The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business (54 page)

6.38
But once a sense of crisis gripped
For more on how crises can create an atmosphere where change is possible in medicine, and how wrong-site surgeries occur, see Douglas McCarthy and David Blumenthal, “Stories from the Sharp End: Case Studies in Safety Improvement,”
Milbank Quarterly
84 (2006): 165–200; J. W. Senders et al., “The Egocentric Surgeon or the Roots of Wrong Side Surgery,”
Quality and Safety in Health Care
17 (2008): 396–400; Mary R. Kwaan et al., “Incidence, Patterns, and Prevention of Wrong-Site Surgery,”
Archives of Surgery
141, no. 4 (April 2006): 353–57.

6.39
Other hospitals have made similar
For a discussion on this topic, see McCarthy and Blumenthal, “Stories from the Sharp End”; Atul Gawande,
Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance
(New York: Metropolitan Books, 2008); Atul Gawande,
The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right
(New York: Metropolitan Books, 2009).

6.40
In the wake of that tragedy
NASA, “Report to the President: Actions to Implement the Recommendations of the Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle
Challenger
Accident,” July 14, 1986; Matthew W. Seeger, “The
Challenger
Tragedy and Search for Legitimacy,”
Communication Studies
37, no. 3 (1986): 147–57; John Noble Wilford, “New NASA System Aims to Encourage Blowing the Whistle,”
The New York Times,
June 5, 1987; Joseph Lorenzo Hall, “
Columbia
and
Challenger
: Organizational Failure at NASA,” Space Policy 19, no. 4 (November 2003), 239–47; Barbara Romzek and Melvin Dubnick, “Accountability
in the Public Sector: Lessons from the
Challenger
Tragedy,”
Public Administration Review
47, no. 3 (May–June 1987): 227–38.

6.41
Then, a runway error
Karl E. Weick, “The Vulnerable System: An Analysis of the Tenerife Air Disaster,”
Journal of Management
16, no. 3 (1990): 571–93; William Evan and Mark Manion,
Minding the Machines: Preventing Technological Disasters
(Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall Professional, 2002); Raimo P. Hämäläinen and Esa Saarinen,
Systems Intelligence: Discovering a Hidden Competence in Human Action and Organizational Life
(Helsinki: Helsinki University of Technology, 2004).

7.1
grab an extra box
The details on subconscious tactics retailers use comes from Jeremy Caplan, “Supermarket Science,”
Time,
May 24, 2007; Paco Underhill,
Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000); Jack Hitt; “The Theory of Supermarkets,”
The New York Times,
March 10, 1996; “The Science of Shopping: The Way the Brain Buys,”
The Economist,
December 20, 2008; “Understanding the Science of Shopping,”
Talk of the Nation,
National Public Radio, December 12, 2008; Malcolm Gladwell, “The Science of Shopping,”
The New Yorker,
November 4, 1996.

7.2
to buy almost anything
There are literally thousands of studies that have scrutinized how habits influence consumer behaviors—and how unconscious and semi-conscious urges influence decisions that might otherwise seem immune from habitual triggers. For more on these fascinating topics, see H. Aarts, A. van Knippenberg, and B. Verplanken, “Habit and Information Use in Travel Mode Choices,”
Acta Psychologica
96, nos. 1–2 (1997): 1–14; J. A. Bargh, “The Four Horsemen of Automaticity: Awareness, Efficiency, Intention, and Control in Social Cognition,” in
Handbook of Social Cognition,
ed. R. S. Wyer, Jr., and T. K. Srull (Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1994); D. Bell, T. Ho, and C. Tang, “Determining Where to Shop: Fixed and Variable Costs of Shopping,”
Journal of Marketing Research
35, no. 3 (1998): 352–69; T. Betsch, S. Haberstroh, B. Molter, A. Glöckner, “Oops, I Did It Again—Relapse Errors in Routinized Decision Making,”
Organizational
Behavior and Human Decision Processes
93, no. 1 (2004): 62–74; M. Cunha, C. Janiszewski, Jr., and J. Laran, “Protection of Prior Learning in Complex Consumer Learning Environments,”
Journal of Consumer
Research
34, no. 6 (2008): 850–64; H. Aarts, U. Danner, and N. de Vries, “Habit Formation and Multiple Means to Goal Attainment: Repeated Retrieval of Target Means Causes Inhibited Access to Competitors,”
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
33, no. 10 (2007): 1367–79; E. Ferguson and P. Bibby, “Predicting Future Blood Donor Returns: Past Behavior, Intentions,
and Observer Effects,”
Health Psychology
21, no. 5 (2002): 513–18; Edward Fox and John Semple, “Understanding ‘Cherry Pickers’: How Retail Customers Split Their Shopping Baskets,” unpublished manuscript, Southern Methodist University, 2002; S. Gopinath, R. Blattberg, and E. Malthouse, “Are Revived Customers as Good as New?” unpublished manuscript, Northwestern University, 2002; H. Aarts, R. Holland, and D. Langendam, “Breaking and Creating Habits on the Working Floor: A Field-Experiment on the Power of Implementation Intentions,”
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
42, no. 6 (2006): 776–83; Mindy Ji and Wendy Wood, “Purchase and Consumption Habits: Not Necessarily What You Intend,”
Journal of Consumer Psychology
17, no. 4 (2007): 261–76; S. Bellman, E. J. Johnson, and G. Lohse, “Cognitive Lock-In and the Power Law of Practice,”
Journal of Marketing
67, no. 2 (2003): 62–75; J. Bettman et al., “Adapting to Time Constraints,” in
Time Pressure and Stressing Human Judgment and Decision Making,
ed. O. Svenson and J. Maule (New York: Springer, 1993); Adwait Khare and J. Inman, “Habitual Behavior in American Eating Patterns: The Role of Meal Occasions,”
Journal of Consumer Research
32, no. 4 (2006): 567–75; David Bell and R. Lal, “The Impact of Frequent Shopper Programs in Grocery Retailing,”
Quantitative Marketing and Economics
1, no. 2 (2002): 179–202; Yuping Liu, “The Long-Term Impact of Loyalty Programs on Consumer Purchase Behavior and Loyalty,”
Journal of Marketing
71, no. 4 (2007): 19–35; Neale Martin,
Habit: The 95% of Behavior Marketers Ignore
(Upper Saddle River, N.J.: FT Press, 2008); H. Aarts, K. Fujia, and K. C. McCulloch, “Inhibition in Goal Systems: A Retrieval-Induced Forgetting Account,”
Journal of Experimental
Social Psychology
44, no. 3 (2008): 614–23; Gerald Häubl and K. B. Murray, “Explaining Cognitive Lock-In: The Role of Skill-Based Habits of Use in Consumer Choice,”
Journal of Consumer
Research
34 (2007) 77–88; D. Neale, J. Quinn, and W. Wood, “Habits: A Repeat Performance,”
Current Directions in Psychological Science
15, no. 4 (2006) 198–202; R. L. Oliver, “Whence Consumer Loyalty?”
Journal of Marketing
63 (1999): 33–44; C. T. Orleans, “Promoting the Maintenance of Health Behavior Change: Recommendations for the Next Generation of Research and Practice,”
Health
Psychology
19 (2000): 76–83; Andy Ouellette and Wendy Wood, “Habit and Intention in Everyday Life: The Multiple Processes by Which Past Behavior Predicts Future Behavior,”
Psychological Bulletin
124, no. 1 (1998) 54–74; E. Iyer, D. Smith, and C. Park, “The Effects of Situational Factors on In-Store Grocery Shopping Behavior: The Role of Store Environment and Time Available for Shopping,”
Journal of Consumer
Research
15, no. 4 (1989): 422–33; O. Amir, R. Dhar, and A. Pocheptsova, “Deciding Without Resources: Resource Depletion and Choice in Context,”
Journal of
Marketing Research
46, no. 3 (2009): 344–55; H. Aarts, R. Custers, and P. Sheeran, “The Goal-Dependent Automaticity of Drinking Habits,”
British Journal of
Social Psychology
44, no. 1 (2005): 47–63; S. Orbell and P.
Sheeran, “Implementation Intentions and Repeated Behavior: Augmenting the Predictive Validity of the Theory of Planned Behavior,”
European Journal of Social Psychology
29, nos. 2–3 (1999): 349–69; P. Sheeran, P. Gollwitzer, and P. Webb, “The Interplay Between Goal Intentions and Implementation Intentions,”
Personality and Social
Psychology Bulletin
31, no. 1 (2005): 87–98; H. Shen and R. S. Wyer, “Procedural Priming and Consumer Judgments: Effects on the Impact of Positively and Negatively Valenced Information,”
Journal of Consumer
Research
34, no. 5 (2007): 727–37; Itamar Simonson, “The Effect of Purchase Quantity and Timing on Variety-Seeking Behavior,”
Journal of Marketing Research
27, no. 2 (1990): 150–62; G. Taylor and S. Neslin, “The Current and Future Sales Impact of a Retail Frequency Reward Program,”
Journal of Retailing
81, no. 4, 293–305; H. Aarts and B. Verplanken, “Habit, Attitude, and Planned Behavior: Is Habit an Empty Construct or an Interesting Case of Goal-Directed Automaticity?”
European Review of Social
Psychology
10 (1999): 101–34; B. Verplanken, Henk Aarts, and Ad Van Knippenberg, “Habit, Information Acquisition, and the Process of Making Travel Mode Choices,”
European
Journal of Social Psychology
27, no. 5 (1997): 539–60; B. Verplanken et al., “Attitude Versus General Habit: Antecedents of Travel Mode Choice,”
Journal of
Applied Social Psychology
24, no. 4 (1994): 285–300; B. Verplanken et al., “Consumer Style and Health: The Role of Impulsive Buying in Unhealthy Eating,”
Psychology and Health
20, no. 4 (2005): 429–41; B. Verplanken et al., “Context Change and Travel Mode Choice: Combining the Habit Discontinuity and Self-Activation Hypotheses,”
Journal of Environmental Psychology
28 (2008): 121–27; Bas Verplanken and Wendy Wood, “Interventions to Break and Create Consumer Habits,”
Journal of Public Policy and Marketing
25, no. 1 (2006): 90–103; H. Evanschitzky, B. Ramaseshan, and V. Vogel, “Customer Equity Drivers and Future Sales,”
Journal of Marketing
72 (2008): 98–108; P. Sheeran and T. L. Webb, “Does Changing Behavioral Intentions Engender Behavioral Change? A Meta-Analysis of the Experimental Evidence,”
Psychological Bulletin
132, no. 2 (2006): 249–68; P. Sheeran, T. L. Webb, and A. Luszczynska, “Planning to Break Unwanted Habits: Habit Strength Moderates Implementation Intention Effects on Behavior Change,”
British Journal of Social Psychology
48, no. 3 (2009): 507–23; D. Wegner and R. Wenzlaff, “Thought Suppression,”
Annual
Review of Psychology
51 (2000): 59–91; L. Lwin, A. Mattila, and J. Wirtz, “How Effective Are Loyalty Reward Programs in Driving Share of Wallet?”
Journal of Service Research
9, no. 4 (2007): 327–34; D. Kashy, J. Quinn, and W. Wood, “Habits in Everyday Life: Thought, Emotion, and Action,”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
83, no. 6 (2002): 1281–97; L. Tam, M. Witt, and W. Wood (2005), “Changing Circumstances, Disrupting Habits,”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
88, no. 6 (2005): 918–33; Alison Jing Xu and Robert S. Wyer, “The Effect of Mind-sets on Consumer Decision Strategies,”
Journal of Consumer Research
34, no. 4 (2007): 556–66; C. Cole, M. Lee, and C. Yoon, “Consumer Decision Making and Aging: Current Knowledge and Future Directions,”
Journal of Consumer
Psychology
19 (2009): 2–16; S. Dhar, A. Krishna, and Z. Zhang, “The Optimal Choice of Promotional Vehicles: Front-Loaded or Rear-Loaded Incentives?”
Management
Science
46, no. 3 (2000): 348–62.

7.3
“potato chips are on sale!”
C. Park, E. Iyer, and D. Smith, “The Effects of Situational Factors on In-Store Grocery Shopping Behavior: The Role of Store Environment and Time Available for Shopping,”
The Journal of Consumer Research
15, no. 4 (1989): 422–33. For more on this topic, see J. Belyavsky Bayuk, C. Janiszewski, and R. Leboeuf, “Letting Good Opportunities Pass Us By: Examining the Role of Mind-set During Goal Pursuit,”
Journal of Consumer Research
37, no. 4 (2010): 570–83; Ab Litt and Zakary L. Tormala, “Fragile Enhancement of Attitudes and Intentions Following Difficult Decisions,”
Journal of Consumer Research
37, no. 4 (2010): 584–98.

7.4
University of Southern California
D. Neal and W. Wood, “The Habitual Consumer,”
Journal of Consumer Psychology
19, no. 4 (2009): 579–92. For more on similar research, see R. Fazio and M. Zanna, “Direct Experience and Attitude–Behavior Consistency,” in
Advances in Experimental Social Psychology,
ed. L. Berkowitz (New York: Academic Press, 2005); R. Abelson and R. Schank, “Knowledge and Memory: The Real Story,” in
Knowledge and Memory: The Real Story,
ed. R. S. Wyer, Jr. (Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2004); Nobert Schwarz, “Meta-Cognitive Experiences in Consumer Judgment and Decision Making,”
Journal of Consumer Psychology
14, no. 4 (September 2004): 332–48; R. Wyer and A. Xu, “The Role of Behavioral Mindsets in Goal-Directed Activity: Conceptual Underpinnings and Empirical Evidence,”
Journal of Consumer Psychology
20, no. 2 (2010): 107–25.

7.5
news or deals on cigarettes
Julia Angwin and Steve Stecklow, “ ‘Scrapers’ Dig Deep for Data on Web,”
The Wall Street Journal,
October 12, 2010; Mark Maremont and Leslie Scism, “Insurers Test Data Profiles to Identify Risky Clients,”
The Wall Street Journal,
November 19, 2010; Paul Sonne and Steve Stecklow, “Shunned Profiling Technology on the Verge of Comeback,”
The Wall Street Journal,
November 24, 2010.

7.6
Pole flashed a slide
This slide is from a keynote speech by Pole at Predicted Analytics World, New York, October 20, 2009. It is no longer available online. Additionally, see Andrew Pole, “Challenges of Incremental Sales Modeling in Direct Marketing.”