Small Can Charges More Than Big Can

“If you want to understand human behaviour, logic can tell you a certain amount. For example, if you put the price down people would probably buy more of what you are selling. If you’re running a pub and it smells of piss, people probably won’t go there. That’s something you don’t need to research, you know that by and large logic will say that it’s not a good idea, okay? Then there’s the information market research can tell you, you know, asking people whether they’d prefer your pub to smell of urine or not? Those are questions which people will answer fairly honestly, you know, they’d rather buy this than that because they think it looks nicer. Research is not all total rubbish, I mean, you know, people do have some access to their thoughts and feelings and they can occasionally describe their behaviour with a degree of accuracy. But then there’s this other thing which is what I call the missing third. It’s probably more like the missing half in terms of human behaviour in truth, it’s the influences on behaviour that logic won’t tell you and research won’t tell you. I’ll give you an example of that. Take Red Bull. My theory asks how can they charge £1.50 for a can of Red Bull, when Coke only costs 50p? In a way they succeeded because they made the can smaller … people recognise that it’s not a Coke can, it’s a small can, therefore this must be a different kind of drink from Coke so maybe there’s a reason why it charges £1.50 rather than 50p. Now the interesting thing is logic’s not going to tell you that. No one’s going to suggest that in order to be able to charge £1.50 for this you have to make the can smaller. No consumer research group is going to say: “I’m not paying £1.50 for that mate, but I would if you gave me less of it.” No one’s ever going to say that. But the truth of the matter is that that’s how the brain works sometimes.”

“Geoffrey Miller *, the guy who wrote Spent, said that there’s a European heuristic, which is that intricacy is good and that’s why Europeans make things like watches — you know, one of your status symbols will be a really intricate small watch; and an American hueristic, that kind of Hummer mentality, which is “big is good”.”