Dan Ariely On Changing Customer Behavior

How social entrepreneurs can harness the principles of behavioral change to reach more customers and create impact

Last updated 2022-01-10 | 4.6

- Map your customer’s behavior journey
- Apply six behavior change principles to your social enterprise
- Understand five value and pricing principles to understand how to price your product

What you'll learn

Map your customer’s behavior journey

Apply six behavior change principles to your social enterprise

Understand five value and pricing principles to understand how to price your product

Design experiments to test these principles in action

* Requirements

* There are no prerequisites for this course. Students will need a sense of self-motivation to actively complete course activities.

Description

Many innovations deployed to solve social problems never reach their full potential. Sometimes they fail because people resist changing their behavior even when they know they should do things like stop smoking, show up to a job training course, start using solar power, take a daily pill, or wash their hands. Knowledge alone won’t cause them to make the switch. There are other motivations, other drivers, and other factors about how their environments are set up that need to be accounted for and potentially redesigned.

This is where social science research can inform the work of social entrepreneurs. In this course, Dan Ariely, a professor at Duke University and the author of the New York Times bestseller Predictably Irrational, will help social entrepreneurs apply insights from behavioral economics and psychology to understand how people make decisions. His research shows that when people make small adjustments to their environment or their daily routines, they can generate new use patterns and trigger better decisions that improve health, education, financial wellbeing, environmental preservation, and other forms of social good.

By drilling down to specific behaviors that your customers need to perform to use your product or service in an intended way, you’ll uncover new opportunities to redesign elements of the experience or motivate people to take the required steps.

In addition to video tutorials from Dan, you'll also gain access to 4 Behavior Change Design Guides (totaling over 90 pages) that will include step-by-step exercises to apply these principles to your product, along with examples from other social enterprises. Once you start seeing these principles in everyday life, you won’t be able to resist redesigning elements of your own life and business to help you and the people around you.

Who this course is for:

Aspiring or active social entrepreneurs looking to design smarter products and services to achieve social impact
Anyone who wants to learn how to apply practical insights from behavioral economics and psychology to real-life businsesses

Course content

5 sections • 41 lectures

Introduction to Behavior Change Design for Entrepreneurs 10 lectures

Introduction to Behavior Change from Dan Ariely Preview 01:58

Dan Ariely will introduce you to the course and preview some of the key principles of behavior change that you will learn

Introduce Yourself to the Course Community Preview 00:09

Introduce yourself to others taking this course and share what you hope to learn.

Optional Listening Guide for Section 1 Preview 00:12

Download this optional listening guide to keep track of key concepts and take notes as you watch the videos in Section 1.

Why Social Science Can Unlock New Insights for Entrepreneurs Preview 02:57

This lecture will teach you how principles from social science can help entrepreneurs work more quickly and effectively to design products and services that people will love and use.

What the Typical Approach to Behavior Change Gets Wrong Preview 06:34

By completing this lecture, you'll learn how most people approach behavior change, but why this traditional approach is flawed. You'll discover how to bring to use findings from social science to build products that help customers make smarter decisions.

Where Entrepreneurs Should Start Preview 03:24

In this lecture, Dan will help through you think through your customer journey, or all the steps that customers have to go through in order to effectively use your product or service. You'll then begin to identify the motivations or thoughts that customers have at each stage of this journey.

RESEARCH BRIEF: Why "Bumps in the Road Matter" Preview 03:59

In this lecture, Dan will introduce you to a fascinating study about generic vs. name-brand drugs and show you what this study can teach us about the importance of removing "bumps in the road" for our customers.

Design the Path of Least Resistance Preview 04:41

In this lecture, you'll learn how to begin reducing sources of friction for your customers so that their experiences and transactions with your product or service are as seamless as possible. This should help your customers make smarter decisions and use your product more effectively.

Apply Your Knowledge of Behavior Change

In this quiz, we'll give you several scenarios and ask you what approach you should NOT take to try and change people's behaviors.

BEHAVIOR CHANGE DESIGN GUIDE 1 Preview 00:11

In this Guide, you'll walk through exercises to map your Customer's Behavior Journey.

Behavior Change Principles to Trigger Use of Your Product 14 lectures

Optional Listening Guide for Section 2 Preview 00:03

Download this optional listening guide to help you keep track of key concepts for Section 2 and take notes.

Choice Architecture and Choice Overload Preview 03:22

In this lecture, Dan will introduce the concept of "choice architecture" and you'll learn why giving more choices to your customers can sometimes backfire.

RESEARCH BRIEF: Default Bias & Organ Donation Preview 05:56

This lecture will teach you to appreciate the power of the default option. You'll learn how one country successfully used the "default option" to significantly increase a lifesaving resource.

RESEARCH BRIEF: Defaults in the Grocery Store Preview 02:52

In this lecture, Dan will show you what a study about jam options in the grocery store can teach you about how to help customers make easier decisions by giving them fewer choices.

Evoking Cues and Loss Aversion Preview 02:46

In this lecture, you'll learn why it is is so painful to lose things and how you can harness the power of loss aversion to help people make better decisions. You'll also learn why cues or triggers in the environment can be a key tool for prompting specific behaviors from customers.

RESEARCH BRIEF: TV Sales, Retirement Funds, and Loss Aversion Preview 05:38

Dan will introduce two studies about TV sales and retirement funds to help you see how aversion works in practice.

Social Desirability and Social Proof Preview 04:16

Dan will help you understand why social desirability is such a potent force for motivating behavior change and help you harness social proof to show your customers how others are using your product or service.

Concreteness Preview 02:47

This lecture will teach you to design instructions that help customers understand one concrete and understandable use case for your product so that customers are more likely to use it correctly.

Incentives Preview 02:32

This lecture will help you understand different ways to motivate customers, and how these different types of motivations can work together, or interfere with each other.

Research Brief: Don't Mix Market and Social Norms Preview 11:07

This lecture will teach you the importance of avoiding mixing market and social norms.

RESEARCH BRIEF: The Case of the Daycare Center Preview 04:21

In this lecture, Dan will share a cautionary research study of a daycare center that mixed social and market norms--to unfortunate results.

RESEARCH BRIEF: Complete and Incomplete Contracts Preview 03:13

In this lecture you'll identify why leaving contracts incomplete can actually be quite powerful and allow you to harness different types of motivation.

Identify the Behavior Change Principle

We'll provide you real life examples of products from social enterprises. You'll identify the behavior change principle that they are applying.

BEHAVIOR CHANGE DESIGN GUIDE 2 Preview 00:03

In this Guide, you'll walk through exercises to apply 6 key behavior change principles to your product or service.

Design a Product Customers Will Value and Pay For 8 lectures

Optional Listening Guide for Section 3 Preview 00:03

Download this optional listening guide to help you keep track of key concepts for Section 3 and take notes.

Value Perception Preview 04:33

This lecture will teach you how people typically perceive value. You'll learn to identify the factors other than functionality and utility that customers take into account when assessing a product or service.

Relativity Preview 03:10

This lecture will help you understand how customers judge products relative to others in the same or similar categories.

RESEARCH BRIEF: Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts Preview 05:30

In this lecture, Dan will introduce you to the concept of "self-herding" and show how your previous decisions play a powerful role in your future decisions. He'll use the example of Starbucks to show how one company masterfully situated itself in a different category--and got people to pay more for coffee.

The Pain of Paying Preview 02:42

In this lecture you'll learn why it hurts so much to part with money--and how you can leverage this principle to help people consume more of things that are good for them or less of something that is harmful.

Mental Accounting Preview 08:09

The Peril of Pay-As-You-Go Preview 02:39

In this lecture you'll learn why micropayments (also known as a Pay-As-You-Go) strategy might not always be the best way to get customers to pay for your product, even if you are dealing with customers on very limited incomes.

BEHAVIOR CHANGE DESIGN GUIDE 3 Preview 00:03

In this Guide, you'll learn to apply five Value and Pricing Principles to your product or service.

How Entrepreneurs Can Design Behavior Change Experiments 8 lectures

Experimental Design for Entrepreneurs Preview 02:36

In this lecture, Dan will teach you why entrepreneurs should design and run experiments, and how you can approach experimental design in cost-effective and efficient ways.

Things All Experiments Need Preview 04:32

In this lecture, you'll learn about the critical factors that all experiments must incorporate in order to yield actionable data and insights for entrepreneurs.

The Ethics of Experiments Preview 03:27

In this lecture, you'll learn how to consider and account for the ethical considerations you should keep in mind when designing experiments to be run with real customers.

Why Experiments Can Change the World Preview 03:01

In this lecture, Dan will share his big picture view on why it is so critical to keep experimenting to build better and more effective products, services, and interventions.