The Irrational Consumer: A Guide

Within this publication, articles are split into sections that correspond to the 5 stages that make up a customer journey.

• Awareness
• Interest
• Evaluation
• Purchase
• Loyalty

At each stage, the experience of cognitive biases and other psychological effects are plotted on a graph.

Authors consider which of three types of psychological factors were responsible for shaping their decisions at each stage.

Cognitive Factors:

Cognitive factors are split into — Attention (including short-term memory, and fatigue), Ease (including processing fluency and cognitive ease), and Availability (the familiarity and accessibility of information).

Situational Factors:

Situational factors are split into — Urgency (including scarcity and any time constraints that encourage action), Certainty (reassurance and information bias), and Endowment (including the endowment effect and loss aversion).

Social Factors:

Social factors are split into — ID (including social cognition and egotism), Reactance (resistance to coercion and a desire for autonomy) and Social Proof (including FOMO, group consensus and conformity).