294. Understand Mapping: Mastering Choice Architecture in Business

Welcome to episode 294 of the Brainy Business Understanding the Psychology of why People Buy Today's episode is all about understanding Mapping.

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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. My name is Melina Palmer and I want to welcome you to the Brainy Business Podcast. Today's episode is all about understanding Mapping. If you aren't familiar with the concept of nudges, there's a whole episode about what they are, as well as choice architecture, which are really foundational to the entire field of behavioral economics. That episode was number 35 and it is linked for you in the show Notes. It kicked off a seven part series on nudges which included this episode which originally aired in early 2019. It was broken into seven parts because nudges is an acronym for the six types of nudges. It stands for Incentives, Understanding Mapping, Defaults, Give Feedback, Expect Error, and Structuring Complex Choices. Richard Thaler won the Nobel Prize for his work in behavioral economics, including the work around nudges. And if you've heard of any books in behavioral economics, Nudge, which he co authored with Cass Sunstein, is likely on the list. Understanding Mapping, which you'll be hearing about today, is really the first step towards structuring complex choices, which is something we need to do in life and business all the time. Helping people to make their best possible decision is what nudging and choice architecture are all about. So why this episode and why today? There are a couple reasons. First is because I recently refreshed the incentives episode when U Ignizi was on the show discussing his new book took mixed signals, so it felt like a good opportunity to go through the series and keep showcasing this important topic. Second is because Kurt Nelson is back on the show this coming Friday and he does work in that incentive space and specifically works on employee motivation. We're going to be discussing that in his episode with some specific examples of work he's been doing and while we don't specifically talk about the concept of understanding mapping, it's more about understanding the problem and what people really need and evaluate what they will really do. Understanding mapping is about getting into the mind of the employee or customer and helping them make better choices. That approach and mindset is so important for motivation and incentive programs. So I wanted to provide this primer for you today as we get ready for that episode on Friday. Before we jump into the episode, remember that there are handy links waiting for you in the show. Notes for everything, including related past episodes, books and articles. It's all found within the app you're listening to and@the brainybusiness.com 294 all right, let's talk about Understanding Mapping the first.

Step, of course, is to explain what mapping is. It isn't the most useful title when you aren't familiar with the concept, but it is pretty easy to understand and in many ways it works just like a regular map. Thaler and Sunstein describe a mapping as the relation between choice and welfare, and they use an example of choosing a flavor of ice cream in one of their papers on choice architecture. As they say, some tasks, like picking out an ice cream flavor, are relatively easy, while others, like choosing a medical treatment, are considerably more difficult. But at their core, the path from the choice and its outcome and is called a mapping. With ice cream, most people know what flavor they might choose, especially if there are only three flavors. Do you want strawberry, chocolate or vanilla? You have a favorite and some sort of mapping in your brain already that lets you know which choice you will likely enjoy the most and if they have considerably more flavors at this ice cream shop, maybe some exotic ones you've never tried before, like lemon, lavender or maple bacon? You can always do a taste test to see which you like best and avoid accidentally buying a giant scoop of ice cream that tastes more like soap than scrumptious. But what about something more complex, like medical treatments? The mapping from choice to outcome, your welfare, as Thaler and Sunstein call it, is much more difficult to see in this case. Not everyone reacts the same way to treatment. There are a lot of variables to consider, even if there are still only three options to choose from. The example from their paper uses a diagnosis of prostate cancer and your options are surgery, radiation, or watchful waiting, which would mean not doing anything for a bit. As they say, each of these options comes with a complex set of possible outcomes regarding side effects of treatment, quality of life, length of life, and so forth. Comparing the options involves making trade offs between a longer life and an increased risk of unpleasant side effects such as impotence or incontinence. Weighing these scenarios makes for a hard decision at two levels. The patient is unlikely to know these trade offs and he's unlikely to be able to imagine what life would be like if he were in continent. Yet there are two scary facts about this scenario. First, most patients decide which course of action to take in the very meeting at which their doctor breaks the bad news about the diagnosis. Second, the treatment option they choose depends strongly on the type of doctor they see. Some specialize in surgery, others in radiation. None specialize in watchful waiting. Guess which option is the most likely candidate for underutilization. Both of these scenarios, choosing ice cream flavors or medical treatments, are showing the concept of a mapping and it's the task of any choice architect to set up a system that helps make the map as clear and easy to use as possible so the chooser can select the options that are best for them and and make them better off. There are a few ways to do this in your business and I've broken it into a five step process. Those five steps are 1 encourage thoughtful review and open mindedness. 2 break it down. 3 make it relatable. 4 help them to get there and 5 call to action. First, encouraging thoughtful review and open mindedness. This is not necessary on every single choice because we humans would get way too overwhelmed and never make any decisions. I have a whole episode about that and the overwhelmed brain which I've linked to in the show notes. However, it's important for big decisions to understand your biases and theirs when helping to map out the choice architecture for somebody. As I mentioned in the prostate cancer example, the treatment option a patient chooses is highly influenced by by the specialty of their doctor and they tend to make a decision of which path to take in the meeting where they received the diagnosis. That's a recipe for bad decision making. Know of course that this influence over the decision is not the fault of the doctor. It's our nature to trust those in authority and assume they know more than us. That is our herding brain in action. We also start to get loss averse and scared and jump into a decision too quickly. So so in that case the doctor is the choice architect and it would be best for them to understand the way the choice is being framed and their own biases in the process. If you're a surgeon, you automatically think surgery. It's the association in your brain and you have an expertise in that area. It's natural and you probably want the patient to stay with you, which is also natural. But it might be best for them to get some other options. Even if you are the best in your field at surgery, if they would do best with radiation, your efforts still might not have as good of an outcome as radiation might. Though of course this is very hard to know in advance. Thinking about this from a business perspective in your practice as a doctor. Perhaps it would be best for your business to have someone you refer to who's complimentary, and I'm sure there are plenty of doctors who do this already. It could be either someone in your same practice or someone in another location whom you work closely with and you both recommend to each other. Or maybe you would meet together as a panel and present options for the patients to help them have a less biased recommendation. It's also important to note that our brains put more weight on what we hear about first. This is the default, so if you meet with them first and recommend surgery but say they should look at another option, they will still put more importance on that first option that was presented just in our nature. It's also important to understand the mindset your patient is in or for another type of business, the mindset of your customer. Are they in shock and scared? Highly emotional? Probably, and that means they're not going to make a good decision. The best choice architect would know that this person should not make a decision in the moment they receive the news unless it's emergent and every second counts. So knowing you are the choice architect and it's your obligation to this person to help them make the best choice, what are you doing to incorporate thoughtful review and an open mind? As I said, this first step is not as important in trivial decisions, but it can still be helpful. Consider the flavors of ice cream. It's not a life or death decision, but if you have 75 flavors available and they have weird names like fish food or chunky Monkey, what are you doing to help the potential customer to be open minded and try something new? What do they need to know and how can you relate back to their existing maps? That is what we'll break down through the episode in the following steps, starting with our next one. Breaking it down. If you want to make a map, it's important to understand all the options someone has available. This goes back to last week's episode on Incentives where we asked the questions of who uses, who chooses, who pays and who profits. If you haven't already listened to that episode, I would recommend going back and checking it out after this one, as well as getting its freebie worksheet on its page. In that episode I talk about all the choices we had on our air conditioning purchase because it's never as simple as do you want air conditioning, yes or no. We could get a lot of fans or stay in hotels on hot days or put a wading pool in the backyard. There are choices outside of your business and offering that should be considered when building your choice architecture. What is the person thinking of? What is their mental state, and what should they be aware of to help them make the best choice? That is how you break it down. And this is a big chunk of where you should spend your time planning in building the map. Let's look at something completely different than what we have already looked into. Buying a camera. Let's say you work at Nikon. The choice your customer has is not just do they want a Coolpix or a DSLR model, but do they need a camera outside of their phone or do they want to buy an Olympus or a Canon? Should they get something with video capabilities? And how many megapixels should they get? Should they rent a camera when they need one? Maybe get disposable cameras when they travel? It becomes a very daunting choice very quickly. Breaking it down into all its components can help you, as the choice architect, to set up the map on behalf of the customer. That way you can anticipate the questions they have, the things they need to know, and guide them to the right recommendation. You are the expert in your offering and they want to know they're making a good choice, something they'll be happy with. Breaking it down will help you to get them there. And once you do that, you need to make it relatable. You can do this using simple rules of thumb and stepping outside of your company or industry jargon. In the camera world, we have the issue of the megapixel. Customers tend to think bigger is better. That's natural. But what do I really get if I go from seven to eight megapixels or ten or a thousand for that matter? Most non professionals have no idea other than a larger file size, which they might not actually realize either what the difference is. So how can you make that relatable to them? What if instead you use the customer's language and something they can relate back to in order to make the best decision? What if instead of listing megapixels, the cameras were listed as producing photos that were web only, 4x6 print, poster size and billboard? I know that I will never need images so crisp that they could be blown up to the size of a billboard. But I might take a photo so great I would like to hang it on my wall so poster size is best for me. Whereas someone who would only be posting images digitally and they never want to take them off of their camera can go with a web only or maybe a photo 4x6. The new concept and relatable mapping made it easier for me to make the decision and it's something I feel good about. I feel more confident in the choice, which means I will be happier over time. Sure, there are other aspects that matter and each one should have its own relatable information. Perhaps I need that same type of map for each lens or feature of the camera. But something needs to to be the lead. Something is most important. That's the default. We'll get into that next week. There's something that all the customers care about, the root of why they're getting a camera in the first place. What is that? In the case of a camera, most people want them to take pictures that they can share. They want to be able to take photos on the go and not worry about carrying around lighting equipment. There are a bunch of things amateurs don't need that a professional photographer would really care about. So the mapping will be different for each type of customer and the product lines as well. You can see how this is getting to be a pretty big job, right? But it's so important and critical for increasing your sales. The way you build your choice architecture is how all your customers will determine what to buy and whether they should go somewhere else. So this is worth spending time on up front to help you with your sales down the line. Every choice can be broken down into a simple rule of thumb to use. Let's say you're having friends over for apple cider. How many apples do you buy? Do you just wing it and buy as many as you can carry? Would it be helpful to know that a good rule of thumb is each glass of cider typically uses three apples? Wouldn't it be nice if the recipe included this tidbit of information? What sort of things that are obvious to you are really important for your potential client to make a decision? If you take a step back, what do they need to know or hear? What rule of thumb will make the choice simple and easy to make? Once you've done that, it's time for step four, helping them get there. Once you know what they need to make the decision and you've made it relatable, they still may need a little sample to know it's a good decision. This is where an ice cream shop will let you taste the fish food ice cream. Or a retailer will let you try on clothes. Or you get to go on a test drive or take some sample pictures with your potential camera and print them out to see the difference at varying sizes. People learn in all sorts of ways and incorporating the senses can be very important in making a decision, which is why there's a whole series on them in the podcast, which I've linked to in the show Notes. If you offer a service, this could be a video of you explaining what you do, or a testimonial from a happy client. The final step is your call to action. It may seem like someone should know when they're ready to buy, when they have all the information available and have analyzed and can make a choice, but it doesn't often happen that way. When there are a lot of options to consider and many variables, it's a good reminder to ask someone if they're ready to buy or if they would like to move forward or have a button that says Buy now to clear the field. This is a point where the customer's brain will think, hmm, do I have enough information yet? And the primed implication is that other people typically buy at this stage herding, which helps them feel more comfortable with the decision if they do choose to buy. I also recommend priming throughout the conversation or interaction to get them ready for the call to action when it comes. If you have not yet listened to that episode on Priming, there is of course a link in the show notes. So that is our concept of mapping in a nutshell. Now do you see why each aspect of Nudges got its own episode? There is a lot to each concept. So as a recap, the five steps in understanding mapping are 1 encourage thoughtful review and open mindedness, 2 break it down, 3 make it relatable, 4 help to get them there and 5 call to action. Now, as promised, I'm going to revisit the air conditioning example from last week to show how this phase applies to the seemingly simple choice of buying air conditioning. To encourage thoughtful review and open mindedness, an air conditioning company should know that I as the customer have other options and be willing to recommend those if they seem like a better fit. Just because they sell air conditioning doesn't mean it's the right thing for everyone they talk to and looking at Step two Breaking It down as someone selling air conditioning, it's important to know what steps I as a potential customer the chooser, will go through on my path to buying air conditioning or not, so they know how to answer any questions I may have and address concerns when they come up. For example, if I say it would be cheaper to just get fans, they could say, on the surface it seems that way, but to properly cool a house this size and have a noticeable decrease in the temperature, it uses much more energy than this efficient air conditioning system. So you would really be paying twice or whatever the actual response is. And this is how we make it relatable. Remember from last week when I talked about the ways to frame the cost instead of Simply saying it's $6500, do you want to buy? Could be made more relatable by saying for just $2 a day. Or think back to last summer when you said you were melting in here on Those days over 80, would you have paid $14 to have it be cooler on that day? This gets them back into the mindset of the pain point and what getting out of it is worth to them. We humans tend to forget things, so reminding them and bringing them back to that moment can help when making a sale. Assuming it's the right moment and the right comparison, which is why the mapping matters. That example is basically the help them get there as well. In the case of air conditioning, getting them to agree that it's worth it and a good decision is the point of this step. Someone can't have a free sample of air conditioning, but we all know what AC feels like on a hot day. I tend to think about walking down the strip in las Vegas in 110 degree heat and then stepping into a cool, comfortable casino. Relating their mindset to the right point is your taste test when they can't have a physical sample. So once you find a mapping connection that sticks, let's say the would you have paid $14 on one of those hot days to have it be cool in here worked? Then you ask for the sale. This is letting them know they likely have enough information to make a choice and they stop to evaluate. And as my friend Nikki Rauch of Sales Maven says, then you stop, wait and don't say anything for as long as it takes for them to respond. They will either say yes or voice a different objection or concern. You will have mapped as well and are able to talk through. And as a quick note, this should not be a sleazy sales experience. You don't want people working off a hard and fast script who will say anything to make the sale. This is where step one comes in and it really becomes a cyclical process, genuinely considering in each instance if this is the right fit for them or not and helping them to come to the best choice. If you are not a fit, you should be able to identify that quickly and recommend they go somewhere else. You will not be a fit for everyone. And if you don't try to sell people who don't need your services. They will respect you for it and keep you in mind for future when they are ready and probably make referrals. Scripts are helpful, but in good choice architecture they should be a supplement and not a hard and fast rule. Staff should understand the intent behind the script. They should understand the mapping as well and what makes a good fit. Then they should practice enough so they have moved everything into the automatic processing in their brain. This is the subconscious I'm always talking about. If they know the content, the features and benefits and how they relate and all the options by heart, it's easier to have a true conversation that isn't salesy. They can be in the moment and truly help the person they're working with, which makes all the difference. Remember from episode 5 the Truth About Pricing Price is never about price, it's about all the things leading up to the price. Price is just one factor of a choice, which is why understanding choice architecture is so critical for any business. Before we jump into the other examples from the episode, I want to make sure that you know I referenced my friend Nikki Rauch there from your sales maven. There is a link to her business in the show notes and she's amazing. I also want to take a quick moment to thank Magic mom for your five star review on itunes titled I need more Hours in the Day. She said, I've just caught one episode so far and I'm hooked. I already know the next three I'm going to listen to bouncing around in the order because there are so many topics that are critically important to my business. I hope you're enjoying the rest of the episodes. Magic mom and I would love to hear more about which episodes you chose and what you learned, how you're applying that in your business. So if you hear this, please send me an email melinathebrainybusiness.com or connect on social media where you can find me as the brainy biz to let me know who you are so I can do a proper shout out with a link in the show notes just like there is for my friend Nikki Rauch. And thank you again for the review. I appreciate it. All right, now let's talk about some other mapping examples. And do note that these are all intentionally more basic choices to be mapped because the final installment of the Nudges series, the S in Nudges, is for structuring complex choices. So we'll get into more complex choices like real estate and travel arrangements in a few weeks. I'm going to go through a bunch of examples in a somewhat rapid fire fashion. And as a reminder, the five steps for using mapping in your business are encouraging, thoughtful review and open minded. Break it down, make it relatable, help them get there and call to action. And this is another good time to download that freebie if you haven't already. Okay, earlier in the episode I talked about an ice cream shop as our basic example of mapping. Getting a little more complex than that, but still not too complex is the idea of a menu. At a restaurant, menus are often sorted into categories like appetizers, seafood, beef, chicken and desserts or separating beer from wine and within that having separate categories for whites, reds. And this is breaking it down into more manageable chunks. Can you imagine how frustrating dining out would be if everything was a complete hodgepodge with no consideration to mapping? Diners would be forced to ask tons of questions with no logical way to consider all their options. Now that the items are in categories, the restaurant will often help you get there and make it relatable. Using well worded descriptions, the description can help you to evaluate if the dish or drink is something you would like or if it's one you should pass on. Looking at the online menu for Ruth's Chris Steakhouse, they start with three different kinds of steak Steak, filet, Cowboy ribeye and New York Strip. Now filet, ribeye and New York strip are titles someone who's familiar with steak, has probably heard of and can relate to. Similar to the chocolate vanilla strawberry choice from earlier. But what's a cowboy ribeye? What makes it cowboy? Does it have a special seasoning on it? Is it the way it's cooked? Does it have toppings on it? Is it really big or age differently? This one descriptor, this one word adds a lot of complexity for the brain and gets all those associations running in your subconscious. And one really brilliant thing that it does. That one word makes your brain want to read the description both for this and the surrounding related items to see how they might be different and how they compare. So let's move on to the descriptions, which I'm going to put under a conscious brain microscope. The filet is listed as 11 ounces of our most tender cut of lean Midwestern beef. That provided a lot of information for the diner with only a few well selected words. We know it's the most tender, but it's still lean. And we have some information of size 11 ounces, but there isn't a lot of context until we read the other descriptions. The cowboy ribeye is described as 22 ounces of perfectly marbled and generously flavored bone in cut. So we can now know that Cowboy seems to be relating both to size and generous flavor, though we don't know from what. And what does perfectly marbled mean by who's standard? Finally, the New York strip is listed as a 16 ounce full flavored USDA prime cut with a slightly firmer texture than a ribeye. So we know it's the mid size and probably the most firm. Since it's firmer than a ribeye and the fillet is the most tender, it's a prime cut and full flavored. By the way, does that mean the others have less flavor? What kind of flavor? Why does it have more On a conscious level, we might have all sorts of questions like this when you would want to nitpick in creating your own choice architecture. And we may think that someone will need all the words in each description or a chart to help them understand every single aspect. Sometimes that's true, and that's more likely with really structured and complex choices. But our subconscious brain can take in a lot of information and gloss over a lot of things. It doesn't matter need to know. It will not ask who determines what's perfectly marbled and what is slightly less than perfect. Instead, it believes what it's told at first until evidence proves it otherwise. In other words, if you're going to use a word like perfect, it better be pretty darn good. If not, you could be setting the experience up for failure. And while you could call the New York strip the firmest steak, that isn't necessarily something everyone gets excited about. So saying it has a slightly firmer texture than a ribeye provides the description without letting it get too extreme, and it tells you something about the ribeye and how it's related to the strip as well as the filet. And it helps the customer to map out their best choice with just a few well chosen words. These short descriptions include some taste words as well as relativity, anchoring and adjustment and framing. There are links to each of those previous episodes in the show Notes. All of that works together to create the mapping and help the diner to understand which item they will like the most and what will make them happiest at the end of the meal. As I said, even the simplest choices have a lot going on and this is just the entree. Restaurants can also incorporate things like staff picks, chef specials, bolded options, images of peppers or flames to indicate spice level, and many other items to help with the mapping process. And any business, not just restaurants, can learn from this practice. Moving on. Our next example is from my nail salon. I talked about them in episode two, the top five wording mistakes businesses make. And it's time to revisit their offerings. Back when I first started going there, they had two choices for pedicures, Standard and the deluxe spa package, which included some extra features like paraffin wax and hot stones. It was only a few dollars more, so it was an easy choice to upgrade to. The staff could ask a simple question, do you want Deluxe? And point to a sign on the wall. English is not the first language for most of the employees at this particular salon. And so this made it easy, easy on customers and the staff alike. It was an easy mapping. Then they added a third option and a fourth and a fifth. Now they hand over a laminated sheet of paper with the descriptions of each option. One is called organic and one is called deluxe and one is standard and one is ultimate. And it makes it all so confusing because there's no commonality between and as a visitor tries to compare, compare what's the same and different in each option. It requires a lot of reading and you easily get overwhelmed. The staff don't know how to explain it, so you just end up picking something. And for all you anchoring and adjustment folks, they do have them in the wrong order. They start with the lowest price first and work their way up. So I asked my tech what she recommended. The first time I was given this sheet, she pointed to one on the list that was around the midpoint on price. And so I said okay, it was fine, but it made me very confused and caused me to have a lot of what if thinking what if I had chosen package 4 instead of package 3? Would it have had a different experience? And that can lead to regret. And both of those topics are going to be the feature of future episodes after finishing up this series on nudges. But it's important to understand when you put too much out there, it can cause overwhelm, which means you're not going to make a decision and leading to regret, which are things you don't want to do when helping someone to make a choice. The big lesson here from the nail salon is adding more may seem like a benefit, but when it doesn't have a useful map so the chooser can compare one to the other, adding more options can cause a lot more harm than good. So in your business, is it easy to compare one choice to the next or does it take a lot of explaining? If so, it's worth looking at the way you're presenting your map so that you can maximize the experience for the chooser. Many of my clients have product based businesses, everything from jewelry organizers to weighted blankets. We talk a lot about how to showcase their products on their websites. For maximum impact. The advice I give them is to consider what they present from the mind of their consumer and we talk about mapping. If there are options to choose from like color, size, shape, texture or something else, what would most customers care about? First, think back to the menu. The broad categories of drinks, appetizers and entrees need to come first before dividing within the section for your product. What is the most logical first category to sort by? It may be price, but I recommend having price come later on as you know if you've listened to that episode the Truth About Pricing, which again is linked in the show notes let's say you sell shoes. What are the main categories to sort by? The top category is probably men's, women's, boys, girls, and maybe something for toddlers and infants. Once you're within the top category, let's go with women's you have a second level, casual, athletic, dressy, and then within the category you can go further. Dressy can be sorted into heels and then heel height, color and styles. When someone knows what they're looking for or what they definitely do not want want, they can use the map to help them make a choice. Do the same with your business and that counts even if you sell a service. Consider credit cards. How does someone know if your credit card is better than another? How do people compare concepts like fees to rates? And what do they naturally understand? Most people do not understand how a fear fee impacts them differently than a rate. For example, how does a 1% increase in the rate impact a consumer compared to a $5 monthly fee? Is it the same money out of pocket? More? Less? How does it change based on your balance? Where is the point that it's a worse deal? Unfortunately, because of the more obvious pain point of $5 per month compared to the calculated ambiguous number of 1%, our silly human brains don't feel them the same way. This is the concept of incentives. Again, where I talked about the meter ticking in the taxi versus buying a car. But it also matters for mapping. If you want to show that your credit card is better or make it more appealing, how can you showcase it in a way that consumers actually relate to instead of what you think they should know, like this rate is better than that fee or something along those lines? Another place this shows up and causes problems is in the miles Per Gallon number on Cars when buying a car, it's common for them to have a sticker or a rating on a website that says they get 10 miles per gallon or 50 miles per gallon. And probably a different number for the highway versus city driving. Our brains see these numbers and think of it as a linear relationship. We think going from 35 to 40 miles per gallon is a significant difference, but it isn't really as useful a number as we think it is. I've linked to an article in the Show Notes which recommends switching from miles per gallon to gallons per mile. Does it sound like the same thing? Do you think those numbers should be the same because they aren't. Our subconscious hears the name or acronym and thinks they're the same. But here's the way it calculates out. 10 miles per gallon means you will use 1,000 gallons for every 10,000 miles you drive. This is an important number because the average American drives 10,000 miles per year. And now you know it will take you 1,000 gallons to get there in the year. At $3.50 a gallon, that's not chump change and it's nice to have that number you can compare to. What about if you go up to 20 miles per gallon? It's a pretty clear shift. It takes 500 gallons per 10,000 miles. So moving up from 10 to 20 miles per gallon cuts your gasoline cost in half. Awesome. What about as you move up, going to a car with 40 miles per gallon halves it again, bringing you down to only 250 gallons used to go 10,000 miles. And a car that gets 50 miles per gallon gets you down to 200. Creating a chart in this way in a number that's easier to calculate and that relates to something you're used to, like how much you pay at the pump makes the mental mapping easier for someone making a decision. If the car with 50 miles per gallon is only $1,500 more than the one with 15 miles per gallon, it's probably a good investment. But moving from 45 to 50, maybe it isn't as important from an out of pocket at the gas station scenario, how can you put numbers out there that are easier for people to understand and see the value in your business or where they're willing to compromise but still make a good decision? And how do industries make it easy to compare across companies? Thaler and Sunstein recommend a system called recap, which stands for Record Evaluate, Compare Alternative prices. In this scenario, you could consider a cell phone plan which has lots of miscellaneous fees and charges that all add up into one big conglomerate Bill, Are you getting the best price for your type of usage or would you do better on a different plan, either from the same company or from another one? It's really hard to tell. The recap option that they suggest makes it so. Companies would have to produce a recap report at the end of the year, which would disclose all the fees and charges throughout the year in an electronic format, which could then be plugged into any other carrier or plan to see if that customer would have gotten a better deal elsewhere and exactly how much it would have cost them on another plan. It's pretty cool, and this could apply to all sorts of other complex choices like insurance, mortgages, credit cards, you name it. I think it would be interesting to test how many people would actually take advantage and how many would be overcome by status quo bias in that case. But that's a test and conversation for another day. Moving on, what if movies did not have trailers or descriptions or reviews from critics, or more recently, ratings on sites like Rotten Tomatoes? How would you choose if you want to see something called Green Book or.

How would you know what Vice is about?

How would you know if it was a comedy or a drama? Movie trailers and sites like Fandango or IMDb or shows like Entertainment Tonight or columns in the newspaper all help you to map the available movies and choose what you want to see. They're making it relatable and giving you a taste of what it would be like so you can be happy with the choice you make. Commercials take advantage of mirror neurons in the customer's brain for any product, not just movies, by showing someone else using the product, maybe tasting it, picking it out from a menu or off a shelf trying it on driving a car. You get the idea. This all helps our brain to feel like we've already made that choice once before, making it easier to make now that it's actually been mapped in our brain. For more on mirror neurons, check out episode 31, which is of course linked in the show notes. Images are great in mapping, but you do want to use words to your advantage too, even in commercials. Did you ever see the commercials for Breyer's ice cream back in the 90s that had kids reading the ingredients off the back of different containers. If not, there's a link in the show notes. One kid reads simple ingredients that he can easily say milk, cream, sugar and the other is reading long, not so delicious sounding names like Poly and Diglycerides or calcium sorbate, which of course she cannot pronounce properly so it sounds more like gobbledygook. That would make you look up and notice the commercial, which is brilliant in and of itself. This is a simple way to show the benefit of easy ingredients in a different way that will help the customer's brain to map to making better decisions in choosing the ice cream with the simple ingredients. If you just say the words simple ingredients versus they have lots of fillers, it's not the same as hearing a child read it. Some of this has been copied more recently in pet food commercials, like those which say chicken is the first ingredient or that they never include grains or cornmeal or whatnot. Speaking of which, how do you choose which cat food to buy? Or dog food? You can't taste it yourself. I mean, maybe you could but probably don't want to. So how do you know if it's good or better than the other options? I saw a commercial recently that showed a delicious salmon fillet lightly seasoned as if it were for a human person. It looked like food any human would be happy to eat, but it's for a cat and I'm guessing the salmon doesn't look like that when it makes its way into the processing plant. But our brain likes this image and relates that to healthy fresh salmon. It helps us us to feel like we're making a good choice for our cat. You see that delicious salmon and think I like salmon. I bet Fluffy would like that too. And again, the visual is best for the subconscious. Lastly, there are many ways you can help the customer to try it out and test their own welfare for items they may not otherwise know if they would like it. We talked about the taste test for ice cream and other foods. Retail stores let people try on clothes, shoes and jewelry, or test perfume, or see a mock up of their house after a remodel. Any type of company, whether you sell physical products or a service, can use a guarantee of some kind. I've talked about this on the podcast before, but people are much more likely to buy an item with a money back guarantee, even though they don't usually take advantage of it. That means there's not as much risk for the company and it's usually a good financial investment since so few will be returned and most people just need that extra assurance that they could return it if they want. This is a nudge and part of the mapping process. This last way I'm going to recommend is one of the easiest and something that is so often overlooked by businesses it probably seems silly and like you shouldn't have to say it explicitly, but it makes a difference. It absolutely helps nudge people to make a choice. And again, it's so easy. Are you ready for this tip? It's to use a call out or a title like Most Popular or Top choice or best value. Know of course that you are responsible in your business to ensure that it truly is the most popular, the best value. And you're not nudging people into a bad choice, but putting this type of a category heading or an arrow pointing at something or will definitely help direct people putting that map in place so they can see what other people have done, bringing in herding and framing and all these other aspects of behavioral economics into helping them make the choice and give them that nudge. Do remember the intent of a nudge is to help people make the best choice and ensuring they still have free choice to decide on or pick anything that they want, including getting nothing. Hopefully you now have a solid understanding of the concept of mapping and have some ideas of how to use it in your business when nudging customers to make a choice.

So what got your brain buzzing as you learned about understanding mapping today? For me, I like the focus on the decision maker's mindset that is underlying the process of understanding mapping. After years of talking about and teaching these concepts to my clients and students, I know this is one of the hardest aspects of nudging for people to really understand how it works and then go on to apply. I get it and it is really important, so it's worth investing the time in, especially if you have more complex choices and options that you're needing to present to people. When you have three flavors of ice cream and that's it, it isn't really that important. But most decisions are more complex than that and they go beyond what you're thinking about. For your single in point, what I mean is people have lots of other options and often there are ones you aren't considering that are keeping people from changing their behavior.

It's easy to say they need to pick us or the competition and we're.

Better or more affordable or whatever. So we've got this in the bag. But really, what else could they do? What if they do nothing? What if their criteria is on something different than what you're considering? What about the creative solution you don't see or given enough credit to? Understanding the value points and how to present the information to help someone make their best decision is not something you figure out in one meeting or conversation. It can take lots of time and thoughtfulness and testing to unlock, but it's so worth really lets you stand out from the competition and win again and again and again based on the effort you put in up front. It pays dividends, trust me. And to hear a little of what this looks like for employees, their incentives and motivation inside an organization, tune in this coming Friday to episode 295 with Kurt Nelson. Thanks to everyone who's already subscribed to the Brainy Business Podcast.

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Episodes, including that conversation with Kurt right as they come out.

Before we close out the show, I.

Want to be sure you know there are links to related past episodes like the rest of the nudging series and books and articles in the show notes for this episode. It's all waiting for you within the app you're listening to and@the brainybusiness.com 294 and just like that, episode 294 on understanding mapping is done. Join me Friday for a brief, brand new episode with Kurt Nelson of the Lantern Group. 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.