Matt Johnson's Blog, page 4

What Social Media and The Decline of Retail Means for Shared Consumer Experiences

The largest, most well-subscribed brands are unsurprisingly in the digital space. But while the reach for these brands is broad, the experience is anything but unified. Spotify has quickly risen to be a dominant force in music streaming. But one needs ...

How Branding Influences American Consumer Culture

Should brand logos be considered art? If you asked Vladimir Nabokov the answer would be a resounding "no". The mid-century Russian author was an admirer of American painter Norman Rockwell who, among other things, stenciled logos and advertisements of ...

Products for Loneliness: How Companion Robots and Humanoids are Driving Consumer Behavior

If Benjamin Button taught us anything, it's that infants and old people are more similar than they are different. Towards the end of our lives, we return to the same state as we started: slow, irritable, and with a tendency towards soft foods. 

In the c...

Loneliness and The Psychology of Personification

Loneliness doesn’t just intensify the drive for human connection. It fundamentally alters the drive itself. As we’ve seen, it turns social cognition inward and makes us more likely to develop distant, more parasocial relationships. 

This, however, is ju...

How Loneliness Impacts the Psychology of Parasocial Relationships

 Humans have at least two unescapable tendencies when it comes to social interactions: We can’t help being judgmental, and we can’t help trying to figure out what the other person is thinking. 

Within seconds of seeing someone, we’re already forming ide...

What The Psychology of Loneliness Means for Consumerism

 Each year there’s that one must-have gift. In 2007, it was the iPhone. In 1984, it was the first Air Jordans. In 1975? A rock. That’s right. 1975 was the year of the pet rock. Accessibly priced at $4 each, the rocks came in a cardboard box shaped like...

The Psychology of Loneliness and Its Influence on Consumerism

 Each year there’s that one must-have gift. In 2007, it was the iPhone. In 1984, it was the first Air Jordans. In 1975? A rock. That’s right. 1975 was the year of the pet rock. Accessibly priced at $4 each, the rocks came in a cardboard box shaped like...

Money on The Mind, with Merle van den Aaker

In your opinion, what is the one thing you wished more people in the general public understood about payments and pricing?

I think what I’d like for people to realise is that the payment method matters. And it matters quite a lot. Most people think that...

Behavioral Economics and the Psychology of Money with Merle van den Akker

One of the most interesting questions in consumer behavior is how we think about money. The field is rife with examples of how pricing strategies and payment systems can reliably warp the psychological value of money. The way we think about money, paym...

How Consumer Behavior is Shaped by Intrinsic Motivation

Over decades of secrecy and solitude, Henry Darger worked obsessively at his art. 

He toiled tirelessly across several mediums, but his masterpiece was an illustrated epic novel. Verbosely titled “The Story of the Vivian Girls in what is known as the re...