NudgeNews January

Behavioural Economics and CSR: ‘Greening’ the Consumer

What could be the connection between CSR and green nudges? Few examples, but read about good arguments for exploring the idea here.


Nudging in the Recommendations

I recently published a book about information phenomena. This post explores how nudging could help break the filterbubble as well as echo chambers.

Nudge in business: mission impossible or win-win?

By Andreas Maaløe Jespersen & Pelle Guldborg Hansen

The nudge-doctrine is primarily developed as a strategy for creating smarter public solutions in health, economy and citizenship. But as the idea has evolved and disseminated, private companies and non-profit organizations have shown a keen interest in adopting nudge-like strategies as well. 

Credit to Xedos4

Businesses in the private market have a long history of using behavioral strategies when engaging with their customers, and they definitely have a lead on the public institutions when it comes to knowledge about their customers behavior and how to affect it. 

In the private market this has traditionally been referred to as marketing strategies, and it covers everything from fancy "buy one get one for free" offers to the supermarket's space-management that always makes us buy more than we thought we needed. 

At just a quick glance marketing and nudge could easily be confused as being the same thing - they both shape behavior by adjusting the context in which we choose or our perception thereof, and they both aim at actual behavior change rather than just information change. But in fact, there is especially one key factor that separates nudging from marketing, and prompts the question “is nudge really a viable strategy for businesses?” 

The key to unlocking the answer is found in the observation that in traditional marketing, there is no real need for the concept 'nudge'.

This crucial element for this difference is that a nudge by definition aims at making people better of: according to their own reflected judgment. This means, that when we nudge people, we have to make certain that we nudge them in a direction they themselves would have taken if they had thought things through and following had unlimited energy to constantly monitor their preferences, without restricting those who reach different conclusions than then one nudged for. 

Credit to Xedos4

Marketing usually aims at increasing profits, and usually does this without considering what people would actually prefer if given the time to think things through. As a result increasing profits often make people worse off according to their own judgment. No one thinks that leaving a supermarket having spend 30 pct more than they initially planned actually leaves better them off (especially not when the 30 pct is spend on items that will also ruin their desire to loose weight), and who is really satisfied by watching money disappear every month for a fitness subscription they no longer use?

Of course, when it has already happened, we are rarely willing as consumers to admit our own failure, and to resolve the resulting cognitive dissonance we come up with reasons that rationalize our actions to save our self-image as rational and responsible decision makers.  

The difference between nudge and marketing comes down to which end we aim to satisfy - the customer's or the business? Unsurprisingly these elements are not as incompatible as they initially seem - take a company like Apple - who have made a hefty profit of supplying their customers with gadgets that are user friendly and intuitive, or a company like Amazon how have revolutionized customer service from something that used to be painful and slow to a pleasant hassle free process.


In fact, a hall-mark of paying proper attention to the nudge-doctrine and getting acquainted with insights from behavioral economics, cognitive psychology and marketing is that it open up new alleys for identifying win-win strategies in the interaction between marketing and consumer welfare. Why not sell more mineral water instead of more softdrinks? And why not sell more whole wheat bread instead of bad white toast bread?   

If businesses are serious about nudge - we hope that the future will bring supermarkets that make you healthier by default, fitness subscriptions that automatically goes on time-out when you're not using them and plane tickets that actually state the full costs before you buy them - only by then can the market truly be said to be nudgers.

NudgeNews, December, 2011

By Pelle Guldborg Hansen

Everyday quite a few articles, blogs and papers on Nudge and related issues are made available online. NudgeNews is our way of trying to facilitate a better understanding of nudging by giving you access and an overview.

Dec. 14, 2011

Nudge-initiative to nudge consumers toward sustainable practices

(consumer, sustainability, marketing)

Akshay R. Rao at the Carlsson School of Management, University of Minnesota is reported to have started up an initiative or consortium involving goverment agencies as well as companies aimed at boosting research in earth-friendly behavior and products:

Initiative to nudge consumers toward sustainable practices

Suggestion that UK government should counter market's use of behavioral economics with a ban

(consumer, alcohol consumption, marketing)

One of the issues that keeps coming up, is how to counter the industry's use of behavioral economics, especially when it leaves to severely harmful behavior. In this piece from The Telegraph Andrew M. Brown provides a balanced and sound argument for why we should consider to counter use of insights from behavioral economics by banning multi-buy deals in relation to alcohol consumption:  

Boozy Britain: your very good health?

Dec. 12, 2011

UK to nudge job creation

(work, incentive schemes)

Ed Davey, employment relations minister in the UK, has announced a plan for re-arranging incentives for employment providers that will have them pay more attention to whether they provide a sustainable job opportunity. Read more about it in the following two links:

A small job can boost job creation says Davey

'Nudge in the right direction' helpful for job creation  

Dec. 4, 2011

Nudging for healthier hospital cafeterias

(health, cafeterias, food)

A new study evaluates cafeterias in children's hospitals. Standards on how to present food and other nudges could be part of such evaluations in the future, says Dr. Lenard Lesser, a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation clinical scholar at UCLA's medical school and the lead author of the study.

UCLA study on healthy food at children's hospitals

Dec. 2, 2011

Smarter lunch rooms
(health, cafeterias, food)

Stargazette.com reports on a programme called "smarter lunch rooms" working in collaboration with Cornell. The article features little documentation, but some great ideas and illustrations of how one works with nudging healthier food choices in cafeterias and lunch rooms.

School lunchrooms strive to get smarter

Dec. 1, 2011

Nudging in the UK 
(nudge politics, problematic cases, car-theft)

A blog update on Marketing about Nudging in the UK by Nicola Clark seemingly based on a talk by Sam Nguyen from the Behavioural Insight Team at Marketing's Trends+ conference.   While there is no direct point in the update, it does feature three pieces of interest: (1) an attempt to get UK consumers to use more money with a nudge that seems samewhat unlikely to succeed; (2) the usual case of a  seemingly problematic case out of reach for the nudge-doctrine; and (3) a very interesting report of a social disclosure nudge in car-theft security.

Nudge theory or fudge theory?

Nudging young people to a better economy

Press here to play

By Pelle Guldborg Hansen


This morning I appeared on the national news station TV2news in an interview about how to nudge young people to a better economy.

When I reach my lunch-break I'll write an English recap with references to the survey we're discussing, plus with reference to some of the interesting findings and claims that I mention.

Until then you may enjoy the interview... in Danish.

NudgeNews Nov. 18, 2011

Credit: Salvatore Vuono

By Pelle Guldborg Hansen

Everyday quite a few articles, blogs and papers on Nudge and related issues are made available online. NudgeNews is our way of trying to facilitate a better understanding of nudging by giving you access and an overview.

Nov. 18, 2011. 

Consumer, money, economy. Politic.co.uk report on how HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) step up their Tax Health Plan using the social nudges.

CIOT: Doctors’ orders – HMRC issue final warning to 2500 health professionals

Consumer, money, economy, new research. Bob Sullivan reports on new research published in Journal of Consumer Research by Promothesh Chatterjee of the University of Kansas and Randall L. Rose or University of South Carolina suggesting that not only do credit cards make you use more money (the credit card premium), but it also makes you evaluate goods in a biased way. 

Using a credit card induces euphoria, new research shows

Sustainability, university, trash. When University of Pittsburgh students weren’t recycling, student Jamie Kimmel designed some new labels to help people realize the consequences of their actions.

U Of Recycling: Creative Signage Gives A Nudge