The Event:

In contrast to spending hundreds of millions of dollars on advertising to entreat people to buy their products, this talk relies on principles of behavioral economics to discuss the structure of the shopping environment and design of marketplace interventions in ways that maximize consumer response. In this talk, Ravi discusses Yale's framework built on recent advances in behavioural economics to understand how consumers make choices and apply these theories inside the store.

The Speaker:

Professor Dhar is an expert in consumer behavior and branding, marketing management, and marketing strategy, and he is a leader in bringing psychological insights to the study of consumer decision-making. His research focuses on using psychological principles, such as limited self-control and cognitive limitations in processing information, to investigate fundamental aspects about the formation of consumer preferences and goals, in order to understand consumer behavior in the marketplace. Over the years, he has addressed questions such as the following: How do consumers make a choice as the number of options multiply? How do people make tradeoffs between what’s fun and what’s practical? Can engaging in a selfless act lead to more selfish choices? Does making an initial purchase have an impact on their willingness to spend on additional purchase? His other research focuses on understanding consumer motivation to pursue their goals in various situations as well managing the simultaneous pursuit of multiple goals. In real-life situations, people hold several different, even conflicting goals that they intend to accomplish and his research explores the regulation of multiple goals in multiple goal systems. His work has been mentioned in Business Week, the New York Times, the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, USA Today, and other popular media.