Newsweek Articles- The Psychology of Consumers

Trusting your Gut:
"One of the leading challengers to the dogma of decision making is psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer, of the Max Planck Institute in Germany, whose new book "Gut Feelings" collects a convincing body of evidence for the power of hunches over laborious data crunching. Hunches, gut feelings, intuition—these are all colloquial English for what Gigerenzer and his colleagues call "heuristics," fast and efficient cognitive shortcuts that (according to the emerging theory) can help us negotiate life, if we let them."
http://www.newsweek.com/id/71514

Anyone who has ever looked at Real Estate understands that you have to get the feel of a space in order to feel comfortable purchasing or renting that property. Square footage, location, materials used and the brands of appliances may factor in, but overall I notice clients will base decisions on how they feel once they enter a space. Its not necessarily always an "a-ha!" moment. Many times, there will be one property crossed off a list for some reason, that stays in the back of the mind and continually pops up.


Why we buy what we buy:
"Market choices have much more to do with the brain's basic, internal perceptions of the world and the way those perceptions shape our feelings of comfort and ease. In this view, even currency has no clear and absolute value; regardless of those numbers on bills and coins, they derive their true value from the individual mind."
http://www.newsweek.com/id/144229

The above article points to experiments that prove humans perceive more value in the familiar. Just as companies with easy to pronounce names do better in the stock market, I see clients of mine gravitate to spaces that are familiar to them. The article would also suggest that developers would do well to choose common, rather than tongue twisting names for their new condo projects.