This podcast is based on The Customer Science Handbook by Alexander Chernev, professor of marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. Drawing on decades of research in psychology, behavioral economics, and marketing, it examines the forces that shape customer behavior and offers a systematic approach to creating transformative customer experiences.
This episode examines decision-making in business markets through the lens of behavioral science, showing that managers—like consumers—are influenced by functional, psychological, and financial consi…
This episode examines the nature of consumption beyond functionality, highlighting how people engage with products and services as immersive experiences. It explores the emotional, cognitive, and sen…
Over time, even the most exciting offerings can become routine, leading to decreased enjoyment through a process called habituation. This episode explains the psychological roots of habituation and p…
This episode explores the role of market research in uncovering customer insights that drive strategic business decisions. It highlights how understanding customer motivations, preferences, and behav…
This episode introduces the concept of customer loyalty as a multidimensional phenomenon that includes both behavioral patterns and emotional commitment. It outlines four key types of loyalty—functio…
This episode explores functional loyalty, which is driven by customers’ satisfaction with the tangible benefits of a company’s offering. It highlights the role of performance consistency, reliability…
Exploratory research helps managers uncover insights into customer needs and behaviors when little is known about the problem space. This episode explains how techniques like focus groups, ethnograph…
Descriptive research allows companies to analyze large volumes of structured and unstructured data to understand market conditions, customer segments, and behavioral trends. This episode discusses ho…
This episode explores how customer value is defined not by the attributes of a product but by the benefits and costs as perceived by customers. It emphasizes the importance of aligning offering attri…
This episode explores the gap between customer choice and actual purchase, emphasizing how decisions often don’t immediately translate into action. It discusses the influence of marketing, social pre…
This episode explores two key behavioral strategies for closing the gap between choice and purchase: boosting action drivers and eliminating action barriers. Action drivers work by increasing the sal…
This episode focuses on anticipated regret as a powerful emotional barrier that hinders customers from acting on their choices. It explains how forward-looking emotions and counterfactual thinking ma…
This episode focuses on how emotional involvement enhances the customer experience and increases satisfaction, loyalty, and brand resonance. It explores the psychological mechanisms behind emotional …
This episode examines identity loyalty, where customers form connections with brands that reflect or enhance their self-concept. It explains how people use products to express who they are or aspire …
This episode dives into behavioral loyalty, which stems from habit rather than conscious decision-making. It describes how routine purchasing behavior is formed, reinforced, and maintained, and why d…
In this episode, the focus is on managing customer experiences to build loyalty through service quality and recovery. Using the service-gap model, it outlines how to identify and close discrepancies …
This episode focuses on how experimentation is used to determine cause-and-effect relationships between marketing actions and customer responses. It explains the principles of controlled experiments,…
After collecting and analyzing data, the real challenge lies in interpreting results accurately and linking them to business decisions. This episode explores common validity threats, decision errors,…
Loss aversion explains why losses hurt more than equivalent gains feel good—a core principle in understanding customer reactions and choices. The episode shows how this bias influences everything fro…
Customer value is multi-dimensional, encompassing functional, psychological, and monetary aspects that interact to shape the customer experience. This episode highlights how companies like Tesla and …