On Amir, professor of marketing at the Rady School of Management at UC San Diego
There is a monster problem facing all marketing leaders: the boredom beast. Sure, you can get consumers and clients to buy, but will they get bored of using your product or service?
On Amir, professor of marketing at the Rady School of Management at UC San Diego (where I am a former continuing education assistant dean), has found that consumers underuse a lot of products and services because of boredom.
The boredom beast might be killing your future sales.
According to Amir, product consumption has a direct effect on product sales. His research shows that many consumers don’t use products as long as they are recommended to use them (Lieberman, Morales, and Amir, “Tangential Immersion: Increasing Persistence in Boring Consumer Behaviors,” Journal of Consumer Research, October 2022).
For example, in an email interview Amir shared that consumers do not brush their teeth as long as they should (and thus purchase new brushes less frequently); many stop cleaning their houses prematurely (leaving not only germs behind but also using less cleaning product), and others underuse their fitness equipment and gym memberships (guilty as charged, professor).
“The insight that consumers underuse products because of boredom opens win-win opportunities for companies,” says Amir. “Similar to Oral-B's blue stripe that increased usage and consumption while improving efficacy, firms can increase usage and engagement with their products that would both lead to increased sales and to increased value to customers.”
Amir's research focuses on using psychological and economic principles to identify successful strategies in different market settings. He investigates different customer decision-making mechanisms and their influences on pricing and promotion strategies, on decision making under risk and uncertainty, and on preference dynamics. He also writes about how insights from research on decision making and behavioral economics may be used to improve business practices and policy making.
How to slay the boredom beast? Let’s return to tooth brushing as an example. By adding a task that requires attention (such as watching a captivating video or podcast), marketers can reduce boredom and increase the amount of time consumers brush their teeth, leading to greater consumption and better outcomes.
“This principle easily translates to other mundane behaviors, such as cardio fitness, or even cleaning surfaces in one's house,” says Amir. “If, for example, a firm provides an engaging tangential task through their app, customers will engage longer and will have better health and cleaner homes. In the process, they will use more fitness equipment and detergent, respectfully. This may even form new habits and greater app usage, providing brands valuable additional engagement channels and valuable data.”
Importantly, the game revolves around attention—take too much attention from the focal activity, and performance degrades, but take too little, and boredom will remain. The aim is something that is not too much and not too little. Like in the children’s story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, you want a middle ground choice that is just right.
“To find the ‘Goldilocks zone,’ companies should optimize data by using A/B tests, which is a way to compare two versions of something to figure out which performs better,” says Amir. “Or they can utilize other evidence-based forms of market research. The data suggest such effort will pay major dividends.”
Prior to coming to UC San Diego, On Amir was an assistant professor of marketing at Yale University. He received his Ph.D. in management science and marketing from MIT’s Sloan School of Management in 2003.
