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Dan Ariely, Marketing Guru
NGMR Marketing Guru Interview - Dan Ariely and Tom H. C. Anderson discuss Predictably Irrational and market research
Today I have the pleasure of speaking with Marketing (Behavioral Economist) Guru and author of Predictably Irrational, Dan Ariely. Dan Ariely is also a professor of Behavioral Economics at Duke University Fuqua School of Business and visiting professor MIT The Media Laboratory.
Tom: Welcome Dan. I really enjoyed the recent interview you did with yourself. It's nice to see a business guru with a good sense of humor.
What's the difference between "behavioral economics" and "consumer insights" or "market research" etc.?
Dan: In reality, there are a lot of similarities between different versions of social science. They all try to understand and predict human behavior. The particular nuance that is specific to behavioral economics is that it examines behavior from a perspective of rational economics and looks at that as a starting theory (often wrong). There are also multiple versions of behavioral economics but my particular version is concerned not only with changing our understanding and reliance on economics but also thinking about what kind of changes we would make in the world if we understood that people behave in a consistent, predictable way that is not captured by standard economic theory.
For example, we can think about how we want to change our finanical system to take into account that people cannot deal well with conflict of interest. Or we can think about how to think differently about health care if we realize that people who are sick cannot weigh the cost & benefits of different treatment options, etc.
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