a time where you had a great experience with a company where things were seamless and streamlined, or it felt easy, and another where you were partway through buying and then stopped, or when you changed your mind on a project or whatever else. Try and think through what happened along the way and keep that in mind as you consider the idea of partitioning. Where were the unintended partitions and where did the lack of them or too many of them make a difference? Of course, look to your own experiences in your company as well. If you have a hard time closing deals or lose people partway through an application form, or find it difficult to get people to buy in on your ideas or pitches in the office, keep all that in mind too. All of this can tie back to partitions. Now, before we jump into the episode, I want to remind you that your free partitioning worksheet and links to past episodes and books and articles are all waiting for you in the show notes for this episode, which are found within the app you're listening to and@the brainybusiness.com254 alright, let's talk about partitioning.

Partitioning is a fairly simple concept, but the implications are really interesting when you start to dig in. Essentially, partitioning has shown us that when you put tiny barriers into place, it causes a consumer to consider their options and be presented with a new Decision point. This can be good or bad on both sides depending on the situation. The most common examples of this concept come from eating or drinking and spending money. In the case of eating, Here's a very simple example. If you're sitting in front of the TV with a giant party sized bag of Cheetos in front of you, how much will you eat? You, if you're anything like me, will likely mindlessly eat much more than you intend, even if you don't realize it. I know I talked about unit bias in episode 52 which was on on math biases, and this is a concept that can help counteract that. In the case of the chips, what if you bought one of those boxes with a bunch of smaller bags of chips inside where they're pre portioned into one or two servings in a bag? Or those little boxes of cereal that show you how tiny a serving really is when they're partitioned into smaller containers and you're required to take an action like go grab and open another bag or box, it creates a new decision point, a small transaction cost, and will drastically reduce the number of people who will tear into a second serving and keep eating. It's much easier to continue reaching into an open bag of Cheetos. You already made the decision to open the bag and eat them, so each reach into the bag is just supporting the decision you made earlier. It feels to your brain like it's part of the same decision to eat chips, and serving size kind of goes out the window until you hit a barrier. One study was done using truly bottomless soup bowls, so the participants didn't know it, but for half of them, their bowls were constantly refilling and the bowl would never empty. Compared with the control group that had regular bowls, those with the bottomless bowls ate 73% more than those with regular bowls, but they did not report feeling any more satisfied or full than those with the regular bowls. They didn't realize how much more they ate, and this was not impacted by the BMI of the person in the study. So this happened for everyone, regardless of their pant size. As the authors point out in the paper, this suggests that our eyes and not our stomachs can indicate serving size and whether we're satiated or full or not versus the actual serving size. As a quick side note, there's some debate that came up in 2018 as to the reliability of 15 studies from Cornell's Brian Wancic, including this one on the soup bowls, and I've linked to an article with more information on that the article notes that in many cases the original data is no longer available, so the results can't be properly validated now unless new studies are conducted. But this fell in line with many other studies and findings in behavioral economics, so I wanted to include it for you here anyway, and you can check out that article again if you want more information. For our purposes here, simply think about your own behavior and I bet you have examples of this for yourself. Have you ever found that putting less on your plate and having to go back to serve up seconds caused you to eat less? Or have you ever portioned out serving sizes into bags so you would have to go back and open a new bag if you wanted more? Me too. Another study by completely different researchers found that adding some sort of measurement reminder can help reduce consumption even if the cups are large. They gave participants large cups of soda, and when the cups had lines on them like a measuring cup, it was much easier to see how much they were consuming and it reduced the amount people drank even when the cups were really big. This is a way to use partitioning to your advantage as an individual, and it's a really great tool to help you break habits because it moves the action from automatic, which is also known as your subconscious brain, into a deliberate decision being made by your conscious brain. And if you have any sort of product that you create and sell, that is maybe a diet food, or you're trying to help people to lose weight or to restrict their consumption, really look at ways that you can use partitioning to your advantage and to theirs. Decision making opportunities increase awareness and the amount of cognitive processing that's used. As I said earlier in the episode, whether you think of this from the aspect of a business or as a consumer, this can be both good and bad. In some cases you want to eliminate the choice because stopping to think about the decision over and over again may allow you to become victim to time discounting or loss aversion. Whereas in other times you might want to make more choices to keep from mindless eating or spending. What's really amazing is that it doesn't need to be a significant action to see the benefits of partitioning. What it needs to do is get the person to stop and think, even just for a second. Have you ever been eating a package of cookies and had a little white paper or piece of cardboard between two of them? It's actually pretty common. And in addition to keeping cookies from breaking, it can also slow down consumption. Well, at least initially. One study found that once something became common like a white partition between cookies, it no longer acted as a partitioning mechanism. The study had three groups where each participant was given a package of 20 thin cookies as a snack while they worked on a group of tasks. They did not know, of course, that the tasks were simply an excuse to keep them in the room for a long period of time and see how many cookies they ate and how quickly. There were three conditions. One had no partitions at all, the second had white partitions, and the third had partitions of different colors between the cookies to make them stand out more. I bet you can guess what happened. Sort of. Those with the colored partitions ate significantly less cookies than those who had the white or no partitions. But what you might find very surprising is there was no real change between the total amount of cookies eaten by those with the white partitions and those who had none, while those with no partitions consumed all their cookies pretty quickly. And those with the white partitions started off slow and then accelerated towards the end, they both ate the same amount. In both of those groups, nearly everyone, 94% of the participants, finished all 20 cookies. What about the group with the colored partitions? Only 22% of them finished all their cookies, compared to 94% in the other two groups. This confirms it isn't just effort that matters, but drawing the attention of the conscious brain really matters too. In another study, a group of women were each given a box of chocolates and told they had to eat all six chocolates over a week and report when they ate them. In one case, the chocolates were unwrapped, easily accessible in the box. In the other, the chocolates were all individually wrapped inside the box. Again, everyone was told they had to eat all six by the end of the week and there was no motivation or encouragement to eat them fast or slow. But those who had the partitions consumed them slower than those without. And an interesting thing about this study is they asked first about aversion to over consumption. Those who had a greater aversion to consuming too much were more impacted by the partitions than those who did not. And as it turns out, partitioning and the impacts of aversion can also be seen in other areas, including gambling. In one study, participants were given envelopes with a total of 100 coupons to gamble with. They had a nominal value if they were to be cashed in, a few cents each, and no one had to gamble at all. Everyone had the option to cash in at any time. There were three groups in the study. One received a single envelope with all 100 coupons. The second had their coupons divided among four envelopes with 25 coupons in each, and the final group had 10 envelopes with 10 coupons each. The study found that once an envelope was opened, all the coupons inside were likely going to be bet, but the number of envelopes significantly impacted the total amount gambled. Interestingly, there were more people who spent nothing didn't bet at all in the single envelope category than for those with the four or ten envelopes. Maybe they knew on some level how this concept worked and didn't want to be tempted at all, knowing they would probably spend everything. And no one in the 10 envelope group opened more than four envelopes, meaning they did not gamble more than 40 of their hundred coupons. The others opened less envelopes but still spent more on average as Those in the 4 envelope group who opened 3 would have gambled up to 75 of their 100 coupons. Can you see how easy it is to be tricked by your brain and think you're doing good by only opening three envelopes but not realizing that if the coupons had been segmented differently, you would have spent a lot less? And again, you likely wouldn't even realize the difference and you'd feel just as good about yourself having had restraint and only gambling 75 of your 100 coupons as if you had opened half the envelopes in the 10 envelope group and only gambled 50 of your hundred coupons and remember, nothing was actually stopping you or forcing you to keep going in any of these scenarios. There's no reason anyone in the single envelope group couldn't have stopped at 25 or 50 or 72 coupons, but they were much less likely to do so without the teeny tiny transaction cost the split second to think from having the coupons in a new envelope. If you think back to mental accounting, which I talked about two weeks ago on episode 56, this is the same reason it's easier to spend coins and $1 bills than to break a 20, 50 or $100 bill. Even though it all spends the same, it feels different. This is also why gamblers will think of house money differently and keep cash or chips in different pockets while playing. They have instilled their own method of partitioning even if they don't realize it. Let's move on now to another gambling study which considered aversion to gambling just like that chocolate study and removed the thrill of a win. Coupons were just worth coupons, so it was more gambling for gambling sake. There were only two segments of envelopes. In this case, participants either received one envelope with 100 coupons or five with 20 coupons each. But the researchers segmented one level further, so each envelope group was broken up into those with a high or low aversion to gambling. Those with a high aversion to gambling were significantly impacted by the partitions. Not surprisingly, the people with one envelope gambled just over 50 of their 100 coupons, whether they had a high aversion to gambling or not. In one case it was about 56, and the other gambled an average of 52. Of the participants with the five envelopes, those in the low aversion category who were not worried or don't have a negative view of gambling, they gambled an average of 49 coupons, which is pretty close to those in the single envelope group, but still a little bit lower. Now, what about those with the high aversion and five envelopes? The number of coupons gambled went down significantly more than half, to just over 22 on average. It's also important to note that those with partitions took longer to bet in all scenarios, which suggests their cognitive processing, which is much slower, was in action instead of the quicker. Automatic subconscious increased attention reduced their spending and their likelihood to take a risk and gamble more. Partitioning money has also been found to help people save more, in addition to helping them spend less. One study in rural China and India found that workers who received their payments in four sealed envelopes saved more than those who received their pay in a single bundle. This again is amazing because they received the same amount of money that they always did, but putting it in four envelopes. And I think it's important to note that they're sealed, so it was an extra effort to get into them, made it so that they were more likely to save. A simple nudge, a tiny thing that can make a really huge difference for people and help them to be better off in the long run, which is really cool. So what about spending money? Let's talk about this a little bit more. This can be called the shopping momentum effect, which comes into play, and I'm not going to get too in depth into this here, as I'm going to dedicate a future episode to the concept. But essentially with shopping, once you start the process of spending, you're more likely to spend again until you hit a partition again. This can be breaking large bills, but it can also be moving into a second mental account, or possibly having to switch from a debit to a credit card or to put a charge onto a second credit card. This is why stores make an effort to get people in with a loss leader. Because once you've made the decision to buy and transition from just browsing to buying, you'll likely be in that mode until you hit a new partition or barrier. And maybe you've noticed at the checkout there are a lot of items there, and maybe you grab something a little bit mindlessly because it's just one more thing on top of what you're buying already. This is that freedom from the partitions. You're already in buying modes. You're going to buy more. There are some really cool studies that show you don't even have to be physically buying, but just thinking in the right way about buying can make someone transition into the new mode and be more likely to buy even unrelated items. So now that I've told you about the studies and how partitioning can impact the way people eat cookies or chips, gamble, save and spend money, what does this mean for your business? The first, most important thing to note is that it's not only impactful on eating and spending, but other behaviors are impacted as well as and it does not need to be a physical item that needs to be opened or unwrapped. Any cognitive interventions, something that makes the user stop and think, can trigger partitioning. This can be done using sound, rhetorical questions, targets, or progress markers, and I'll give you examples of each of those when it comes to sound, let's go back to that air conditioning example I dug into in the series on choice architecture and nudges. We have our air conditioning set at a certain temperature at certain times of day, and regardless of the temperature outside, it's going to do what it has to in order to regulate the temperature in the house. I've been able to set it and forget it, which is nice for me as a consumer, but might not be best for the environment or the electric bill. What if instead the air conditioning was set to automatically shut off after a certain period of time and make a beep? That's the sound notification to let me know that it's off and if I want to turn it back on, I would have to walk over to the unit and hit a few buttons. Even with my WI fi enabled unit, which those of you who listen to the series know all about, I would still need to open up the app and take an action to turn the air conditioning back on. This is choice architecture and nudging in action. It's a nudge to use less energy, but something I can easily turn back on if I want to, but because it brings something to my attention that I would have likely forgotten about even if it wasn't necessary. Even if I was feeling kind of cold. I might even be more likely to put on a sweater or grab a blanket than to go over and fiddle with the air conditioning. If I was worried I might mess something up and then have to go through a whole big fix. And maybe I'm only going to be cold for a second. I don't want to have to get up again. It can create all of these obstacles in my mind that will keep me from changing the air conditioning, but if it just turned itself off, it's a lot easier to go back and hit yes, I'm still using this. It's like, you know, Netflix. After you've watched six shows or something, it has a little alert that comes up that says are you still watching Netflix? So that it won't just keep running forever and ever. That is a partition. That's a stop point. In some ways, it's encouraging you to maybe get up and stop binge watching, or in the case of the air conditioning, to not overuse if you don't need it to keep going. And this doesn't need to feel bad or negative for the consumer, I'm going to be thankful that it could save on my energy bill and that the system is looking out for me rather than being irritated in most cases, especially since it's easy to correct if I want to. In the case of a rhetorical question, I have an example of a person in a store using this in a really bad way. Recently, my husband and I were just on a trip and buying snacks in the airport. Food in the airport is often more expensive than in the grocery store, but travelers have come to expect this. It's like when you buy something to drink at a sporting event or the movies. In addition to this, a food that is often surprisingly expensive for people, if you don't buy it all the time, would be almonds or mixed nuts. And the bags they carry in the airport are often really big. We buy enough almonds to know that the size bag they sell at the airport would be eight or nine dollars in the store, but it was listed as, I think $12.99 at this shop. So it was more than normal, but not astronomical considering how many servings were in there, how long the flight was. We were planning to eat almonds throughout our trip. We were going to be doing some driving and it was better for us than chips or something. Wanted a little bit of protein, whatever. So we stood in the line, got to the front, handed our items to the cashier. She looked at the almonds kind of begrudgingly and said, are you aware of how much these cost? My husband and I looked at each other and kind of shrugged and said, I think so. To which she said, they're 12.99. Are you sure you want to buy them? Feeling somewhat shamed by our potentially extravagant almond purchase, we decided not to buy them even though we wanted them and had no problem with the price. Her bringing it up and forcing us to rethink our decision multiple times caused anticipated regret, which is the topic of a future episode, and lowered the total amount we spent there significantly. It doesn't mean anything to her as the cashier, I'm sure, but the business probably isn't happy with this trend. However, I'm guessing it's something they started themselves and don't even realize the big problem that they put in motion. I'm guessing the owners actually put a policy in place because a lot of people would buy a big bag of almonds and then complain about how expensive it was, causing returns. So they told the cashiers to confirm with everyone that they knew the price before ringing them up. This has now caused a negative spiral where they ask in this way that causes a partition and rethinking of the purchase, which means they sell less almonds. The cashiers may even report and say, yep, we knew it. So many people put back the bags of almonds after they heard the price. We saved so many returns. In reality, what they likely did was unnecessarily stop purchases from customers who would have been satisfied with their decision to buy almonds like my husband and I, and now feel a little worse about themselves after the interaction at that business. This is an example of a lose lose situation where adding a partition is worse for everyone involved. In the case of your business, it's easy to talk people out of a sale or make them feel bad about a purchase or start to regret it. Even when you're trying to be helpful, this often comes from mindset issues on behalf of the business owner, which is something I work with my clients on all the time regarding pricing and how to frame their messages. If you keep asking someone are you sure? Either in those words or other ones, you're creating unnecessary partitions. And of course eventually they're going to say, well, I guess not at some point. So when someone decides to buy, stop, it's done. You did it. If they have regrets, they can come back, but that's the customer's job, not yours, and especially not before the transaction has even taken place. Setting up targets or progress markers, on the other hand, can be great partitions for a business to set up to keep on the radar of their current past or potential customers. Let's say you have someone who's interested in working with you, but it isn't the right fit at the moment for whatever reason. You can give them a progress marker to work toward. Say once you hit that six figure mark, send me an email so we can celebrate and that'll give you an opportunity to sell in the moment when they would be ready to buy from you. Or maybe if they say they can't afford to hire you now, you could say no problem, I know you do your annual budgeting in August. Is it okay to check back in with you then as you work on next year's priorities? Or back to the air conditioning example, there's no reason for us to proactively reach out to our AC company unless something goes wrong. But if they set up a progress point in advance and let me know they're going to check in at six months and two years out to do a free maintenance review, that's a way to keep on our mental radar a little partition so they're top of mind when it's time to have work done.

Or make a future purchase.

Removing partitions and obstacles can be great for businesses and customers alike. Consider the last time you went to the dentist, did they ask you if you wanted to make your next appointment before you leave? Even though it's six months out, they probably did and that's removing the obstacle of a partition in the future. Struggling to get a hold of someone to make an appointment, a lot of back and forth phone tag. It's just a lot of work and creates pain on both sides. Setting up the appointment when the individual is still there in dentist mode is going to be huge in setting up repeat customers and can be implemented for any type of business. Of course, if you run a hair salon or a chiropractic office or you're a dentist, you definitely need to be doing this. But for everyone else, don't think this doesn't apply to you. My friend Nikki Rauch, your sales maven, gives a great tip about scheduling circle back calls and getting meetings on the calendar right away instead of just handing someone your card and telling them to call you or send you an email. How many networking events have you been to where you met someone and had a great conversation and they were interested in buying what you were selling and you gave them your card and said email me and we'll finalize the details. Or maybe they handed you their card and said the same thing and then after lots of emails and voicemails you heard nothing but crickets and figured they never wanted to buy from you anyway. That's probably not the case and this probably happened because you inadvertently put in a partition, a step that had to be taken, or multiple steps to allow for lots of other decisions and transaction costs before doing business with you, which is not good. Instead, what you should do is schedule a follow up call and get on their calendar right then at the event. I do this all the time thanks to Nikki's advice and it's made such a difference. I also ask about a circle back call and get those scheduled instead of just saying okay, so I'll wait for your email. Partitions in the selling process are a recipe for getting ghosted. Take Nikki's advice and always schedule those follow up meetings in the moment. You will be glad you did. If you want more sales tips, Nikki has a new book out called the Selling Staircase, which I highly recommend and have linked to in the show Notes. I also have a link to her website yoursalesmaven.com because everything she teaches is amazing. I just love her stuff. She's a fan of the show and it's relevant to this episode and I wanted to share it with you. In case you forgot, those show notes are in the app you're listening to or atthe brainy business.com 58 all right, let's wrap up these business tips on partitioning with one last example. This is another one that applies to everyone and something I talk about a lot. The importance of small steps and making sure each piece you put out into the world is intentional. Every piece, whether it's an email or a Facebook ad or a direct mailer, should be clear and concise. Can someone look and very quickly know what they're supposed to do, what the next step is, and once they go to the website to apply or fill out your form or subscribe and is it easy or are there a lot of extra steps and pages that are making it easier on you but harder on them? I've helped a lot of clients simplify their intake forms or email processes to eliminate steps that can be handled later on or maybe aren't needed at all. Any form or action you're asking someone to take needs to be as simple as possible. Include the least amount of information and steps as you can and Once you think it's the least amount possible, check to see if you can actually save a few more things for later or omit them completely. If you want someone to set up a discovery call with you and you include all sorts of extra questions that you might need about what they care about and why they came to you and where they live and what their past revenue was and who they've worked.

With in the past.

Things you should maybe ask when you're doing the call, or if they ever happen to come up and be relevant. When you're working together, you're creating all sorts of partitions, spots where they're stopping to think and will eventually start to say in their own head, what a pain, I'll come back to this later. Or ugh, this seems like way more work. Maybe I don't want to hire them after all. The moral here make it easy for people to do business with you. Remove unnecessary partitions in the process and everyone will be happier.

So what got your brain buzzing as you learned about partitioning today?

For me, I love taking this idea.

Of partitioning from the jumbo bag of Cheetos to the fun size bags and applying it to overall experiences with companies. Where are you adding extra steps and asking questions that are working like those separators between the cookies? Where are you making it harder for people to work with you and feel.

Good about choosing you?

Where are you going past the close and talking people out of stuff? The concept of partitioning can help you to look for opportunities to make it all easier, especially up front. Partitions are particularly dangerous early on and in the selling process. This is a point where people also have a tendency to ask for way more than is needed and overwhelm their potential client or new hire or vendor partner or whatever it is. Be critical here. When you look at your process, what do you actually need right now to close the deal or get to the next step? If you just want someone to sign up for your webinar so you can pitch them for the product, then do you need to know their title and how long they've been with the organization and how many employees they have and their company's revenue and their entire life story, or you just need their name and email address so they can sign up and you can follow up? And I encourage you to not get stuck in the status quo here of what you have had in the past. Really try and look, be critical and cut as much as you can. What if you didn't have those things? How might that work? And if you get enough from way more people.

You just have lots of other opportunities down the line.

Breaking down your experiences into their small goals and nudgeable moments is really important here. And a big piece of what I outline in my book what your customer wants and can't tell you. Partitioning has its own chapter.

It's number 15.

If you want to read and apply this a little more right now. And also flip to chapter 24, a series of small steps which has more insight into how you break your project into its small pieces to be more effective. And of course, if you want support in doing this in your business, come fill out the form on my website and pay particular attention to many required fields there are or aren't in that process. And of course, don't forget about all the good stuff waiting for you in the show. Notes like your free worksheet and related past episodes and books on experience, design and so much more. It's all waiting for you in the app you're listening to and@the brainybusiness.com 254 and just like that, episode 254 on partitioning is done. Join me Friday for another Brainy episode of the Brainy Business Podcast.

It's going to be a lot of fun.

You don't want to miss it.

Until then, thanks again for listening and.

Learning with me, and remember to be thoughtful.

Thank you for listening to the Brainy Business Podcast. Molina offers virtual strategy sessions, workshops and other services to help businesses be more brain friendly. For more free resources, visit thebrainybusiness.com.